The mystics of yesteryears were well aware of the heightened awareness that comes with correct posture. Which is why it's vital to a serious meditation practice... which is why yoga (as we know it in the west) is so important in preparing your body for correct posture which allows you to better meditate.

As a side note Yoga means "union with god", asanas, or physical poses, is just one aspect of a Yoga practice. Here in the states we have started latching onto Yoga, but only the physical aspect of it.

Sorry for the sidetrack.

Nice. I installed an SSD on my laptop and I can't imagine not having one now.

SSD is the NUTS for a poker player. HUD fires up very quickly and importing hands lightning fast. They are so cheap now days too.

Interesting. I'm only starting to scratch the surface of the mind body connection, and it's an area I'm not really learned in. I was pretty fat from the ages of 10-18, and growing up as a fat kid who breezed through classroom stuff, I think it created a deep rooted notion that body and mind were unrelated.

Awesome, makes me fired up to get it next week!

So one thing I'm working on is staying more present and focused at the tables. I end up doing a lot of random thinking at the tables, some of it thinking of different poker strategy or mental game type stuff, and then other times just contemplating random personal growth or general life topics. Often this thinking is healthy and beneficial to me, but obviously while at the tables really isn't the time for it.

V2MOM

Vision
I want to be present and focused at the tables. I can then observe more action, and waste fewer brain cycles pondering topics that would be better addressed later.

Values
I want this because it will help me increase my profitability. I will gain better reads and make better decisions on the whole by dedicating more of my brainpower to the task at hand. I think I may also realize some tangential life benefits as well, as often I don't fully concentrate on the task at hand and my mind wanders, or even in social situations or during recreation time I won't be fully present and will be thinking about what I'm going to do later or other random topics. In the same way I can increase my poker performance by being more present, I can be more fulfilled by a variety of experiences by being more present as well.

Method
I will make this a stronger priority in my 15 minute self awareness check timer. I will also develop a system to jot down thought topics for later, and then follow through by thinking of them while at the gym or walking the dog or before bed.

Obstacles
A lack of diligence will be an obstacle. This will be a topic it will be easy for me to deem as not too important and slack with my effort to address it. Another obstacle will be if I don't actually follow through and revisit these thoughts, I will subconsciously understand that and it will make it more difficult to put the thought to rest if my subconscious is not confident I will actually revisit the thought process and follow it through to completion.

Measurement
I will measure my progress by grading myself at the end of each session. I already assign myself a general letter grade at the end of each session, but I will instead start to break that out into more granular categories - I will probably just start with a grade for Variance Tolerance, Presence/Focus, and Process/Schedule. Usually when I start to tilt or otherwise make poor decisions, it is related to one of those categories. I will also measure my progress next month when I do my monthly goals review with the stable.

It's become quite a popular book, for good reason... Eckhart Tolle's "Power of Now" is a good read on the subject of staying in the moment.

If you like more obscure texts find a copy of Ram Dass' "Be Here Now" and have your mind blown.

Thanks for the recommendations. Nick (I think) also suggested the Power of Now to me, and I have a copy that I haven't gotten around to reading yet. I think I will bump it up in the queue.

I took a few days off from the grind around Valentine's Day. I have also been quite busy with stakee management and coaching stuff, as the stable is larger than ever now. It was a healthy and sound reduction in grinding hours for a bit, but I want to crank out some more volume before the end of the month. I've been running hot lately, so I'll need to be mindful of winner's tilt, and also as I approach the end of the month the fear of losing back profits right before month's end will intensify and I need to be ready for that and use it as an opportunity to practice that skill.



149.5/1000 hours
14.95% complete

pace: 135 hours

Sexy results.

"What a man can be, he must be."

I've been thinking a lot about personal growth lately, and the foundation required for self actualization and fulfilling our potential. This is also related to the concept of underlying goals that TMGOP refers to. Why did I WANT to try to run up a big win into a new all time record win? In live poker, why do I sometimes worry about looking foolish when considering a river bluff/bluffcatch.

Even beyond poker, WHY do we do what we do?

Here is Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs:



This is pretty similar to Tony Robbins' Six Basic Human Needs:

Certainty
Uncertainty
Love/Connection
Significance

Growth
Contribution

I put a gap after the first four, as they really serve as the foundation for being in a state where we can achieve our potential. He has a famous TED Talk about this that you can view here:

http://www.ted.com/talks/tony_robbin...do?language=en

I actually got looking into these 6 needs when the concept was introduced in a financial planning book I am reading (Money: Master the Game). The more I think about this, the more I can see these basic needs in action both in myself and in others. It's easy to see why someone who feels a lack of significance can be allured by violence, for example. If I point a gun at you, all of a sudden I'm pretty much the most significant thing in your entire life.

I have been thinking about how those needs relate to me in my life:

Certainty - I have a stable relationship and my financial picture is much more solid than it has been in the past. There is still a large mountain to climb, but I'm on my way.
Uncertainty - The nature of poker income and also the changing landscape of poker in the US provides plenty of uncertainty and variety.
Love/Connection - Things with my girlfriend are going well and moving forward. My dog and cat also satisfy this to a smaller extent.
Significance - Being a coach for the stable allows me to feel significant and that my thoughts/opinions are valued and meaningful.

Growth - I have been undergoing a lot of personal growth lately, and it is a relatively new thing in my life approach. Most of my focus currently is psychological.
Contribution - My ultimate contribution goal is to be able to be a highly effective parent, and provide my future children with resources and guidance and knowledge that I didn't have the benefit of. In the short term future, I am in the process of seeking out a preferred charity, and I am specifically leaning towards stem cell research.

I am finding that viewing the world through this prism of basic needs is helpful to me, and does quite a bit to make me feel more motivated, and more eager to give my best effort and improve/grow. It also is helping me feel more balanced in life, and I can see the value and importance of finding ways to improve how I address my basic needs. If this is interesting to you, give the TED talk linked above a watch and hopefully you will find it beneficial.

Just got beaten up a bit. I think on the whole I'm pretty happy with my grind so far today. I'm a bit shaken up by the loss, but I do feel like I am improving my tolerances slightly. I stuck to a good process today, and feel like I was doing a good job with variance tolerance and focus for the most part. When I did get off track, I was able to recover fairly quickly each time. I made some mistakes and it's not like I was on my A+ game, but I think I was on a solid B+ game while taking punches, which is an improvement.

The main thing is I was able to keep coming around to a mindset of:

"This type of tough run is the exact type of situation I want to improve my ability to handle. Specifically, by keeping my mindset off of short term results and more focused and present on doing my best with what is in front of me. Also, by breathing and using some physical movement when necessary to shake off an unhealthy state. Even if I get off track with my mental game temporarily, it is still important to work on my ability to quickly correct it again and again throughout session. As long as I try my best and give good effort, I will see improvement in my game, and in the long term I will get the results I am looking for anyways."

This post is a healthy cooldown, and now I'm going to take a break and then come back and put in two quality hours before bed.

158/1000 hours
15.8% complete

I'm happy with the effort I put in today. I tried hard to stick to a good process, and I feel like I improved some mental leaks a little bit. I had to make a few calls or bluffs in big pots that I felt very hesitant to do since I was afraid of losing, but I was able to reason through the situation and make the right play and get back to a better mental state. I ended up getting winner on the day, and was nearing end of session when I took a bad beat at 5/10 for stacks and I had a intense negative reaction to it. I realized I had already started to visualize the story of my great comeback session, and I subconsciously felt like I deserved the win since my processes were good today. That created a situation where I was unprepared to handle the variance, and made it extra painful since I was reacting to this comeback fantasy being destroyed with end of session imminent. It's not good that I reacted so strongly, but I worked hard to recover quickly. I did some pushups and a bit of quick focused breathing and injected good logic about this being an opportunity to improve and grow, and decided to play another 20 minutes to practice my recovery and stabilization. I ended up winning a couple small pots near the end to finish slight winner anyways, but more importantly I was ready to accept the losing session and also I feel like I tried my best today.

Played a full slate of Sunday tourneys today. I don't generally play a lot of MTTs, but I do play some from time to time. I'm no MTT expert, but I do feel confident I have a good edge in fields I am seeing. I blanked on everything and lost about $1300 today. I feel good about my play, and about my grinding process. There were a couple hands I think I could have done differently, but on the whole I feel like I made good decisions and just kind of ran poorly across the board (I finished in the bottom half of all events).

I think I will make a habit of trying to play a flight of Sunday tourneys more often. I am glad that I can see the value of the fields, and not get overly fixated on losing a chunk of money today.

164/1000 hours
16.4% complete

I was having a very hard time with my mental state in my first session today. After losing a chunk yesterday in tournament buyins, I didn't want to have another loser today, especially with the end of month nearing. I was acutely aware of my cashier and session profit/loss throughout session. I was really having a hard time staying in a good mental state, but I did keep trying to correct it over and over. I was able to intermittently get back to fairly good states, but I was really struggling to stay on track throughout. Every few minutes my mind would start thinking about my monthly results and the upcoming profit chop, and maybe I should just end session now or wouldn't it suck if I booked a huge loser, etc. I kept snapping myself out of it, and reminding myself that for me playing with a fear of losing leads to overly weak tight play which then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

At the gym, those reps that are hardest are the ones that make us stronger, and I was trying to think of things that way in session. It was a battle to keep in a good state, but I fought my way through it and feel like I played pretty well and finished the session about breakeven. I never even got up or down more than a few hundred throughout session, but somehow the difference between ending session +100 or -100 felt like all the difference in the world. I kept injecting logic and correcting the thought process, but it was just a constant process throughout session, eating up a ton of brain cycles and emotional/mental effort.

In my second session, I was in a much better mental state, and felt a lot more freed up to play my best regardless of if I was winning or losing. I ran into some tough spots but I was still fairly zoned in. Then the tough spots piled up a bit, and I was down a couple thousand, and I had to take a quick break to regroup. I was able to get back to a good mental state a lot more easily the second go round, and finished strong and played well down the stretch and was fortunate to win some pots to get even.

I've been sticking to some pretty regimented processes in terms of my session length and breaks and my 15minute self reminders. Having a good process and structure definitely helps keep my play at a pretty reasonable level even when I'm having a tough time mentally. Hopefully today's effort will help me inchworm and improve my C game by a little bit.

Nice post!!

Tough session, I just got beat up a bit. At the very end, I was getting ready to quit because I was a bit overwhelmed and needed a break, and got into a big pot with a big fish. I may have overplayed 2pair and cost myself an extra $300 bucks I didn't need to lose. I had to quit a bit earlier than planned, but I'm glad I just shut it down and came here to vent it out, and I'm going to take a break and come back in a while. I'm not thrilled I cost myself a few hundred bucks I could have saved if I were on my A game, but I'm happy I have a good process in place to nip it in the bud and regroup and come back in the right mindset later when I'm ready.

If I want to improve my ability to play well through negative variance before profit chops, these difficult sessions are the very opportunities to improve that I need. I can't just HOPE that I don't run bad at the end of the month, I need to face the possibility head on and believe in the logic that every hour I play when on my A game carries a solid positive expectation, and by increasing my ability to put in more of these A game hours in the last week of the month I will provide a significant boost to my annual earning potential. It's difficult to fully commit mentally to the concept when the short term sting of a loss is on me, but even as I force myself to type out these thoughts (through gritted teeth), I can feel some of the sting fading away and myself starting to get motivated to come back and try hard to play my best and improve my ability to stay in a good mental and emotional and physical state through a wide variety of conditions.

Psychological bench presses.

Had to come back and tack on another thought. The last hand where I might have misplayed the 2pair (I'll have to review it later), I did not take my time and think it through fully. I was very frustrated by the hand, and I know that frustration comes from knowing I didn't take my time and use a good thought process, and instead came to a quick rationalization that allowed me to stick my chips in. It really doesn't matter if after the fact I review the hand and decide that stacking off was best given the guy was 70vpip etc., what matters is that I strayed away from my A game grinding processes as a result of prior negative variance getting me off my game. That is why the hand immediately frustrated me, and it's an important distinction.

Failure is necessary part of the growth process. This failure will give me motivation and fuel to improve my processes so it happens less frequently in the future, and I can use it as a reminder to myself of the importance of thinking a decision through fully and using my time bank even when under duress. By being more focused and aware of that concept, I will slowly continue to train it from Conscious Competence to Unconscious Competence.

Big comeback session. I was in a much better zone for my second session. I was running kind of poorly again, and at one point bottomed out at stuck -2.5k on the day, playing mostly 2/4 and 3/6. I was coping with it a lot better in my second session, and was getting ready to wrap up when I was lucky enough to find some fish and run well against them in big pots at the end of the night and finished +1.5k winner on the day. It feels good, but I'm probably a bit too happy about the result. Nonetheless, I did work hard today and kept battling against my end of month mental leak and it's a nice to see an immediate reminder of why it's important to keep putting in the hours.

The stable is growing bigger and bigger, and is consuming more and more of my time as a result. If I'm going to be able to reach the 1000 hour goal, I need to be taking advantage of the times I have available to grind, and that means continuing to work through the end of the month. Generally Wednesday nights I take off for a small stakes home game I like to play in, but I plan on grinding Thu/Fri/Sat nights.

173.5/1000 hours
17.35% complete

Pace: 153.5 hours

Thanks!

My new laptop arrived in the mail today. After 12 days of not shipping my order and giving me no timetable as to when it would eventually be shipped, I had to cancel my order with Tiger Direct. I'm sure a lot of people have great experiences with them, but for me this situation was very off putting and I was unhappy with the customer service I got surrounding the matter. I won't be giving them any business in the future. The item cost $20 more on Newegg, but they shipped it out promptly without hassle. I wish I had bought it there in the first place.

Here's an updated graph (as of a couple days ago) for you guys:

Nice progress boss!

As you probably may know I'm struggling with something similar and its always tremendously helpful to read your well expressed thoughts and try to use the same process to correct my own leaks with them.

Thanks, and glad you find it helpful!

Got migrated over to my new laptop yesterday. It took WAY longer than expected to get all my stuff moved over and get all the software I needed downloaded, installed and configured. I haven't really used Windows 8 before so that was also an adventure. It took up most of my day, but it needed to get done. I was only able to put in a short session yesterday, and I didn't play high stakes since I was tweaking the last bit of my poker software, so the end of month leak wasn't really relevant. I can't play much tonight it looks like, as I have to take my girlfriend to a work dinner party. I want to grind and I'm not looking forward to a 4 hour dinner with a bunch of people I never met, but it's important to her so I'm going to go and make the best of it. The resulting lack of play yesterday and today is a bit frustrating, as I want to face end of month issue head on and not avoid it, but nonetheless sometimes life stuff happens. I should still be able to put in a solid day of grinding on Saturday and work on the issue.

Moving my HM2 database over got me looking at some past results. I no longer have any of my old hands from pre-Black Friday, but here is the PTR of my Stars account, now that PTR works for Stars again. Oh, the memories of mass tabling full ring to chase Supernova Milestone bonuses.



Here are all the hands in total I have in my database. This isn't everything after Black Friday, but has most of it, starting with nl25 play. Late 2011 to late 2013 were kind of "lost years" for me both in poker and in life. I was playing a lot of live poker during that time, and also WAY too much World of Warcraft. I don't play much live at all anymore, and I quit video games completely, and my life is far better off for it.



Just kind of posting these as a nostalgic look back.

skraper got me involved in helping him with ImaWhale in late 2013. On the graph, that correlates to roughly the 100k hand mark. Several years ago, we worked together closely on some staking stuff and also coaching through Version2Poker. Over time after Black Friday though, I had become quite withdrawn, both from online poker and also life in general. Sean continued with coaching on his own, and set up a relationship with ImaWhale. Some months later when he asked me to come on board and help him manage the stable, I wasn't in a great place in life, and that was the catalyst that helped get me back on my feet.

Thanks to ImaWhale, who helped put me in profitable situations, and who were understanding about working with me through some financial difficulties in the early part of our relationship.

More importantly, I just wanted to publicly say "Thank you Sean".

My life is in a better place now than ever before, and you were key to helping me get things turned around. Beyond the opportunity to get back to coaching and grinding, having someone that is passionate about personal growth to work with and bounce ideas off on a regular basis is immensely valuable. Wouldn't be here without you buddy.

Good stuff. Having good friends that you trust and try to work to bring out the best in each other makes life so much better/easier. Gl the rest of 2015 Dan!

Truth. Thanks, and you too!

Looks like I should have ample time to grind today. Looking forward to getting in a couple solid sessions, and facing my end of month leak head on. One thing I have been slacking on lately is self study. I have been running well this month, and it's very easy to ease up on evaluating my own game when things feel like they are going well. It's important that I value this process, and keep in mind it is NOT optional - if I'm going to keep playing at a high level it is absolutely necessary, and choosing to avoid self study is equivalent to just actively choosing to deteriorate my level of play. If I ask myself, "Do you want to intentionally degrade your skills?", I would of course say no, I don't. However, when it comes to finding reasons to skip self HH review, it becomes very easy to come up with some sort of rationalization for the behavior. It's lazy and self destructive to not keep up with my self study, and I know full well the value and importance of EFFORT.