i am in serious need of a change.

several years ago i was fit, had plenty of money, a nice girlfriend, lots of friends, and was approaching life with a positive energy each day. today i am out of shape, poor, single, lazy, and in a state of melancholy. there have been ups and downs along the way, but over the years things have slowly escalated and i am now very unsatisfied with myself. i can share more about this process if people are interested.

TIME TO FIX THIS THING!

Health
i am overweight and out of shape. i tipped the bathroom scale this morning 252 pounds. i'm quite tall so i'm not obese, but things are getting out of hand. i have been smoking WAY too much pot, and i'm cutting that out entirely. my plan is to start eating better and hitting the gym 3-4x per week. i know that a healthier lifestyle will result in more energy and productivity and also increased esteem and happiness. i have successfully lost weight in the past, so i'm familiar with what to do and to avoid.

Poker
poker is my main source of income. i have always been an underachiever in regards to poker. i have barely played for the last few months. i have had good results in the past, and know that i have a good poker mind and i am a winning player. i tend to go through cycles of bankroll building and good results followed by withdrawal and lack of play. i have played micro and small stakes NLHE for many years and have never fully broken through to the midstakes. despite the more difficult state of today's games i know i have the ability to be successful if i can fully apply myself. i'd like to try to settle in to a routine of spending at least 4 hours per day grinding and at least 30 minutes per day studying.

Social
over the course of time i have drifted away from many once close friends. my network of friends continues to diminish, and i don't make an effort to meet new people. every time i am going to go out with friends i have strange avoidance tendencies, and always end up having fun and feeling good when i go.

Hobbies
i used to be a fairly accomplished guitar player. i would also write and record some stuff, and sing a little. i barely pick up an instrument these days. making music has always made me happy, and i'm not sure why it has fallen out of my life. i also rarely read these days and have piles of books i want to read, so i want to try to get in the habit of reading for half an hour at night.

Goals
one thing i have learned about myself is that it's not best for me to set specific goals in terms of results like pounds lost or dollars earned. when i do that i tend to binge on reaching the goal and reach it and feel like the goal is over and completed and revert to poor form.

MY GOAL IS TO LIVE EACH DAY THE WAY I WISH I LIVED

i know that if i work hard each day and live a healthy lifestyle my general life happiness will increase and i will attain the results i am looking for. for me, right now, the most important thing by far is THE PROCESS.

at this moment i am not filled with a reluctance to work hard or a begrudging acceptance of the need for change, but rather i feel motivated and ready to make it happen. i hope to make gradual consistent positive change in my life and view it as a permanent shift in the way i do things, and not a temporary challenge or goal to be met and then set aside. i feel i'm at a bit of a crossroads, and don't want to slip into becoming someone who has given up.

my hope is that through this thread i can both inspire some people to effect a positive change in their lives, and to provide myself an avenue of personal accountability to keep going.

i will keep this thread updated on a regular basis primarily with poker content, but also some random fitness and life notes mixed in.

thanks for reading and thanks in advance for any and all support i receive!

Good luck, nice read. This might be of interest to you:

http://www.kratosguide.com/16-habits...-do-every-day/

sounds like me lol (except for the weed part)

gl will follow.

jw where are you located?

Good luck dude.. one of the hardest steps in the whole process of making the change for what you feel is the better is the fact of being honest with yourself and knowing what has to be changed. I know I feel a lot more outgoing now that I'm making the effort into meeting new people and girls more often over the last 2 years since I play poker in casinos now and not online anymore (which I wouldn't mind dabbling in again for fun/dinner/drinks money).

I like threads like these because when I see people trying to better themselves, I also become more motivated in the process to try doing things different to better myself too. If there's one thing we as a forum/poker players can take in general from all the hours spent playing against one another is that if you want to get better, you NEED to be motivated to put in the effort to do better and have confidence that you will over time. From there as long as there's a will, there's a way!

And with that, good luck in your endeavor of trying to better yourself in the new year of 2013, I'd be glad to follow you along your path as I've seen some of your results at the micros and know you're capable of making the move to bigger and better things as far as poker is concerned .


Edit: Really should proof read my posts beforehand.. think I might of used the word "better" like 17x here lol..

thanks for the links and feedback guys

andrew i'm in rochester ny

In my experience trying to change everything about my routine overnight is a sure recipe for me giving up within a few days. It quickly becomes overwhelming. I've found that picking 1 or 2 related things to focus on and work on those and then slowly add in the rest over the next several months is better for me.

But if you were to just quit smoking pot and starting working out once a week. and make that your main focus for a few weeks. Then maybe in February you make it exercising twice a week and add in spending 1 hour a week practicing guitar. Some progression like that is significantly more likely to succeed imo. I think this comes from the fact that we tend to overestimate our future dedication (which is a pretty well documented phenomena).

Oh and

P.S. wtf does going ham mean? i assume its some sort of crazy communist canadian propaganda

ty for the advice sean

goin ham means "travelling to the pig" which is canadian for trying hard

Good luck with it dan, u should move to a sunny cheap country or something to get out of the cold and turn the page and start fresh.

U should prolly do some sport, i prefer that to gym, at least the competition gets me more motivated than lifting weight

Going "hard as (a) mother****er". It's pretty ghey.

GL bro Wish you the best !!

lifetime graph? glgl

gl dan


Also, being single is a good thing when you're trying to succeed at poker imo

I can relate to this... I for one have always been an all or nothing person. Like using Dans goals as examples, say if I grinded well and ate well.. but didn't exercise. I'd be like jeez I've slacked here I will start another day where I'll do everything right... and I will get lazy on the grinding & go eat junk. It's a weird psychological thing but for me when I set a bunch of goals I like to achieve them all, rather than slowly & steadily... which could be half the problem why I have half the issues in the first place I guess.

GL Dan, I have similar problems & goals myself and I'm hoping 2013 is a new start. Will follow & look for some inspiration...

Set fewer, smaller goals. I recently started the burpee challenge where you do 1 burpee on day 1 and 2 on day 2, 3 on day 3 etc. At the end you end up doing like 5k burpees. But I guarantee if you take the average out of shape person and tell them to do 5k burpees over the next 3 months they would give up very quickly whereas those who do it incrementally will have much higher success rate. imnsho

alright first day back at the tables

couldn't play many tables or for too long as my brain is getting reaccustomed to the grind

this is all just nl20 fast fold as i want to ease back in to the swing of things
(my site/SN is not outted so dont ask plz lol)



i didn't play my best, but avoided doing anything too spewy and only leaked a little bit around the edges

i also ran well obv

Good luck dude!

Gl op

well i'm about to fall asleep (hopefully) and the day was good - played some cards and ate healthy and got some exercise and cleaned up around the house a bit and had time to watch football and play a bit of guitar

trying to fall asleep to some poker training videos, but i fear i won't sleep much tonight due to chemical withdrawal doh

GLGL!

GL with it BB...your input/effort in the micro forums is greatly valued by me. Don't overwhelm yourself with too many goals though or it will be difficult to stay on top of things.

thanks all

trog i dont have a lifetime graph a lot of stuff is on an old computer

i have made more than 100k from poker but it has been over the course of a long time so it's not that impressive

akromah ty maybe i will try to get back to posting a bit of strat here and there to give back

You could look at it like this or you could realize that 95% of poker players will not even come close to netting 100k, no matter how long they played. You frame your own vision of yourself.

Gl bro, from Rochester myself but moved to Florida last year. Sounds a lot like me as well except i like the beer/liquor, not the pot, and i may be a hair less chubby, not to be confused with a hairless chubby. Go bills, go sabres....I'll hunt you down on merge

so far so good. went to the gym today. just from exercise yesterday and eating well i weighed 6 or 7 pounds less today than i did yesterday lol. obv i know i didn't lose 7 pounds of fat tissue but still happy. didn't sleep great but i slept better than expected.

played a little bit more volume, here is my graph so far:


gonna just stick with nl20 for a bit to get back into the swings and build up a new bankroll and slowly move myself back up

Days: 2
Pounds Lost: 6
nl20 Profit: $128.37

HAPPY NEW YEAR