Cliff’s List Newsletter 1/08/2007

I haven’t posted any of the recent Cliff’s List newsletters in awhile so I though I would throw one up here just to see whats going on in the PUA community. You can always, always find good material in these newsletters.

-Bobby

Cliff’s List Newsletter

Greg (www.theessentialfire.com):

My thoughts and beliefs on the subject of seduction.

So what really stands in your way? Why do you really choke up around women?

We all know this one The basic emotion is fear. Where does that fear come from?

Again, we all know the answer Lack of confidence. So, how do you build real confidence?

This is the tricky part Lack of confidence can stem from many areas of our emotional being  Mental road blocks at several logic levels can create beliefs or symptoms that stop us dead in our tracks. Our choices are to focus on the symptoms and apply fixes directly to each behavior or build a solid emotional foundation that addresses all of the symptoms

Example: You find yourself hesitating to approach a woman there is undoubtedly some internal dialog happening What are you saying to yourself? Shes out of my league, this never works for me, I’m lousy at picking up women, she wouldn’t hang with someone like me, I’m nervous, maybe one more drink, etc All common, and the list is endless.

If you know something about NLP, you know that those dialog statements are coming from a handful of the many parts of you that will block you from succeeding on several fronts.

Direct fix approach:

The symptom is that you hesitate to approach women. A direct fix would be to convince yourself that your behavior is irrational (there are many understandings and techniques that can help with this) then approach many women repeating the exercise until you no longer fear the process. There are many varieties of this approach.

Again, if you know something about NLP, you know that the above approach is basically an attempt to force feed your parts some new ideas and reinforce those ideas with selected behaviors. In other words, you are attacking those parts from the bottom of the logic level ladder (Behavioral change)

This approach will generally create a quick shift and if you are a man with a fair foundation of self-esteem the shift may be permanent. If however you have reason to have low self-esteem or deep seated emotional issues, the fix will not only fade quickly but, the resulting failures will reinforce your identity as a looser or your beliefs that this stuff doesn’t work for you, etc

Another thing to think about when applying behavioral changes to this specific symptom is that you might increase you ability to gain relationship without increasing your ability to maintain relationship. Again in the long run the risk is that you could reinforce your negative beliefs and put yourself in a deeper hole of despair.

Foundational change:

It is my sincere belief that its not about seduction but rather attraction at a deep level. Its about being the rock solid “real man.” (An icon of masculine) That requires change at all logic levels. In short; build the belief system foundation that will support the behavioral changes.

Example continued:

A man that is the icon of masculine is a man that people gravitate to, a man the people look up to and yes, a man that everyone is attracted to. Visualize that man (you may know him) a man who women are attracted to being with and men are attracted to working with. He most likely doesn’t have any problem approaching women. In fact he is more likely approached quite often. His attractiveness is foundational.

Lets look at some of the elements of that attractiveness (he has them all)

1. Lack of need He doesn’t need on a physical or emotional level.

2. Lack of concern Nothing shakes him.

3. Straight forward, direct speech and eye contact

4. Physical and emotional presence When you deal with him you know he is involved.

5. He makes people feel comfortable

6. His life seems effortless.

7. Purpose He is a man on a mission and he won’t be denied.

8. He knows how to get what he wants and he usually gets it.

9. He seems to be more interested in giving than getting.

10. He is a leader.

11. He is successful on many levels.

12. He looks good, he walks tall, etc

The list goes on…

What is important to understand is that while some people find all or most of these traits within themselves naturally, more men must cultivate them. Most men must do a great deal of change work to get to this place. Its also good to understand that men in our culture have been trained to be the opposite of the above list.

The good thing is that avenues for change exist and its not rocket science. Theres hope for those of you looking for this now There is a formula and anyone can do it!

Caution: Self-knowledge is not the magic bullet, you must do the work. You can’t just tell yourself that you are confident. Every part of you must know that you are “exceptional”. The proof will be that your life is amazing and on track to a real purpose.

The basic path includes

1. Gain a thorough understanding of relationship polarity.

2. Practice and become proficient with your command of your core polarity

3. Use change modalities like NLP and other counseling to remove road blocks.

4. Define your purpose.

5. Refine and plan the path to your purpose.

6. Develop your manifestation skills.

7. Implement your plan.

8. Work with a group of men on an ongoing basis to stay on track.

9. Be accountable.

10. Serve and change the world.

11. Enjoy the results.

These are highlights of a somewhat complex path to an attainable state of being. Try it and be amazed. My own experience has been great and men that have chosen this path have completely changed their lives and oh yea, the world is attracted to them.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Dr Alex Benzer (http://tinyurl.com/ya68tu):

THE DARK SECRET TO SUCCESS WITH WOMEN (AND EVERYTHING ELSE)

I remember drawing upon a lot of different resources when I first embarked on my journey to get better

at this whole dating thing.

One thing that struck me as peculiar was that all of the various teachers had some version of an ‘anti-flake clause’

in their material.

I mean, here were these guys, ostensibly highly successful with women and with enough of them around such that they

didn’t have to particularly worry about any one woman’s responsiveness to their approach.

And yet, they cared enough about this to put in big, bold, letters a clause for all their readers: “Do this so the

women won’t flake on you as much.”

One of them called it his ‘phone rules’ — and he dispensed them like some kind of 3 Commandments brought from on high.

The other had similar boilerplate to eliminate such potential unreliability from the get-go. Heck — even I put in a ‘flake insurance’ segment in The Tao of Dating

(available at http://tinyurl.com/ya68tu).

Now let’s think of someone who is an archetype of success with women — Hugh Hefner, say. Can you imagine him worrying about whether a 22 year old girl will return his calls? Hard to imagine. We’ll get back to that in a moment.

This comparison brought me to an insight: even when a guy is very good with women, he is still the pursuer. In every animal species, there is one gender which is courted, and another which does the courting. And as a male Homo sapiens, you will never escape the fact that you are the pursuer.

Sure, you can deploy some clever techniques for portraying yourself as cool and interesting enough such that a woman becomes interested and joins in the courtship dance. But the woman will almost never initiate the dance.

Unless — you have enough resources and a priori name recognition (also known as being ‘rich and famous’) such that they pursue you. That is the domain of a very small percentage of men, and I’m assuming that those people do not constitute the bulk of this readership because they’re doing just fine on their own.

So going back to our original train of thought: if these dispensers of dating advice thought it was important enough to include an anti-flake clause in their teachings, we can conclude that is must have happened to them. A lot.

And it caused them enough pain such that they didn’t want it to happen to you. Because they’re good teachers and didn’t want you to experience that pain.

And so this brings us to the main topic of this article, which is the Price of Success.

And that price is the ability to bear failure. Repeatedly.

In the business world, this comes in the form of failed ventures, getting fired, having ideas rejected, being passed over for promotions, not getting funded for a project, etc.

In the dating world, it comes in the form of not getting phone numbers, not getting calls returned, being stood up, being dumped, and being divorced.

In Taoist thought, this is known as the unity of opposites.

There are no coins with only one side. There are no mountains that cast no shadow. As stated in Chapter 2 of the Tao Te Ching,

Being and non-being create each other.

Difficult and easy support each other.

Long and short define each other.

High and low depend on each other.

Before and after follow each other.

Thus it is a law of the world that success does not exist without failure. If there were no failure, what would success be measured against?

So know beyond a shadow of a doubt that any person who has been good with women (or in business or anything else) has had his share of failures.

I’ll even let you in on another secret: more often than not, the failures outnumber the successes by a large margin.

It’s absolutely true.

Therefore it follows that if you wish to be successful with women, you are absolutely, incontrovertibly going to encounter failure in its various forms. And the more

success you want with them, the more failure you will encounter.

The question then becomes: How badly do you want it, buddy? Do you want it badly enough to be able to sacrifice your pride? Do you have the courage, the internal fortitude to stomach the fluctuations that are intrinsic to any success process?

I’ll use a poker metaphor here: there is no player in the world that wins every hand. Not a single one. There isn’t even a single player who wins every week or every month.

The really good players know that there are fluctuations inherent to success, accept that, and flow with it.

So consider yourself forewarned. The price of being good with women is to encounter a good deal of failure. You will succeed a fraction of the time, and you won’t succeed the remaining times.

The price of being phenomenally good with women is to encounter phenomenal failure and to handle it phenomenally well.

If you can’t deal with the bad breaks, you could become bitter, disillusioned and not very fun to be around. For you, the cost may not outweigh the benefit.

But wait a second, you say. There are people out there who *are* very good with women, and they are happy and well-adjusted.

And there are people who have billions of dollars to their name and didn’t seem to fail. How do you account for the Rockefellers, Gateses and Dells of the world?

Ahh, you’re catching on, my friend. There is a secret to make the unity of opposites work for you.

The secret is this: arrange things such that when you win, you win big. So big that the wins absolutely dwarf the losses.

The mountain does cast a shadow. But if you visit the mountain around noon, the shadow is smallest. Pick your opportunities.

Mark Cuban, the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was fired from every job he had. And John D. Rockefeller, the oil titan of the early 20th century, openly admitted that he had a lot more failures than triumphs.

But when Rockefeller won, he won HUGE. And when Mark Cuban won, he sold Broadcast.com to Yahoo for 5.7 billion bucks. That’s ‘billion’, with a ‘B’.

So let’s bring this back to dating. You will not succeed with every woman you meet (however you choose to define success). So pick your battles such that when you do win, you win big.

You do this by figuring out what kind of woman would truly fulfill you, and then to make a point of only pursuing that kind of woman. To chase down every woman in hope that something might come of it is like playing every hand you get in poker in hope that it will develop into a winning hand. All you do is squander your energy, your spirit and your funds and end up a guaranteed loser.

I don’t want you to be a loser. I want you to be a winner — a huge winner.

What you have to remember is that in life, it doesn’t take that much to be a big winner. The most successful guys I know end up settling down with that one amazing woman who truly fulfills them, whether it’s a long-term girlfriend or a wife.

Think of it this way: You’ve been on a long journey through the jungle. You’ve gotten muddy and sweaty, you’ve been pelted by monkeys, you’re grimy and dirty and a big mess. Let me ask you this: how many showers does it take to make you shiny and clean again?

One. That’s it.

And, similarly, that one massive success — whether it’s a company sold after 14 years of hard work like one of my buddies just did, or whether it’s meeting that one woman who truly fulfills you and validates everything that you stand for — redeems everything that happened beforehand.

And a funny thing is, when you have that success, it will feel as if it’s always been that way. Moreover, you’re free to feel that success right now, because feelings are free, and it’s going to happen anyway, and why the heck postpone joy?

So feel the joy and be grateful for it already, because that’s how you accelerate the process of bringing that success into your life. But that’s a topic for a different

day.

Another thing is that if you continue to apply patience and good judgment, success will build upon success. That first success becomes a second, a third, a fourth, and then a habit.

So, to recap:

1) There is no success without failure. This is as true in dating as in every other sphere of endeavor.

2) The bigger the size of the success you desire, the more failure you must be willing to stomach. If you don’t think you have the courage and maturity to deal with that fact, you may be better off settling for mediocrity.

3) Pick your battles. Stay away from the mediocre opportunities and longshots. That way when you win, you win big.

4) When you do win big, it will feel as it’s always been that way. So start feeling like that winner right now, because you’re still that guy and feelings are free.

A great book on inner game is David D’s Double Your Dating.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Art (Day Coach, www.notniceguy.com):

Virtually unknown and certainly underestimated is the ability of meeting women during the day.

There are key differences when you are meeting someone in the lounge or a club settings and when you are meeting someone in the park or coffee shop. The main differences are the mindset and the setting of when the meeting happens. In the alcohol and “party up” atmosphere in a club at night, the loud music and the hectic environment is created to be very disruptive. The women who go to these clubs and lounges are often more of a party girl type. Since men have a “Pick up” mentality and have to deal with rejection, the night life is much more unfriendly for men than for women. Often I hear that this is “not fair”, well yes and life is in generally unfair, but you can change it.

Through years of coaching, I have noticed that as we get older, we tend to go out less. Since the most common public places to meet women are clubs, bars and lounges; it feels limiting for men to go out on a regular basis, when they already had their share of loud music and crowded places.

Meeting women during the day is a different breed. Everything is flipped on its head from the nightlife behavior. The atmosphere is laid back, quiet, no male competition, no “pick up” vibe, no alcohol and it is also occupied by different types of women. When everything is added up, theres a big discrepancy and it seems that a day meeting could be a better deal, doesn’t it? So then if its so good, why is meeting during the day so underrated? When men are talking about meeting women, its always understood that it will be in bars or clubs. Its just assumed that there is no day meeting. Its never mentioned. Men who do attempt to meet women during the day, don’t really have much success with it, because the whole thinking is turned on its head. If a man doesn’t like the night life or does not get anywhere with women even if he does, he has two options. He can either stick within his social circle (if he has one), or try to do his best in meeting women on-line, where the territory is usually stacked against the guy.