Yeah, I know, I didn't update every day
It struck me that the problems I face in poker have mostly nothing to do with the actual play, but always with the mind.
At this moment I have two problems. Motivation and concentration.
I might have found the reason for my lack of motivation.
In the latest blogs of Bryce Paradis he touches on this subject a couple of times. He's going through some serious problems, so it's not really related, but I can find my 'pokerlife' in it.
I think the most relevant video is this:
YouTube - Acceptance
The lesson to be learned is that you have to accept the present, and preferably be happy with it.
I was never really happy with my pokerlife. I was going for the major goal. It's a good thing when you reach the things you wanted in order to reach your goal, but when things aren't going as planned, it's a failure and you're not accepting it, because you don't want to be where you are now, you want to be in the future, you want to be at your goal.
2009 was a pretty big step in my pokerlife. I moved up through the limits pretty fast, I got supernova level which I've set for a goal that year. I thought the whole setting goals thing was the reason why I did so good, so I did it again.
Once things go bad, like they are going right now, it's a downwards spiral, because you're not happy with the current 'pokerlife' you have, you don't reach your goal in time and might never reach it, so there's little reason to play at all.
So I need to learn to be happy with the things I got. Living in the present, not the future.
If I think about it, it's all nice. Even while I'm down 6k if profit this year, with my rakeback I'll prolly have about 5k up. Which is obv. way less then I hoped for, but it's still nice, giving the downswing.
If I want to quit at the end of the year and cash everything out I'll have a very nice car to show for it. At the moment I'm buying my gas for my car, and small online purchases with money from poker. I even went to see the u2 360° tour, which was the best concert I've ever seen by far. I'm going to see Avenged Sevenfold in a week or two. All for free. Oh well, not for free, but just for clicking a couple of buttons online.
I need to realize that what I got is pretty good, and future things are things I can not control. I can try and make my current situation better, but I can not force it to happen. I need to be happy with the current situation and the road I'm on.
2nd big problem I got is concentration. I just realized that I have some serious issues with that. I've paused the video of bryce (10 min.) twice to just think about other stuff, I got up from the table and wandered around at least 7 times while I wrote this blog. It's pretty hard to keep focus on one thing. When I do something for a time, it just becomes more of a drag, so I do something else.
The easy solution would be medication. But I'm really not into medication. Medication is to heal, not to make things easy. So for now, I don't have any solution to this yet. I'm not saying I'm never going to take medication, but for now I definitely don't feel anything for that.
I might try some aromatherapy although I'm not really a big believer in that sort of stuff, but my mother is into it, so I just have to ask for it.
As for the volume, it all went good until I got down 600$ in a session again, and I just quited. I know it's all long term and stuff, but for now I'm just going to focus on being happy with the 'pokerlife' I have.
