Facing Adversity in 2016
01-03-2016
, 09:41 AM
Hey everyone.
I'm Adversity, and I have been my own worst enemy for the best part of 5 years now. I had a complete fear of failure, which cost me ridiculous sums of money and growth as a player, and which has therefore cost me the most important thing of all: life experiences.
I am happy to say I have actually broken that now which was probably the hardest thing I have ever attempted and the most enjoyable thing to accomplish; now I'm looking to actually profit from that work.
So I had a look in quite some detail on what makes good goals that people are more likely to stick to and found the SMART technique. That is making goals:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely
Using this, I've decided the best way to be both accountable and specific is to break it down into yearly goals which I review quarterly, and monthly goals. Now, nobody gives a **** about how I decided what goals to choose; we care about good life experiences and great graphs. So:
Year Goals
[ ] Earn Over 6 figures
[ ] Achieve SuperNova
[ ] Travel to at least 1 Country on my Bucket List
[ ] Gain my SCUBA Diving qualification
The idea to is to get myself in a position to play the volume with real focus for the first quarter, and then as that begins to get more and more comfortable for myself, start to look towards doing some things that are actually thread worthy like travelling, snowboarding and more skydiving!
I want these goals to be achievable and growing month on month. I don't want there to be a push at all right at the start, then lose a bit of focus, fail the second month and just let the thread die.
January Goals
[ ] Take one day off a week to do something social
(A day off can mean only playing for an hour whilst waiting to do something etc)
Goals below are to be daily averages over the last week in January (Monday 25th - Sunday 31st
[ ] 5 HEM Hours Per Day
[ ] Average 25 Games/HEM Hour
[ ] Attend all coaching sessions
[ ] Take an active part in all coaching sessions
[ ] On days with no coaching watch a past video
So, on we go. I won't make a promise to update every day or anything, but I will at a minimum provide a monthly review at the end of each month, and hopefully I can add a lot more in-between about poker, the things that drive me to change my mindset and a good amount of life experiences after the first quarter so that anybody out there that has the same troubles I have might take it on board that changing is worth it. Doing amazing things with your life is a lot more rewarding than being complacent, regardless of how hard it is to fight yourself!
I'll leave you all with my last 3k games, and the hope that we have even better graphs over the coming months!
Cheers,
Jay
Last edited by Adversity; 01-03-2016 at 09:45 AM.
Reason: Video Embedding
01-03-2016
, 05:56 PM
Cheers Mate!
May as well drop in the thread because Stars is absolutely ungrindable right now. I'm not sure if they've sold off all of their servers and started using AOL Dial-up for connection or what, but it's extremely tilting, and must be annoying for recreational players as well.
Anyway, this is so far:
It's nice but when you're in the zone and just want to grind and get games in it's certainly an annoyance that I could have done without. On a positive note though, that graph represents 6.85 HEM hours and 11 games/hr. Now considering for a long period of time I was doing only about 9 HEM hours a week (!) I'm certainly very happy with that. If I can push forward and up my games/hr now, my January goal should be an absolute lock!
Before any of you think to complain to Stars about the lag, don't try to do it via phone. This is all you'll hear down the other end of the line:
Ciao!
May as well drop in the thread because Stars is absolutely ungrindable right now. I'm not sure if they've sold off all of their servers and started using AOL Dial-up for connection or what, but it's extremely tilting, and must be annoying for recreational players as well.
Anyway, this is so far:
It's nice but when you're in the zone and just want to grind and get games in it's certainly an annoyance that I could have done without. On a positive note though, that graph represents 6.85 HEM hours and 11 games/hr. Now considering for a long period of time I was doing only about 9 HEM hours a week (!) I'm certainly very happy with that. If I can push forward and up my games/hr now, my January goal should be an absolute lock!
Before any of you think to complain to Stars about the lag, don't try to do it via phone. This is all you'll hear down the other end of the line:
Ciao!
01-05-2016
, 03:52 PM
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
Hero (BB): t475 15.83 BBs
BTN: t610 20.33 BBs
SB: t415 13.83 BBs
Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is BB with K
3
BTN raises to t60, 1 fold, Hero calls t30
Flop: (t135) T 6
3
(2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks
Turn: (t135) 3 (2 players)
Hero bets t65, BTN raises to t130, Hero raises to t415 all in, BTN calls t285
River: (t965) K
(2 players - 1 is all in)
He must have literally had his mouse hovering over the call button; don't think I've ever been called so fast in my life. For a second I actually thought he had TT.
Poker's dead.
Hero (BB): t475 15.83 BBs
BTN: t610 20.33 BBs
SB: t415 13.83 BBs
Pre Flop: (t45) Hero is BB with K
3BTN raises to t60, 1 fold, Hero calls t30
Flop: (t135) T
6 3 (2 players)Hero checks, BTN checks
Turn: (t135) 3
(2 players)Hero bets t65, BTN raises to t130, Hero raises to t415 all in, BTN calls t285
River: (t965) K
(2 players - 1 is all in)Spoiler:
He must have literally had his mouse hovering over the call button; don't think I've ever been called so fast in my life. For a second I actually thought he had TT.
Poker's dead.
01-09-2016
, 09:08 PM
Mental Contrasting
So one of the worst things in the world is feeling unmotivated. Lack of motivation can stop people from reaching amazing, life changing goals, and can begin to spiral out of control if left unchecked, for what appears to be no reason whatsoever.
When an individual feels unmotivated, apathy takes over. And it spreads. Areas of your life that feel otherwise unconnected seem to get affected by an overriding emotional response of indifference. It comes seemingly from nowhere, and can be either a sudden overflow of listlessness, or a gradual suppression of the normal sensations which had crept up on you over time.
One of the reasons I think we as poker players are more sensitive to these problems are a mix of both the freedom and the possibilities of what we do. Being able to work as little as you like is certainly an issue that every poker player has had to deal with, but often overlooked is the fact that on some level, your mind is aware that the more it plays, the more you will make and therefore achieve. That feeling of wasting opportunities causes a lot more problems than most of us realise, and being something that I still have to wrestle with everyday, is definitely something I'd like to share my experiences on.
One of the worst possible situations to find yourself in is having a lofty goal, which is completely achievable, but not having the drive to follow through with it. Have a look back at the PG&C threads over the past week that have been started. How many have the numbers "2016" and "100k" in the title? Now go inside those same threads. How many already have decent results over a good sample of games, but just need to up the amount of hours they put in at the tables to achieve their lofty goal? I'd hazard an educated guess at 50-60%, with the others being unproven players that we of course do not have the required information to know if they can reach their targets or not. Now, of those 50-60%, how many will make that goal come December 31st? Well, probably not many. But it seems so doable right? A player shows us a graph with X amount of cash hands played. He's made $25k over that sample, so if he can just get 4X hands in over the year, he'll make it! Unfortunately, that doesn't happen as often as many of us would like, and one of the problems comes back to the achievability of the goal, and how the mind processes it.
When we make a goal, that is both lofty and achievable, our mind visualizes it, whether we want it to or not. It starts to imagine not just the feeling of the goal, but also the feeling of things attached with it. If you make $100k, how will your life change? Well, the average guy on here will either play higher stakes, or live a better life. If you play higher stakes, your mind will imagine firstly making even more money, but also the rush and sense of achievement in and of itself. The higher you play, the better you are as far as your ego is concerned, and this outcome is what your mind is focused on. Should you want a better life (in general terms that is) your mind might think about travelling the world, or having a nicer car, living in a nicer home and being able to enjoy finer things with your family. However the problem here is that your mind can actually assume you've already made it. That the dream of achieving the goal is so vivid and exciting, but so accessible through your plan, that it has already made it. All the hard work has been done, it's just a matter of playing the waiting game until the end of the year for you to actually receive the prize. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and in the meantime, your mind has reduced it's drive because, being the unbelievably extraordinary piece of equipment it is, it has decided that this is no longer a required use of energy.
This is where Mental Contrasting comes in. The idea is actually pretty simple. Rather than just having a goal and visualizing it, you also have to visualize obstacles. You have to put a focus on some of the things that will inevitably go wrong throughout the duration of your goals, and what it will feel like trying to overcome them. What this essentially does, is it warns the mind in advance that whilst your goals is achievable, it is only achievable if it is fully on board. It can only be reached if the mind realises that this is the most important thing for it to achieve, and therefore energy (or motivation) cannot be directed away from it because it has already been achieved. It is still very much a work in progress, and something that must be followed through day by day.
One of the most important things in poker is motivation. Having goals and being able to stick with them will make me infinitely more profitable at the tables, and staying hungry to play, with a desire to improve is probably the single biggest factor at this point for me to achieve any target I have set myself. Hopefully, some of this can help some of you as well.
Anyway, I tend to ramble when it's late. I've read quite a lot about motivation and different techniques to achieve it over the last few months, and writing it down as though I'm explaining it to somebody else always helps me feel like I've understood the subject. So if anybody actually likes things like this, let me know and I can do a few more.
Regardless, thanks for reading, a video below is on the science of motivation and includes some information on mental contrasting.
Jay
02-01-2016
, 06:54 PM
Very awesome read man! Thanks for sharing! I'll send u a PM in the future to send u some motivational videos, I struggle with the same aspect of visualizing the end goal, when I havnt actually reached it, so getting my mindset in order is key.
Quote:
Mental Contrasting
So one of the worst things in the world is feeling unmotivated. Lack of motivation can stop people from reaching amazing, life changing goals, and can begin to spiral out of control if left unchecked, for what appears to be no reason whatsoever.
When an individual feels unmotivated, apathy takes over. And it spreads. Areas of your life that feel otherwise unconnected seem to get affected by an overriding emotional response of indifference. It comes seemingly from nowhere, and can be either a sudden overflow of listlessness, or a gradual suppression of the normal sensations which had crept up on you over time.
One of the reasons I think we as poker players are more sensitive to these problems are a mix of both the freedom and the possibilities of what we do. Being able to work as little as you like is certainly an issue that every poker player has had to deal with, but often overlooked is the fact that on some level, your mind is aware that the more it plays, the more you will make and therefore achieve. That feeling of wasting opportunities causes a lot more problems than most of us realise, and being something that I still have to wrestle with everyday, is definitely something I'd like to share my experiences on.
One of the worst possible situations to find yourself in is having a lofty goal, which is completely achievable, but not having the drive to follow through with it. Have a look back at the PG&C threads over the past week that have been started. How many have the numbers "2016" and "100k" in the title? Now go inside those same threads. How many already have decent results over a good sample of games, but just need to up the amount of hours they put in at the tables to achieve their lofty goal? I'd hazard an educated guess at 50-60%, with the others being unproven players that we of course do not have the required information to know if they can reach their targets or not. Now, of those 50-60%, how many will make that goal come December 31st? Well, probably not many. But it seems so doable right? A player shows us a graph with X amount of cash hands played. He's made $25k over that sample, so if he can just get 4X hands in over the year, he'll make it! Unfortunately, that doesn't happen as often as many of us would like, and one of the problems comes back to the achievability of the goal, and how the mind processes it.
When we make a goal, that is both lofty and achievable, our mind visualizes it, whether we want it to or not. It starts to imagine not just the feeling of the goal, but also the feeling of things attached with it. If you make $100k, how will your life change? Well, the average guy on here will either play higher stakes, or live a better life. If you play higher stakes, your mind will imagine firstly making even more money, but also the rush and sense of achievement in and of itself. The higher you play, the better you are as far as your ego is concerned, and this outcome is what your mind is focused on. Should you want a better life (in general terms that is) your mind might think about travelling the world, or having a nicer car, living in a nicer home and being able to enjoy finer things with your family. However the problem here is that your mind can actually assume you've already made it. That the dream of achieving the goal is so vivid and exciting, but so accessible through your plan, that it has already made it. All the hard work has been done, it's just a matter of playing the waiting game until the end of the year for you to actually receive the prize. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and in the meantime, your mind has reduced it's drive because, being the unbelievably extraordinary piece of equipment it is, it has decided that this is no longer a required use of energy.
This is where Mental Contrasting comes in. The idea is actually pretty simple. Rather than just having a goal and visualizing it, you also have to visualize obstacles. You have to put a focus on some of the things that will inevitably go wrong throughout the duration of your goals, and what it will feel like trying to overcome them. What this essentially does, is it warns the mind in advance that whilst your goals is achievable, it is only achievable if it is fully on board. It can only be reached if the mind realises that this is the most important thing for it to achieve, and therefore energy (or motivation) cannot be directed away from it because it has already been achieved. It is still very much a work in progress, and something that must be followed through day by day.
One of the most important things in poker is motivation. Having goals and being able to stick with them will make me infinitely more profitable at the tables, and staying hungry to play, with a desire to improve is probably the single biggest factor at this point for me to achieve any target I have set myself. Hopefully, some of this can help some of you as well.
Anyway, I tend to ramble when it's late. I've read quite a lot about motivation and different techniques to achieve it over the last few months, and writing it down as though I'm explaining it to somebody else always helps me feel like I've understood the subject. So if anybody actually likes things like this, let me know and I can do a few more.
Regardless, thanks for reading, a video below is on the science of motivation and includes some information on mental contrasting.
Jay
Mental Contrasting
So one of the worst things in the world is feeling unmotivated. Lack of motivation can stop people from reaching amazing, life changing goals, and can begin to spiral out of control if left unchecked, for what appears to be no reason whatsoever.
When an individual feels unmotivated, apathy takes over. And it spreads. Areas of your life that feel otherwise unconnected seem to get affected by an overriding emotional response of indifference. It comes seemingly from nowhere, and can be either a sudden overflow of listlessness, or a gradual suppression of the normal sensations which had crept up on you over time.
One of the reasons I think we as poker players are more sensitive to these problems are a mix of both the freedom and the possibilities of what we do. Being able to work as little as you like is certainly an issue that every poker player has had to deal with, but often overlooked is the fact that on some level, your mind is aware that the more it plays, the more you will make and therefore achieve. That feeling of wasting opportunities causes a lot more problems than most of us realise, and being something that I still have to wrestle with everyday, is definitely something I'd like to share my experiences on.
One of the worst possible situations to find yourself in is having a lofty goal, which is completely achievable, but not having the drive to follow through with it. Have a look back at the PG&C threads over the past week that have been started. How many have the numbers "2016" and "100k" in the title? Now go inside those same threads. How many already have decent results over a good sample of games, but just need to up the amount of hours they put in at the tables to achieve their lofty goal? I'd hazard an educated guess at 50-60%, with the others being unproven players that we of course do not have the required information to know if they can reach their targets or not. Now, of those 50-60%, how many will make that goal come December 31st? Well, probably not many. But it seems so doable right? A player shows us a graph with X amount of cash hands played. He's made $25k over that sample, so if he can just get 4X hands in over the year, he'll make it! Unfortunately, that doesn't happen as often as many of us would like, and one of the problems comes back to the achievability of the goal, and how the mind processes it.
When we make a goal, that is both lofty and achievable, our mind visualizes it, whether we want it to or not. It starts to imagine not just the feeling of the goal, but also the feeling of things attached with it. If you make $100k, how will your life change? Well, the average guy on here will either play higher stakes, or live a better life. If you play higher stakes, your mind will imagine firstly making even more money, but also the rush and sense of achievement in and of itself. The higher you play, the better you are as far as your ego is concerned, and this outcome is what your mind is focused on. Should you want a better life (in general terms that is) your mind might think about travelling the world, or having a nicer car, living in a nicer home and being able to enjoy finer things with your family. However the problem here is that your mind can actually assume you've already made it. That the dream of achieving the goal is so vivid and exciting, but so accessible through your plan, that it has already made it. All the hard work has been done, it's just a matter of playing the waiting game until the end of the year for you to actually receive the prize. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened, and in the meantime, your mind has reduced it's drive because, being the unbelievably extraordinary piece of equipment it is, it has decided that this is no longer a required use of energy.
This is where Mental Contrasting comes in. The idea is actually pretty simple. Rather than just having a goal and visualizing it, you also have to visualize obstacles. You have to put a focus on some of the things that will inevitably go wrong throughout the duration of your goals, and what it will feel like trying to overcome them. What this essentially does, is it warns the mind in advance that whilst your goals is achievable, it is only achievable if it is fully on board. It can only be reached if the mind realises that this is the most important thing for it to achieve, and therefore energy (or motivation) cannot be directed away from it because it has already been achieved. It is still very much a work in progress, and something that must be followed through day by day.
One of the most important things in poker is motivation. Having goals and being able to stick with them will make me infinitely more profitable at the tables, and staying hungry to play, with a desire to improve is probably the single biggest factor at this point for me to achieve any target I have set myself. Hopefully, some of this can help some of you as well.
Anyway, I tend to ramble when it's late. I've read quite a lot about motivation and different techniques to achieve it over the last few months, and writing it down as though I'm explaining it to somebody else always helps me feel like I've understood the subject. So if anybody actually likes things like this, let me know and I can do a few more.
Regardless, thanks for reading, a video below is on the science of motivation and includes some information on mental contrasting.
Jay