Clark Faint .com

Every day I drive through Baltimore on my way to or from work or just during the course of my travels. I see a lot of people down on their luck in the way of the impoverished, homeless, beggars, or obviously just those who don’t have a very good hand in life at the moment. One of the questions that always goes through my mind is this: “Did this man or woman really have it that badly in life? Or did they bring this circumstance on their self?”

I tend to believe more likely than not that people bring things on themselves. I know because I’ve made poor choices in the past that came back to haunt me later. But I also am cognizant of my poor choices, take inventory and analysis of them, and then try to press forward a better and more improved person.

The really sad part about this is that I see the same 3 or 4 beggars on the median on my way into Baltimore city every day. Not only do I believe that they have relegated themselves to this fate by the consequences of their own choices, but that they are resigned to stay in the same position by not changing what they have done and are doing to get there in the first place. I don’t know or judge these people for their character because I don’t know them and they seem to be content begging for money and basically just barely getting by on the pity of others. But I do know that there are many people far more capable than these “beggars” that aren’t too far from the same fate themselves.

A good friend of mine, who I have mentioned before on this blog, is the same way. This guy could have had the world at his fingertips. He had looks, was somewhat intelligent in school, and was very socially calibrated. But he wasn’t willing to put in the extra effort or commit to anything, drowned himself in alcoholism, and blames everybody but himself for his problems. I even tried to help him but he took the help just as a beggar would a quarter.

Think about that for a second. What happens when you give a beggar change? Are you really helping that person in ANY WAY whatsoever? In my experience, the answer is a big fat NO. A little back story to this: When I was a bit younger, any time panhandlers asked me for change I was about 50-50 on whether I’d give them some or not. Sometimes I would give them some, sometimes not. I didn’t like giving it to them, but if I felt generous in the moment and I had some spare change I would do it.

The turning point in me not doing this any more came in a moment of generosity. One day as I was walking out of a store, a panhandler approached me and asked me “Hey man, can I get some change?” I had a handful of change after just making some small purchase and figured I’d help the guy out. So after being charitable and giving the guy a little money, the next words out of his mouth shocked me. “Hey man, let me get a couple of dollars.”

I was seriously taken aback as I realized what had happened. By giving this loser a little money I had only taught him that he could successfully do nothing of value in this world, ask those who have to take pity on him and give a handout and then maybe even ask for a little more! I refused to give him any more money and I have refused to give money to beggars since that day.

Now back to my friend. He was much the same way as this wayward beggar. He would do next to nothing in the way of productivity, get into all kinds of trouble with substance abuse and the law, and ask for handouts when things got too sticky for him. Time and again people (including me) helped him, hoping that this guy who had so much potential would live up to it this time and turn his life around using their charity in the way of time, money, and energy as the springboard.

But in a vicious circle, all he did was use others, get in more trouble, and then come back with his hands out once again claiming hard times and blaming erroneous circumstances and other people for problems that he himself created. I haven’t talked to this guy in quite a while but I’m sure at this very moment he’s out there drinking his life away wondering where it all went when the answer looks back at him every time he’s in front of the mirror.

I am in no way saying that there are not people out there who have legitimately fallen on hard times. I KNOW that times are rough right now. I have another really good friend who’s had some difficult times himself. He hit me up for a small loan recently. But the difference between him and the other guy is that he’s motivated to do and achieve more and better things in his life. He knows the mistakes he’s made in life, hones up to them, and presses forward with a fresh resolve. These are the kinds of people I prefer to have in my life. The kind who appreciate help, use it to move forward and then can very possibly return the favor to you later on down the line when you may be the one down on your luck!

You may have noticed that I referred to the bum in my earlier story as a “loser”. That was no typo. He was a loser. Let me clarify that even further. If you are doing NOTHING to improve your life and are getting by solely by preying on the pity and good fortune of others, YOU ARE A LOSER. Wondering about the title of this article? This is what I’m referring to: Don’t be THAT guy! Don’t be a LOSER!

If your circumstances are bad don’t be afraid to ask somebody who is more fortunate than you for help, but also make sure that their help is not a waste! Any time somebody has helped me when I was down on my luck, I was personally so grateful that I would get fired up. I wanted to show this person that I appreciate them believing in me so much that their investment would not be in vain. Whether you think of it that way or not, that’s exactly what it is! Any time somebody thinks enough of you to help you with a favor, they are INVESTING in you. They are betting that you are going to take their help, come out strong and right the ship that is your life and be a better person for it. There is no greater insult to the people that care enough about you to help you out than to make a mistake, get into a troublesome predicament, then take their help for granted and go back to the behaviors that got you into trouble in the first place!

Once you do this too many times you start to become viewed as dead weight, and the people that were so generous and helped you before will become much more hesitant to help you again, if at all. I have watched it happen over time to my friend as I have witnessed it happen to many others. Where do you go when there’s no one left in your personal life to ask for help? My best guess would be to that median on the way into the city to play the numbers game. If you look pathetic enough to the right amount of good-willed and generous people, you are bound to scrape up just enough money to keep living your life as pathetically as you are content with, right? Don’t be THAT guy!

Here are a few points to take away from this article:

1. Live your life with character, motivation, and a true desire to get better and achieve what you want. Do not do just enough to scrape by, get into trouble, and then aimlessly beg for help from others that will be wasted.

2. If you do get into a tight spot, realize that it is completely by virtue of choices that you yourself made. Your being here right now is mostly if not completely, YOUR FAULT. Realizing that is a huge problem for most people. Take complete responsibility for your life right now. The good part of this is that you can take responsibility for the good things in your life as well. These are also because of actions you have taken. Think about how you got these results and try to apply the lessons to the troubled aspects of your life.

3. If you have to ask someone for help, let them know that their investment in you will not be in vain. Whatever strategy you had (or didn’t have) to get into that situation should change or stop altogether. Let the person you’re asking for help know that you know that you messed up, that you are really going to turn things around, and that you will be extremely grateful for their assistance. More importantly, MEAN what you are saying.

4. Once you have taken that person’s help, re-pay them somehow or at least try to. Help them in return, pay them back borrowed money, or just continue to show them how much their help really turned things around for you. Do not waste somebody else’s precious resources and then come back asking for more because you can’t or won’t change the way you do things.

I hope that for some of you this article has really opened your eyes. Every one of us has asked for help or given it at some point. If you are asking somebody for help over and over while doing nothing to become independent and help them in return, you are a waste of space on this planet. Either change by letting that person know you are worth the investment or at least have the dignity to spare your loved ones the burden of having to nurse an adult and take your begging ways elsewhere. If you are a person that is usually on the helping side of things, take a long hard look at yourself too. Is the same worthless friend or family member coming back to you over and over for the same self-perpetuated problems and expecting you to clean up the mess? It’s time to give them some tough love and cut the umbilical cord. Stop investing in those that don’t deserve your help and start investing in those that do. It’s a tough process but either this person will change enough so that they will become worthy of your help or they’ll flounder off to someone else in an attempt to drain their resources. Either way your life will become more enriched as a result.

I love the old saying, “If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” It’s about time that we start giving a little less, and teaching a little more.

I have been a fan of pickup theory and social dynamics since those first hormones hit as a teenager and I wanted to know how to increase my success with women. Back then it seemed like some magical way to interact with women and see more success in relationships. As I have gotten older, I realize that it is not magic but just common sense.

Many people bash the so-called “pickup and seduction community” without really knowing much about it. It’s unjustly called manipulation, trickery, and hypnosis; all of which imply that women are helpless victims to sleazy pickup artists. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Women are always in control and very much so have the power of choice at all times. The reason that men seem to take off and start to get success in their dating lives after learning and applying pickup is for one predominant reason only: pickup and seduction theories teach a massive amount of personal development. This makes a man more attractive and therefore much more likely to attract a female.

For the most part, it teaches men that are a little less socially and emotionally agile to become more skilled in these areas, which are usually lagging far behind the social skill and prowess that many women possess naturally.

I mention mostly men, but there are also many women that study pickup theory to benefit their own lives. In addition, most women who witness men putting pickup theory into action usually realize that not only should it not be deemed sleazy, but encouraged. When it comes down to it, it’s just a way of getting really good at basic social skills: meeting new people, forming new friendships, flirting, and building relationships.

I love pickup because it teaches constant self-improvement and consciously choosing to make yourself a more attractive and well-rounded person. Is there really any other way to live your life and get ahead?

Here are 10 things about pickup in theory and in action that I feel have helped tremendously in my own personal development:

1. It teaches you to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. How are you ever going to accomplish anything if you are always inside? You have to come out at some point to go places, meet people, and LIVE LIFE. Believe it or not just doing this alone can really boost your social and dating life.

2. You become a more social being. How many times have you gone out and not talked to a single person you didn’t know? I’ve had problems with being too introverted in the past, but every time I go out now I expect an adventure. I generously talk to strangers. I may meet the most interesting person I’ve ever met, learn something new, or make an awesome new friend just because I went out and randomly started talking to somebody on a particular night.

3. You lose any social anxiety or fear you may have had. On the tail of the last one, the key to becoming a social person is losing any fear or hang-ups you may have had about being more social in the first place. To many people, approaching a group of people you don’t know can be as terrifying as public speaking (because in a way, that’s exactly what it is!). Getting over this fear is a very liberating experience for most people.

4. You learn how to improve your physical attractiveness. A lot of men (and women!) are just a few small touches away from being very good-looking. They just don’t know how to present themselves. Pickup doctrine gives many tips and tricks to improve your looks: grooming, dress, hygiene, physical fitness, and posture are just a few.

5. You also learn how to be more attractive by developing and conveying your personality. Storytelling is probably the most important skill covered here. A big complaint about the pickup community is that they teach memorize stories and routines. In reality, this is just a way of giving shy guys who have no clue what to say to a group of people something interesting to talk about. The learning lesson is in breaking down why the stories or routines are good and applying the format and building blocks to your own life and making your own stories more interesting. This subject could very well warrant its own article from me in the near future.

6. You are taught to pursue your dreams and be what you really want to be. Who is more attractive? The guy who has given up on his dream and works the office job he hates or the guy who is passionately pursuing an acting career even though he hasn’t broken through or had real success yet? I’d be willing to bet that the latter can speak with more passion and enthusiasm about what he’s doing than the former. Passion and enthusiasm about what you do are very attractive qualities. Nuff said.

7. You become a master of reading social cues. This is one of my favorite subjects. Body language, language patterns, verbal jousting, flirting, and many other subtle but VERY IMPORTANT ways that humans communicate with or without words are covered here. More importantly you begin to understand sub-communication. I can usually read by a woman’s body language alone if she’s interested, attracted, bored, or cold to me and what I’m saying within the first couple of minutes of meeting her. I couldn’t have said this with confidence ten years ago. And this is just one example.

8. You learn the importance of inner game. Much more important than outer game, inner game is the process you take to really build your self-esteem and confidence. You learn to like yourself for who you are and really see the value that you can bring to others lives. For many people, a lack of confidence and self-belief is one of the biggest stumbling blocks they have to achieving ANY thing in their lives, let alone social and dating skills.

9. You learn how to handle rejection and failure. In making any attempt to learn social skills and approach people for the first time, there will be stumbling blocks along the way. There can be plenty of rejection, especially in the beginning. Pickup theory teaches that this should be reframed or viewed from a different perspective. Instead of an approach gone bad being referred to as a “crash-and-burn”, it’s called a “crash-and-learn”. The thing to realize is that nobody can possibly reject your value and worth as a person off of your approach alone. They simply reject the approach itself. The importance of this attitude is vital to someone trying to develop any skill in life, especially social skills. The results of any approach, good or bad, should be considered feedback. Learn from them all and try to repeat the process, improving each time.

10. Life becomes more fun! It’s so much more fun to go out and meet new people as often as possible instead of hum-drumming around the house EVERY night. Each night you go out becomes an adventure. That new social circle or special someone is out there just waiting for you to approach and show them how awesome you are. It’s up to you to get out there and do it.

Clark

Alrighty, it’s time for another episode of Clark’s blog. I’ve taken a couple of days off to refresh and now I feel ready to write. Sometimes it can be a challenge to come up with a good topic to write about even though this is world is full of things to talk about!

My topic today is motivation. What motivates you to push yourself to accomplish your goals and dreams? If you can’t answer that question, you’ve got some soul-searching to do. Do you ever start off doing something with a full head of steam and charge right out of the gates? You probably even make good progress to start with. Then maybe things slow down to a more stagnant pace and you start to lose some of that enthusiasm and energy you had when you started. It happens to all of us. It even happened to me this week when I thought of writing a couple of days and then decided against it. Instead of going only a week with one blog entry though, I decided it would be better to push myself to write one night even if I didn’t want to. Thankfully, tonight I did.

How did I overcome the lull in my enthusiasm and motivation? Well, first of all I reminded myself of my goals and what I want to achieve. I reminded myself what I have to do to get there. But I believe that most importantly, I fed myself some motivational material. I think this is key to reviving a drop-off or plateau in your energy level. In addition to thinking about your goals and what you want to achieve, expose yourself to someone or something that motivates and inspires you. Maybe even something that makes you angry or fired up enough to take action.

For example, I saw The Dark Knight today. It was an EXCELLENT film. I walked out of that theater just like the little kid who wants to jump off rooftops, fight the bad guys, and BE Batman. Watching a 3 hour film gave me quite the energy boost. An even better example of a movie I saw recently was Wanted. Even though there was a lot of crudeness to that movie (and trust me, it was vanilla compared to the comic book), I loved the underlying message. A guy, who becomes so fed up with his boring and ordinary life that he decides to take matters into his own hands and become the master of his life that he was destined to be. My favorite line is the last one in the whole movie, minus the expletive of course: “What have you done with your life lately?”

I walked out of that theater ready to work and write until I couldn’t stand it any more.
Movies are just one way you can give yourself a good kick in the butt to jump start your desire again. I love to read inspirational books, stories, and web sites. Think and Grow Rich, The Power of Positive Thinking, anything related to the law of attraction, and a good Larry Winget book (this guy tells it like it is) are always helpful.

Another way to do it is to create an air or illusion of competition. “How do I do that?” you may say? Create an enemy. Michael Jordan was the king of this. He kept that mental edge on the basketball court because he maintained a chip on his shoulder since the time he got cut from the varsity team in high school. I’ve read many stories of him blowing something an opponent said out of proportion, or fabricating an insult just to get himself fired up and motivated for the next game. He had something to prove and if it will pump you up to throw yourself headlong into your goals then create your own enemy to push your limits, grow and succeed. Coke has Pepsi. Pizza Hut has Papa John’s. I have Steve Pavlina. I say that half-jokingly because I’m a huge admirer of his website and his body of work. But if I’m dragging a little bit some days and I don’t feel like writing, I bring up his website and check out what he’s doing. I pretend my website is going head-to-head against his and it always seems to give me that boost I need to get creative, write something awesome, and post it here.

On the same token, use that “enemy” as an inspiration and model them as well. If that person has achieved as much or more than you, appreciate their efforts and successes and remind yourself that the same is possible for you. Steve Pavlina is once again excellent for me here. The guy has achieved so much with his personal development blog. He’s got a book coming out, which I have no doubt will be excellent like his site has been for years now. That’s an inspiration for me as a new blogger about what is possible if I apply myself and continue to learn and grow and offer value to others. Who is the person in your world that you can use as inspiration to push through a dry spell and keep your freight train of success on the tracks?

So to recap, use these steps to pick yourself up if your desire starts to lull a bit:

1. Ask yourself what your goals and desires are. Remind yourself of those things you want and why you want them. Imagine having them and act as if you are going to get them no matter what. Start fanning those flames of your hunger for success when they get low.

2. Feed yourself motivational material. Watch a movie that gets you fired up to succeed. Read that book about the law of attraction or a success story. Consume media that makes you want to take action NOW.

3. Create an air of competition. Do you have a competitor or an “enemy”? If not then make one up. Tell yourself that this person is doing everything in their power to achieve more and better success than you and dares you to do something about it. Get pumped up and let the energy carry you through your routine with more gusto than ever.

4. Get inspired by another person. It may even be your “enemy”, but admire this person’s success and model the ways they got there. Feed off of their enthusiasm in order to renew your own. Let the new ideas from your newfound inspiration come forward and do your best to implement them ASAP.

5. If all else fails, take a little time off and then come back with a renewed passion. Then wash, rinse, and repeat the steps above.

We all feel a little under the weather sometimes. The key is not to stay there for too long and when you realize you’re there to do something about it quickly. Desire + Motivation + Focus + Action = Success. Out of those four components that equal success, the first three will wane considerably from time to time. It is up to you to take CONSISTENT action steadfastly in spite of this to keep yourself moving in the right direction. Sometimes the action is best spent re-fueling the other three. Keep yourself moving. Do what is necessary to succeed.

Clark