Drawk Kwast

Understanding Women: Logical Checkpoints vs. Emotional Zones

by Drawk Kwast – April 13th, 2010

Have you ever wondered if women are completely crazy or if you just don’t understand them? Women may not make logical sense, but it is still possible for us to understand the emotional system they run on. The trick is to find a way to relate to this foreign system from reference points that we already understand. As men, we have to evolve past the “all women are just crazy” theory that we like to fall back on every time we don’t understand their actions.

So let’s start from a reference point that we already understand as men. Men work in terms of logical checkpoints. As an example, we’ll look at how men decide to loan money to friends.

Steve loans Bill $50.00 and Bill pays the money back, on time, with zero hassle. A month later, Bill asks Steve if he can borrow $80.00 and Steve has plenty of cash to easily accommodate him. Every guy reading this knows that Steve loans Bill the money. It’s just logical. If Steve can loan Bill $50.00 with no hassle, he has passed that logical checkpoint in their relationship, and he is cleared for more credit. This logical checkpoint can be defined simply as, “If I loan you money, and you pay it back, I can loan you more money.”

Women operate under a completely different set of rules. Women work in terms of emotional zones. They float in and out of these zones quickly and easily, and they do it in a non-logical, non-linear way. If you know which emotion zone a woman is in, you know how she will respond. This system when simplified is, “I did it because I felt that way at the time and I’ll do it again when I feel that way again.” Here is the process when a woman loans someone money.

Sally is in a good mood and loans Becky $50.00 because Becky is a friend that she has a strong connection with. Becky never pays the money back. After two weeks, Sally calls up Becky. What Becky doesn’t know is that Sally is now in a bad mood because she just broke up with her boyfriend. Therefore, Sally starts yelling at Becky about the money she hasn’t paid back. In reality, Sally is just yelling at Becky as an emotional outlet to help her deal with the negative emotions of her recent breakup. If during this call Becky asks for more money, the answer will be no. Two days later, Becky calls Sally because she just found out that Sally had broken up with her boyfriend. Girls like to talk on the phone to explore and share in the emotions of each other’s life drama. After Sally cries her guts out, she tells Becky how lucky she is to have a good friend like her. At the end of that call, Becky, who still owes Sally $50.00, asks to borrow another $80.00 and Sally agrees. This action makes zero logical sense to a guy and is a bad decision, but because women “do what they feel in the moment,” we can at least understand how the female system gave this result.

A guy looks at previous history from a logical point of view and tends to make a logical choice. He operates in a world of logical checkpoints. A woman tends to ignore previous logical history and goes with how she feels in the moment. She operates in a world of emotional zones. For example, a woman going into a good mood will be agreeable and accommodating. A woman going into a bad mood will be disagreeable and combative. In either case, her choices have nothing to do with logic. If you ask an upset woman during an argument if she wants $100.00, she will tell you to go get bent rather than giving the logical answer of yes. Now let’s look at how the two systems can conflict, using a second date as an example.

Steve and Sally are about to go on their second date. We ask each of them separately what they think the chances are of having sex at the end of the date. Both of them give us the same answer. They both tell us they had a great first date, and it’s very likely. What 99.99% of men fail to see, however, is that even though they gave the same answer, they arrived at that answer in two totally different ways.

Steve came to this conclusion using logical checkpoints. At the end of their last date, Steve made it to third base. Logically, if she went that far last time, when she sees him again, sex is the next thing to happen. It’s a logical progression, just like when Bill borrowed $50.00 from him.

Sally came to this conclusion because of the emotional zone she was in when we asked the question. It was as simple as feeling positive emotions for Steve, and wanting more. Just like with Becky, if she feels that way again, she will act that way again and tend to take it a bit further to intensify that feeling.

For most guys, this second date would be a crap-shoot. Most guys, based off of their logic, would make the move for sex and it would either happen or not. If they score, the guy thinks he was correct and his logic was sound. If he doesn’t score, he still sees his logic as sound and just labels the girl as crazy, or having issues. He never truly understands what’s going on.

Steve is not most guys. He is in the one percent of the one percent who actually knows what’s going on. Steve is a true alpha male. He uses his default mode of logical checkpoints with his friends and at work, but he understands the emotional zones women operate under and, because of this, knows that he must completely throw logic out the window on his date. He knows that Sally will sleep with him if and when she feels like sleeping with him. Most guys have heard the saying, “You have to get the woman into the mood.” Steve is one of the few guys who actually understands what this really means. It’s not what she thinks she wants to do, it’s what she feels like she wants to do, and Steve is very good at getting girls to feel like doing it.

Steve is a master seducer who plays the game using only two rules. The first is that women ignore logic because they make decisions based off of whatever emotional zone they find themselves in at that moment. The second is that women can be moved in and out of different emotional zones fairly easily. Thus, to get a girl to respond a certain way, you must make her feel a certain way.

When things go less than perfectly, he never takes personal responsibility for the bad mood of the girl he just stared talking to. He knows that if a girl is bitchy, she will be ready to be guided into a new mood soon enough. He just keeps smiling, unaffected by her temporary state, waiting for her to fall into his happy mood. His power is in being able hold his good mood long enough that it becomes contagious to her. Not only is this amazing, but it happens like clockwork. It’s like he’s bulletproof.

You may think this kind of success would leave Steve with a huge ego, but you would be wrong. Compliment him on how he picked up a girl, and you will always get the same response. He will tell you that he didn’t do anything special. It’s just that she was in a good mood and almost anything would have worked. Like I said, Steve truly understands the game.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Antilibrary

by Drawk Kwast – April 11th, 2010

I am the proud owner of an antilibrary. I don’t own any books that I have read. That’s not to say that I haven’t read any books. Quite to the contrary, I have read a mountain of them, but as soon as I get to the end of the last page, I either mail them to friends or simply throw them out. I believe that only unread books have value.

Look at the book shelves of most any person and you will see all the books they have read. People buy a book, read it, and put it on the shelf like an ornament. People keep their books because it makes them feel intelligent to look at everything they have read. It’s as if they believe that for every 10 books they finish and put on the shelf, they gain one I.Q. point.

This approach never made any sense to me. Once I read a book, I’m done with it. What am I going to do, read the same book twice? Logically, I know that I get much more value out of reading two different books than out of reading one book twice. If I happen to read something that really hits me, I take notes by putting it into an electronic knowledge depository on my computer. Once it’s there, keeping track of these gems of insight becomes much easier than looking for highlighted pages inside of a physical book. Now you may think that the process of taking notes requires a lot of time, but you would be wrong. The average book I read has no more than three things that make it into my electronic knowledge depository. The most influential book I read last year resulted in less than one page of notes.

If you read one book on a subject you know nothing about, such as the mating habits of the endangered African penguins, every page of that one book will contain new information for you. Take notes, and you’ll end up rewriting most of the book. An interesting thing happens, however, if you read 20 books on that subject. By the time you read number 20, you have actually encountered the same information over and over again. At this point, repetition has burned the relevant information into your memory, but the other reason you remember the information so well is that different authors have presented the information in different ways, from different perspectives.

If you learn Kung Fu from one master, you have learned some of what that one master knows about Kung Fu. If in that process you take notes at nauseam, you will retain a greater percentage of what that one teacher showed you. However, if you learn Kung Fu from three masters, Muay Thai from three different masters, and Ju Jitsu from three more different masters, the result will be a true understand of martial arts, with no notes needed.

In Bruce Lee’s Tao of Jeet Kune Do, he tells you to throw his book out as soon as you finish reading it. His intent is to open your awareness. He wants you to find things that are relevant and true for you through the process of seeing his ideas. He warns that memorizing what he says at the expense of gathering other information and inserting your own reflections will only cripple your true learning.

The first time I read the word antilibrary, I was reading about a man named Umberto Eco. He has over 30,000 books in his antilibrary. This is a man who understands that if you focus on what you have read, you will believe yourself to be knowledgeable, and be wrong. If you focus on what you have not read, you will believe yourself to be ignorant, and be wrong. Given the two options, I would like to believe myself to be ignorant.

Umberto Eco is a philosopher who has written many books of his own. Do you ever wonder how philosophers come up with so much to write about? They do lots of reading. That was the number one secret I learned as I became a writer myself. Consider this: if you read one book on a new subject and then wrote a book on that subject, your book would be very similar to the one you just read. If, however, you read 100 books on a new subject, without taking any notes, and then wrote a book of your own, you would be pleasantly surprised by the results. Not only would it be free of plagiarism, but it would also reflect your personality. This is what Bruce Lee’s advice was in the Tao of Jeet Kune Do. Take what works for you and make it yours. Focus more on what you don’t know rather than what you can’t remember.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Self Sabotage Part II – The Rollercoaster Crashes

by Drawk Kwast – April 9th, 2010

This is the second chapter in the story of Gary and his psycho bipolar girlfriend, Melinda. You can read the first part of their story in my article titled Self Sabotage: The Emotional Rollercoaster. That article explained what motivates Gary to date an insane person, while this second article documents the disaster that became of his life because he stayed with her. So for all of you who emailed me asking what happened with Gary and Melinda, enjoy.

I remember the first time I met Melinda and realized that there was something very wrong with this girl. I remember Gary shrugging his shoulders and telling me that she was “on medication for being psychologically unstable.” I also remember the first time I told Gary that if he didn’t get rid of Melinda, only bad things could happen as a result of keeping her around.

By the time one of her mood swings resulted in the police coming, I thought to myself that surely Gary would realize that he had to get rid of her – but to my amazement they were back together later that night. After that, I took it upon myself one evening to put a beer in Gary’s hand and have a bit of a sit-down conversation with him. I told him that if he did not get rid of his girlfriend, something was going to happen that would be irreversible. I explained to him that if he did not get away now, the day would come when he would not be able to get away, and that’s where our story picks back up with these two, the point of no return…

One of the benefits of dating a crazy girl is that the crazier they are, the better they are in bed. This was something that Gary not only knew, but enjoyed quite frequently. The biggest problem with Gary’s enjoyment of this was that Gary enjoyed it without the use of a condom. Not smart. Melinda’s idea of birth control was abortion, and she had already had five of them with Gary. What had not occurred to him was: what would result if the day came that she got pregnant and decided not to have an abortion?

The day finally came when Gary decided he had had enough of Melinda. He told her they were finished, and he was serious about it. What Gary did not know however, was that by the time he told her this, she was pregnant again. So what did Melinda decide to do to keep Gary in her life? Simple answer, don’t have another abortion. Having his child would guarantee that he was in her life permanently. Gary having a child with Melinda would also guarantee that his child would turn out just as crazy as she is. The surprises that Gary had not considered just kept on getting better.

So what happened over the next nine months? Interesting things: I’ll give you the highlights. Melinda, crazy as ever, and now with the added bonus of the out of control emotions that pregnant women have, ruined a perfectly good frying pan over Gary’s head. I say ruined because afterwards, it was so dented that it was unusable. Gary got lucky with that, no permanent brain damage (although considering the decisions this guy makes in life, I question whether his brain ever did work correctly). When the police got there they arrested Melinda and took her away in handcuffs, but when it came time for Gary to testify in court, he didn’t for the sake of his unborn child.

And while all of this was happening, he was having sex with another girl, Ayesha. You’ll remember that I said Gary doesn’t like having sex with condoms. You guessed it, Ayesha gets pregnant also. Ayesha’s boyfriend was very upset when he got out of prison and found out about all this.

So this leaves Gary with a two-week-old son, another baby on the way from a different girl, and a guy who just got out of prison looking for him. My advice to Gary was to sue for custody of his son, sever ties with Melinda, and learn how to use a condom. Gary replies by telling me, “Well at least things can’t get any worse.” He was wrong about this also.

After having their son, Melinda assures Gary that she has had a birth control implant put in, and they continue to have unprotected sex. Within weeks, Melinda tells Gary that she is pregnant again. At three months pregnant Melinda and Gary go to see a doctor for prenatal care. The doctor looks up at Gary and assures him that his girlfriend is doing fine for being six weeks pregnant. Gary looks at the doctor and says, you mean three months pregnant right? The doctor assures Gary that he knows what he’s talking about, and no, in fact Melinda is six weeks pregnant.

Melinda’s story is that she had a miscarriage, didn’t even know it was a miscarriage, and must have become pregnant again six weeks ago. This is the type of insanity that you just can’t make up, or believe actually happened, either.

Now let’s discuss what this has done to Gary financially. With the new baby in the house, formula to buy, and the never ending supply of diapers needed, Gary found himself frequently short on cash. His solution was to continuously get car title loans to make ends meet. This worked for a while until the day that he could not make the high interest payments and they took his car. So how does Gary get to work every day? Melinda drives him every morning and picks him up every evening spending the whole time nagging him about how he needs to figure out how to buy a car. The irony is that Melinda isn’t working either. She is on unemployment and disability. It’s hilarious to me to know that a leech of the system like Melinda continuously nags Gary about not making enough money.

The moral to the story is to be careful who you surround yourself with, and always, always use a condom! Gary called me the other day and my advice was a murder-suicide. He wasn’t sure if I was kidding or not, and neither was I.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Cheeseburger Model for Success

by Drawk Kwast – February 8th, 2010

Everything I ever needed to learn about how to live a successful and balanced life I learned from eating cheeseburgers. The average person needs to eat 2,000 calories a day. A Double Quarter Pounder Meal, super-sized, from McDonald’s is 1,840 calories. This is the reason why McDonald’s no longer gives you the “super-size” option, because eating that, plus anything else over the course of the day, will cause the average person to get fat. It’s not one trip to McDonald’s that makes a person fat however; it is the continued trips to McDonald’s over time that have a snowball effect. We can apply this “Cheeseburger Model” to any area of a person’s life to discover the path that will lead to ultimate success or ultimate failure.

The model is easy to understand. Imagine two people eating at McDonald’s over the next 12 months. One of them, Bob, will start tomorrow by eating lunch and dinner there. The other one, Abe, will also start tomorrow by eating lunch there. By the next day, Bob has had enough McDonald’s to last two weeks and begins eating other, healthier food. Abe loves McDonald’s, and continues to have lunch there every weekday because it is right across the street from where he works. Abe tells us that it is “just so close and convenient.” After one month, we see that Bob has eaten at McDonald’s only three times, while Abe has eaten lunch there 20 times. After one year, Bob is at 10 meals while Abe has eaten at McDonald’s 248 times. At this point, do you think Bob looks much different from how he did a year ago? No. How about Abe? Oh baby, did he get fat! The point of the Cheeseburger Model is to illustrate that success or failure in your life tends to be a snowball effect.

One day of sluffing off followed by a year of hard work will not doom your prosperity any more than one day of hard work followed by a year of sluffing off will guarantee your success. It’s a matter of consistency. Here are some practical examples of applying this model in real life.

Starting a Business. It takes a matter of only hours to start a new business. What most people don’t realize, however, is that spending a Saturday ordering business cards and setting up a website is only the first step. You will not have much of a business if you only work on it when you feel like it. There is quite a bit of trial and error when you start a new business, and you will find that it’s mostly error for the first few months, or even years, which will leave you wanting to give up. Slow and steady wins the race when it comes to start-ups. If you have an idea that you truly feel is worth it, devote one hour or more, five days a week, for one year to it.

Finding a Girlfriend. The average guy asks out fewer than three girls per month and is heartbroken when his rare attempts fail. This is the same guy who isn’t comfortable talking to women because, quite simply, he never talks to women. Finding a girlfriend isn’t about making one approach every few weeks, it’s about talking to every woman you can, every time you leave the house. You get comfortable talking with them by, quite simply, talking to lots of them. This increases your chances of getting a date by not only learning to talk with them, but also by asking more of them out. Don’t fish with a spear gun, use a net. You can always throw back the ones you don’t like.

Party Time. I grew up in an environment where I was told that listening to music with friends would inevitably turn me into a heroin addict. To this day I cringe when I hear idiots say things like, “if you never take that first drink, you cannot become an alcoholic.” It’s not the first drink; it’s the seventh before noon, every day for a month that wrecks a person. Humans are social creatures and that is why we group together to have fun. It is in our nature. It’s ok to have some fun, and the right amount of fun will actually make us more productive once it’s time to get back to work. Be an adult by knowing and respecting your limits, then enjoy life by playing like a child. Everything in moderation.

Getting in Shape. Every athletic club makes the majority of their money because of January 1. If it were not for New Year’s resolutions, most gyms would go out of business. It is the same thing every year. A tidal wave of people sign yearlong contracts in that first week of January, and by the end of the third week, half will never walk into the gym again, until next January. Now, for the people like me who actually keep going regularly, we love new sign-ups because without them we would never get new equipment to play with, but we do laugh at them. These people do not realize that one week at the gym is not going to get them into shape. This is the opposite of eating at McDonald’s. If over the next year they would come to the gym 248 times, they would have the bodies they want. If you want to look like the people who work out all of the time, you are going to need to work out all of the time.

Life is a Journey. One step in the right direction followed by a few hundred in the wrong direction will not get you to your goal, but it is fine to take a few steps on the scenic route from time to time.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Ziggy’s Rules

by Drawk Kwast – February 2nd, 2010

His name is Ziggy. He earns silly amounts of money without effort, is a magnet for ridiculously attractive women, and makes James Bond look socially inept in comparison. I remember the day I met him. It was the day I realized that different people live in different versions of reality. The world in which I lived at the time was one of frustration, confusion, and neediness. From the second I met Ziggy, I could see that he lived in a very different world, one of ease, understanding, and abundance. I wanted what he had and I wasn’t shy about asking him how he did it. A massive amount of excitement swept through me as he began his answer with, “Let me tell you what I know about women…”

All women have an expiration date. He told me that there is a point in every relationship when the thrill of getting the girl turns into either the fear of losing her or the pain of not being able to get rid of her. There is a thrill in the chase and a rush that comes over you the first time you enjoy intense sexual pleasure together. This is an incredible thing, he said, but the very nature of it is fleeting, which means it cannot last. No woman ages in reverse; instead, her beauty will fade. A perfect love that burns intensely bright must also fade. Every flower blooms only once and eventually fades, but tomorrow will bring new flowers. You may know how you feel about her today, but you don’t know how you will feel about her tomorrow and, more importantly, you don’t know how you will feel about the women you have yet to meet in the future. All women have an expiration date.

Place this number in your mind, half your age plus seven. The perfect age for a female companion, according to Ziggy, is always half your age plus seven. If you are 24 years old, you will find the perfect age for a woman at 19. If you are 40, she is 27. When you hit 80, it will be 47 for her. As yesterday’s flowers fade, this is how to pick today’s flowers. Over the years, I have met many of his new wives and mistresses. They all fit this equation; half his age plus seven.

Easier to say “I’m done” than “Here’s half.” Ziggy told me he once put together an Excel spreadsheet to calculate the total financial cost of all his divorces and mistresses. He told me it would have been cheaper for him to have had sex parties in Vegas with multiple strippers every weekend for the last 20 years. He told me marriage should only be considered in the case of wanting to have children. Even then, you will regret it when you eventually find yourself standing beside your divorce lawyer in front of a judge. I will never forget how he explained that you may always be in love with the woman you married, but the woman you married is nowhere near the same person you divorced. They are two totally different people. Be ready to walk out in a second when that change happens and make it easy on yourself by not leaving her half of your bank account. Just remember, it is much easier to say “I’m done” than “Here’s half.”

So, how did these rules work out for him? Every time I see him, he’s in the company of an amazingly attractive young woman who adores every second spent with him. Ziggy is a man who enjoys every moment of life despite the fact that he knows the moment will not last. He can do this because he knows all the great moments will be followed by many others.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Stripper Magic

by Drawk Kwast – November 8th, 2009

When I first moved to Las Vegas I made a commitment to myself to avoid strippers which, against my better judgment, I would later change my mind on. What had not occurred to me was that when you live in Las Vegas, every attractive girl you meet is either a “dancer” which is the same thing as stripper, or a stripper, which is the same thing as prostitute. These are girls I would meet at the gym or at the grocery store, get them out on a date, and find out they were a “dancer.” From these experiences, I learned a valuable lesson about women in general. That’s what this story is about.

I met “Kitten” (she actually introduced herself with her real name but I am changing it here to protect the not so innocent) while she was moving into my building. She was tall, slender, raven-haired, and 19 years old. I wanted to drink her bath water from the moment I met her. She was this dangerous combination of too adorable and too street smart. She told me she was a “dancer” and I told her I would figure out later if I cared. A few hours after meeting her, we were out on the Las Vegas Strip drinking Jager bombs.

I paid for the first round of drinks. When it was time to get a second round, I told her it was her turn to buy. She gave me a strange look that was as much seductive as it was confused. I told her I wasn’t a client and I slapped her ass as she went to the bar to buy me a drink. It was on this night that I made the most amazing discovery about women in general. After she bought that round, she tried to get me to buy the next two rounds. She did it with the cutest little, “I know you want to have sex with me look” on her face. I looked at her and told her that her stripper magic wasn’t going to work on me. She didn’t know how to respond to that, other than going to the bar to buy us more drinks. That was the birth of my saying “stripper magic” and the first realization of how much power these words hold.

I have known her for almost a year now. I am proud to say that I have never had sex with a stripper, and she won’t be the first as she turned out to be a bad kisser anyway. She is a friend. I enjoy hanging out with her to hear stories of the wild life she leads and because it’s easy to pickup amazing looking women when you are already with one. Every time we go out and it’s her turn to buy the drinks, I laugh a little inside knowing that she is buying my drink with the money she got from some horny guy the night before. She is one person in my diverse collection of friends who keeps my life beyond interesting. Every time she falls back into default stripper mode, I smile at her and remind her that her stripper magic doesn’t work on me.

The interesting thing is that all women are born with stripper magic. Whether it’s the girl at the bar asking you to buy her a drink or the woman who feels that she deserves half of a guy’s money after leaving him. It’s just that actual strippers use this magic as their primary source of income. Women think that if they put on some mascara and bat their eyelashes, guys will do anything for them, and in most cases they are correct. That’s stripper magic.

As for me, I’m different and I know how to have fun with it. Whenever any cute girl asks me to do something for them, I smile and tell them that their stripper magic isn’t going to work on me. If it’s a girl I am dating, I say no to things on occasion as I remind her that her stripper magic doesn’t work on me. If it’s a girl trying to sell me something, I tell her with a smile that her hooker magic isn’t going to work on me. As long as I say it in a playful way, everyone gets a good laugh. In most cases, it’s funny because I am calling them out on something they know they are doing. In any case, the women are always derailed with a response like that.

One thing to keep in mind when you are using this to tease women is that the truth hurts. For me, the sexiest quality in a woman is that she doesn’t need me. She hangs out with me because she enjoys being with me, never because she needs me to pay her bills. When you jokingly accuse a self sufficient woman of trying to use stripper magic on you, she will laugh. If you try this on a girl that has nothing going for herself but her looks, expect an emotional flair up. Personally, I don’t waste my time on low value people who don’t know how to take a joke.

Just remember that there is a huge difference between telling a girl that she is behaving like a prostitute and saying with a smile on your face that her “stripper magic” isn’t going to work on you.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Science of Luck

by Drawk Kwast – November 5th, 2009

The biggest reason you don’t have the life you want is because you are focused on what you aren’t getting. You see only your lack of luck. Successful people live life as they desire because they focus on what they are getting. These people see all their options, and when they receive the benefits from wisely acting on the options, everyone else calls them lucky. It was Machiavelli who told us that success is 50% luck, and the rest is how we respond to that luck through cunning and bravura. Personally I believe that life is only 10% what happens to me and 90% how I respond to it, but this goes way beyond seeing the glass half empty or half full. This is the difference between seeing the glass or dying of thirst.

Most people hold the belief that some are just born lucky and others are not. They believe somehow that “fate” decides the lucky. The most interesting thing to me about the concept of luck is that the world’s biggest experts on the subject seem to be the ones who do not have it. The day I came to this realization was the day I realized the concept of luck was flawed. Think of it like this. What if the biggest experts on financial investing were all bankrupt and the people with the most money had no idea how they did it? It would tell you that something else is going on that no one is seeing. This is how it is with luck. Ask a lucky person why they are so lucky and the most popular answers will be either that they don’t know or that it’s because they expect good things to happen to them. The flaw in the logic of the second statement is simple. If you had been unusually lucky your entire life, would you not also start to expect it?

Ask a person who considers themselves unlucky about luck and expect everything from an emotional rant to a lengthy pseudo-scientific explanation based on something completely irrelevant like the day they were born on. They will include that the “fact” (as they see it) that because their luck has been so bad for so long, it means that their luck has to be about to change for the better. Ask them about a person who is lucky and they will tell you that because they have been so lucky for so long, they should be careful because their luck is about to run out. None of this is necessarily true. I have known people who spend their entire lives falling on their face and I have known people who always land on their feet, no matter what happens. The key to what I am about to show you is in the last part of that sentence, “…no matter what happens.” This has nothing to do with luck. It’s pure science.

There was a very interesting study done on luck by Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire. He gave a newspaper to both a group of “lucky” and a group of “unlucky” people. Both groups were asked to look through the newspaper and tell him how many photographs it contained. On average, the unlucky people took about two minutes to count the photographs, whereas the lucky people took just seconds. Why? Because the second page of the newspaper contained the message: “Stop counting. There are 43 photographs in this newspaper.” This message took up half of the page and was written in type that was more than 2 inches high. It was staring everyone straight in the face, but the unlucky people tended to miss it and the lucky people tended to spot it followed by adjusting their actions based on what they found.

It’s not about luck. It’s about keeping your eyes open.

I am the type of person who is considered lucky. I learned how to be lucky. I interact with as many people as possible to create as many opportunities as I can for myself. I separate from the negative and pursue the positive in very creative ways. I know when to hold on to value that others don’t see and when to let go for something better that I usually find hiding right in front of my face. It’s not that I have better luck than other people; it’s that I can see things that others can’t.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Blind Spots: What You Can Learn From a Turkey

by Drawk Kwast – September 26th, 2009

Being able to see your blind spots is one of life’s most important lessons and it can be easily learned from a turkey. Every day at farms across the world, turkeys are born. They learn that humans feed them. They are thankful for the nice humans who feed and take care of them. As the days turn into months, the turkeys see that they get feed every day and begin to accept this as one of the core realities of their existence. After the passing of 364 days, they sleep that night being 100% sure that they will get fed the next day. On day 365, rather than getting fed, the farmer kills the turkey. There is a big problem with living your life assuming that your past will equal your future. The thing to learn is that you are not aware of what you do not know, like the turkey. These blind spots can sneak up on you and kill you before you even know what happened.

I know quite a few men who behave like turkeys in their romantic relationships. These guys assume that the women they are with will stay with them for no other reason than that they are with them right now. They think that if their woman was unhappy she would have already left, and since she is still with them she must be happy. It then comes as a huge surprise to them when their woman leaves for another guy. This other guy knows how to give her things in the relationship that the turkey never even knew she needed to be happy.

Then there are the turkeys who have worked at the same company for 20 years. Every day they sit in their cubical, and every two weeks they get a paycheck. They assume that this will continue with the same certainty as the sun rising every morning. Then, to their total shock, one dark morning they arrive at the office to find out that the company is out of business. Because this possibility never crossed their mind, they are not prepared for it.

It is a very foolish man who thinks he knows the rules of the game just because he has not lost, yet. The woman you are with is not going to tell you in advance that she is looking for another man. It comes as a total surprise to every man when this happens. The owner of your company is not going to tell you that the company will be bankrupt next month. It comes as a total surprise to every man when this happens. The farmer is not going to tell the turkey that he plans on killing it tomorrow. It comes as a complete surprise to every turkey when this happens.

Unfortunately life doesn’t come with “CAUTION: Slippery when wet!” warning labels. Your blind spots are your responsibility, and like I said, most people don’t even know they have these blind spots until it’s too late. The most successful men I know all keep an open mind and go into every situation knowing that they can not possibly know everything. It takes a big man to get past his own ego and admit that tomorrow may take a turn that he hasn’t yet considered, even though he has been prepared for everything up until that point. Just admitting that you have blind spots will cause you to look for them and begin to see what you didn’t even know was there.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Learning to catch… a Girl

by Drawk Kwast – September 15th, 2009

Everyone knows that the easiest way for a person to learn how to do something is to “learn by doing.” A good example of this is when you learned how to catch a ball. When you think back to when you learned how to catch, do you remember your parents teaching you about trajectories, aerodynamic drag coefficients, and gravitational equations? Probably not. Whoever taught you to catch most likely told you to keep your eyes on the ball, you hands up and ready, and then tossed a ball toward you. As they kept on throwing the ball toward you, some mechanism in your brain took over and you learned how to catch.

This may come as a surprise to you, but your brain is not designed to compute mountains of data with math equations. Evolution has setup our brains to figure things out through a system of experience based techniques called heuristics. These are the actual engines behind the “learn by doing” process in humans. Heuristics are not math equations. They are down and dirty, simple little tricks and shortcuts your brain uses to figure the environment out.

When it comes to catching a ball, the “gaze heuristic” is used. When we look at the brain activity of someone catching a ball, their brain is not solving a system of differential equations regarding the forces acting on the ball and then using that data to predict where the ball will be and thus where their hand will need to be to catch it. Without the help of scientific equipment, someone could never figure that out real time while the ball is in the air. The human brain just can’t do this. So here is how your brain does it. The brain uses your eyes to fixate on the ball while it is in the air. Your body then moves to keep the angle of this gaze the same as the ball gets closer. The result is an alignment between your body and the path of the ball.

Great to know, but what does this have to do with getting laid?

Every guy knows that you can’t learn to catch a ball by researching it. You learn by playing catch. For some strange reason though, guys seem to think that they can learn how to catch women by researching it. It will not work. Humans learn by doing. Sure, just like learning to catch, there is some good advice out there like don’t blink as you are about to catch. Balls in the face are never good (in any context) but realize that if your plan to get good with women resembles a father teaching his son advanced physics before throwing the football at him, you are doing something wrong.

So why do guys do this if it doesn’t work?

Let’s look at a second example. A person learning to run can practice running by themselves. A person who does this will improve their ability and when they chose to run a race against someone, their practice will pay off. The important thing to understand about this example of learning is that you can practice without the risk of failure because you are practicing by yourself. Most sports are like this. There are things you can practice to hone your skills outside of the game, without the pressure of losing. Once you feel like you have improved, you can then get in the game and only risk losing once you feel that you are ready.

Getting good with women is nothing like this. There is no way to practice without actually practicing inside of the game. You are either playing or not. Sure, read the rule book before you play the game but realize that you can only practice inside of the game. Guys hate this. The reality is that to get good at this game you have to play it as a novice and fail quite a bit before you learn anything. Every guy wants to avoid this learning pain and as a result, most over-research, thinking they can get around it. This actually creates a negative feedback loop. If you start off with a belief that you need to understand all the math equations before you can be successful, what happens?

The first problem is that with the help of the internet, you never feel like you have read enough because there is so much information available, so you just keep on reading. This is a wealth of information creating a poverty of action.

As you attempt to read everything, the next problem you run into is that you start to find contradictory information. For every guru that says one thing you can find another guru that says the opposite. The only way you can filter this information is to actually try it in real life and keep what works for you and throw out what doesn’t.

Then another problem because you believe success with women is in understanding the equations. You read, read, read, and read some more. Then you finally pick a girl to walk up to and test what you have read about. When it doesn’t work, you tell yourself that you obviously have not read enough and you go right back to burrying yourself in research.

This negative feedback loop just gets worse and worse because more research means less time out in public interacting with real girls. It never occurs to these guys that they just need time interacting with women to become comfortable with them. It’s not that the “material” they have been reading isn’t working, it’s that they have been hiding in a cave reading, and girls can instantly feel how uncomfortable they are.

This is the fallacy of the pickup line. Every guy wants that magic opener. They research to find that magical incantation that will instantly win the girl over. They overhear a guy who is good with women, repeat the words he used and then wonder why it doesn’t work for them. It’s not what you say but how comfortable and playful you are as you say it. Guys who are good with women are comfortable with women and they didn’t get that way from reading books. They will tell you that it’s not that complicated and just as easy as learning how to catch. You practice and you get better at. If you are reading this, I am very doubtful that it’s the first bit of research you have ever done on attracting women. You know enough to get out and start talking with girls. You need to spend less time with your computer and more time talking with girls (where you will learn best by doing). Just keep at it until you hit a sticking point. When that happens, research to find a way past it, and once you have the answer, stop reading and get back out in the real world. Rinse and repeat. That’s the way to learn. For every hour you spend reading about interacting with girls, you should spend no less than 4 hours actually interacting with them. Keep at least a 4:1 ratio.

So how long did you spend reading this article?

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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Perfect Relationship

by Drawk Kwast – August 21st, 2009

Everyone has an idea in their head as to what a perfect relationship is, yet no one seems to be able to find it. Consider for a moment how many people there are on this planet. Consider how many possible pairs of couples that is. Now ask yourself, with this almost incomprehensible number of possibilities why are none of them perfect relationships?

It would seem just by the laws of statistics that a certain number of these – just by dumb luck – would end up as perfect matches for each other, but it never happens. If you ask a couple who have been married for over 40 years and have had kids if they have a perfect relationship, they will answer no. If you ask them if they have had a successful relationship, they will answer yes. If you ask them why perfect relationships don’t exist, they will tell you that its because of the difference between men and women, and that its in our nature to have some tension.

So if a relationship can be considered successful without being perfect, and perfect is impossible because of the difference between the sexes, where does that leave us other than confused and frustrated? The answer is in evolutionary psychology.

One of the things children learn is not to touch hot stoves. Ask any child who has just been burnt by carelessly touching a hot stove if they would rather not feel that pain and they will say yes. That pain, however, is a perfect system built by evolution to teach you not to hurt yourself. That system is not built to make you feel good, it is built to help you survive.

In the same way, people are confused by what the perfect relationship is. People want a zero pain relationship and wonder why they cannot find it. They are asking the wrong question. Perfect relationships are all around us but we are too blind to see them. As humans, we have not evolved to have zero pain relationships, we have evolved to pair a man and a woman together to have the strongest offspring possible. Evolution is a game of survival of the fittest and without tension there is no fitness.

Let’s say that a girl grows up without learning how to test a man. Once she is of mating age, she has no idea how to screen potential mates to find the best one to have kids with. She is naïve, easily lured in by a man who lies about his resources and ultimately their offspring’s survivability is threatened.

Let’s say that a boy grows up without learning how to deal with those tests. The boy has resources, but has no idea how to deal with a woman’s tests. Even though he would make a good mate, he fails the tests of a good mate and is forced to mate with a weaker woman, or worse, not at all.

As far as evolution is concerned, it is a woman who knows how to test a man and a man who knows how to deal with those tests that produce the strongest offspring. This is why make-up sex is so good after a fight in a relationship. The woman has proven herself strong by testing the guy and the guy has proven himself strong by dealing with it. Evolution then rewards them with great sexual pleasure because they know each other to be strong and great for mating.

As we grow up, we learn from our parents how to deal with the opposite sex. This is evolution’s perfect system. You see, you are the descendant of a long line of ancestors who successfully had offspring strong enough to survive and then have strong offspring of their own. This is evolution’s idea of a perfect relationship. The perfect relationship produces the strongest offspring possible and that requires a certain amount of tension. Humans are not designed to have relationships without “pain” – we are designed to have relationships that produce strong kids.

So am I telling you to start seeking out relationships full of pain? Not at all. That would be like me telling a child to keep on burning their hand on a hot stove. That would be insane. I’m telling you to relax and see things for how they are. Ask a couple who has been married 40 years if they have ever fought and they will say yes. They will tell you that it’s not about preventing conflict, but how they deal with that conflict.

Article Source: www.drawkkwast.com

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