Hand 3: Were you planning on barreling on brick turn and rivers?

I'm assuming u mean any non 4 or 2 turn and river cards? I'd say its dependent on exactly which runouts, but generally I'd say looking to showdown as flop bet is just for protection/thin value as so many hands that have good equity against me with 2 overs/backdoor draws will be folded out.

So yeah, occasionally I might decide to run it if there's a run out that favours my range highly, but mostly looking to bet for protection on flop and showdown/decide rivers etc

I'm gonna want to be barreling so many bluffs on the turn that I don't think I need to start bluffing bottom pairs. My only value bets are 2 pairs/Ax/sets which is fairly thin compared to all of the potential bluffs I can have...flush draws/57/78/37/any random 2 cards really...not to mention villain likely has a fair amount of Ax that he'll want to station.

The good news: I made it through SCOOP and I'm alive.
The bad news: I barely feel alive and this is the most withered I've felt from poker in a long, long time.

Now that the series is done I feel I'm due for a long post updating about everything. I wish I could say the post is gonna all be about massive binkage, getting shredded, driving lambos etc. Unfortunately, this thread is about being honest (most of the time) about almost everything.

Well, I'm gonna try my best to put a positive spin on some of this stuff. Between PP millions MTL and SCOOP I knew going into these series that I wanted to/was willing to fire pretty hard. I figured these are good spots to fire hard in and take a shot due to big prizepools, which inherently brings a lot of dead money along with it. On a negative note, the big prizepools are also encompassed by massive variance, high stress levels, and a lot of leaving the comfort zone.

Like I said, going into the last few months I was well aware of the possible repercussions of leaving my BR comfort zone. I just felt like maybe 1/10 I would brick hard and put myself in a ****ty spot, 8/10 I would be alright after selling action etc and cashing a few events, 1/10 get a nice bink and be super well off.

Anyways, what's that saying about Murphy's Law? Well yeah, it applies here pretty perfectly. Everything went wrong, and MORE.

If you still have any guesses on how the previous few months have went poker-wise for me I'll sum it up for you in one word : ****. The runbad has been the worst I've had in my career in a very unfortunate time. On the bright side, if there was a Forbes Top 100 for richest people in the world in Sklansky $, I would be a strong candidate

So yeah, I'm glad I got that little whine out of the way. It's time to move on and set my sails in the right direction.

What did go well lately? I worked really hard. Grinded heaps. Worked out consistently and really starting to feel good. Ate decent. Put in my best effort. Beginning to really feel more confident/stable/secure in my relationships with myself/others.

Where are things heading? Well, like I said, I'm in a relatively ****ty spot after this bottom tier run. I guess I'm technically rolled for all of this if you include all my assets, but unfortunately those are not liquid, and the BR took a big hit lately. Now seems like a fitting time to grind out a bunch of lower variance games/sell pieces accordingly/and figure out a plan for WSOP. Currently, my flight is booked for next week but I'm thinking postponing would be my best option. Vegas is the nut worst place to be in the world if you are not in a good mental head space.

To sum it up: Keep gyming, keep eating healthy, keep enjoying life, grind some good low variance volume, rebuild. Plan and execute, the 2nd part is the hard one.

All the above probably seems pretty negative energy but I wanted to just give an honest post. I'm doing pretty well altogether just poker has been garbage lately. I'm not worried though it will turn around.

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Coming in for a quick bad beat whine. Just got 12th in Late ST after being 1/15. Lost a massive flip/then an all in/then bluffed river in a really big pot and got called by a hand that played horrendously etc.

On the bright side, I FTd the big 55 and probably should have shipped it but these 2 hands brought an abrupt end to my tourney life (wp german reg btw):

https://www.boomplayer.com/27863763_BC15452AA4

https://www.boomplayer.com/27863827_60BABD825E

Really gross but am happy with my productive day and also happy with making a tonne of sklanksy $ yet again. Quite happy with my play and gotta figure that every dog has his day...I'm just waiting for mine

Holy KTo that is tilting

Yeah aside from being an absolute ICM punt and being an awful hand to do this with, he snap jammed it in which makes it even more tilting. He was actually a guy I considered to be a good reg before that FT lol.

It's funny because I wasn't playing back at him much all FT even though I probably could have. I 3 bet his BTN open once from SB and snap folded to a snap jam. Seemed like he was just not gonna be doing anything other than jam over 3 bets so I even peeled KQo in previous orbit same spot because I didn't wanna call off a jam haha. Anyways, sorta feels like I owned him in meta game and made him make 2 massive mistakes so I guess in a way I won

Sorry for all the whining btw boys it's been a tough ~6 weeks poker wise. Have been putting my head down and grinding a lower variance schedule last few days and feeling great. Things will turn around soon

Thanks for the post about river value/bluffing. Gutted you had a bad SCOOP but im sure the run good will return. Your too good a player for it not too.

Hey, bad to hear about the way scoop went for you.

But now its gonna be a good time for online, loads of "regs" "eggs" gonna be in vegas and fields gonna be pretty soft so keep with the grind

1 question, how do u work on ur game? how many times a week?

Cheers.

It's all good I didn't lose a tonne of $ or anything because I sold pieces fairly responsibly and had some small scores in bowl comps to stay afloat. Losing just sucks in general

Well my flight is booked for ~5 days from now (booked it way in advance) and now I'm not really feeling Vegas. Sorta just feeling like enjoying summer here/life and grinding some soft/small games online.

As far as working on my game goes I don't actually put a lot of work in the lab myself. Although it seems like everyone talks like they go in the lab a tonne but when you really find out most guys just aren't running that many sims they just pretend like they're in the lab 24/7. That being said:

-I do have a friend who is very good with the softwares. We compile hh's once in a while and run a few sims/discuss lab results.
-Watch some RIO videos. Have really been enjoying Ben Sulsky's content lately. That guy thinks poker on a genius level and he has opened my eyes to a whole new level of thinking/helps me realize I still suck.
-Do a very limited amount of coaching. Critiquing other players/seeing their hand histories/finding their leaks helps me understand the minds of other players/how to exploit them.
-Raise Your Edge.
-Watching FT replays or railing good players. Look for stuff they are doing/try to understand it.
-Send my hands to good players and pick their brains about them.
-Actively study on the fly in game.

Hope that answers your question.

Thanks for the answer.

Ben sulsky is a beast, and its nice to take part of the things he does and try to convert them into mtt in some way.

Ill recommend Kevin Rabichow for hu game and Daniel Dvoress .

u prob do work more than 90% of the fields

GL in what ever u choose to do

thanks dude. have seen a few kevin vids a long time ago but will check em out when I got some spare time.

Alright, should I start with the good news or the bad news? Seeing as I'm basically typing into the abyss here and there really isn't anyone that can answer that question, I'll start with the good news first.

THE GOOD NEWS: Things are starting to look up again and I'm winning some all-ins. Just managed to ship the hot 16.50 own dime and a few other bowls. That tournament wasn't in my package and I felt kinda guilty as my packs have been bricking lately so I decided to give ~25% of the score away as a charity to my investors.

It's funny during these downswings we're forced to question our game and think in greater depth about our overall strategy from an outside perspective as best we can. Definitely think this downswing has forced me to think critically and I've found a couple nuances that I believe are going to print. I'm feeling great and seeing light at the end of the tunnel (in terms of health, wealth, poker, relationships)...I'll just pray it's not a train!

Unfortunately, this thread isn't all about sunshine, rainbows, and lollipops. Here's the bad news, well maybe there are some haters out there who this is actually good news to

THE BAD NEWS: I canceled my flight and hotel for Vegas that was supposed to be Thursday evening. I'm partially bummed about my decision but also part of me just wants to chill out and enjoy life right now. Ultimately, a decreased BR, my parents cottage, soft online games with smaller fields, and a desire to not be a zombie walking through the desert that is Las Vegas with a fragile state of mind, all led to my decision.

It sort of feels like I'm being offered a wonderful big bag of gold in exchange for just a few weeks of my time in Vegas. Although, sometimes decisions need to be looked at from more than a monetary perspective. I feel like right now I just don't want to be beat down living on the road and in a casino hotel. Ultimately, I just said it's been a while since I've taken some time off and done some life loving. With the gorgeous weather here I couldn't think of a better time to do it.

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Feels like a little while since I've written a little piece in here and still a bit wired from my grind so it seems like a good time to do it.

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So this weekend I went to play at a home game near my place. I've been playing there occasionally for ~8 years now. It's funny because when I first started going the tournament was like my Main Event. I believe it was a 50$ buy in. Usually, this would involve me scraping through all my savings, maybe my parents piggy bank, maybe getting a stake from a friend. It's funny now that I just skip the tourney and go to punt in the cash game sometimes and often laugh to myself about how astronomical this game was to me in the past.

Anyways, I've grown from the young, broke, clueless kid in that game in 2010, to now, the more mature, slightly less broke, slightly less clueless young adult in 2018. A lot of the recreational players in the game know me quite well and really respect me as a player.

The year end tournament happened to be on break from final table when one of the recreational players came up to me and said "Mike, I can't believe you do this for a living...it's so stressful I feel like I've lost 10 years off my life just from this FT."

This really got me thinking about just how stressful poker really is. Sometimes we're so wrapped up in the game or accustomed to it that we don't even realize the roller-coaster that we put ourselves through. It's no secret that high stress levels on the mind and body are sooooo bad for us in the long run (a quick google search can tell you why).

When you take a step back you realize how massive the swings are, how rough this game is on our bodies/minds, and really just how stressful it is playing poker for a living. Outside of 50k downswings, battling every monkey and reg, rake changes, 18 hour grind sessions, etc...we have to worry about: being coerced to conform to societal norms in terms of careers, a steady influx of bills with a not so steady influx of income, managing our health, managing our human condition. In other words, a constant battle to silence your inner degen.

In this career we're forced to to become robotic and use the logical side of our brains for ~10 hour sessions, ~5x per week. The benefit of this is that eventually you become accustomed to the emotional roller coaster and your brain really numbs a lot of emotions. The downside of this is that the emotionless, robotic brain often follows you into every other area of your life. It's tough to just snap out of poker after a session and go right back to your normal self. I'd argue almost impossible. If I had to be honest I'd say this reason is the biggest contributor to me retiring from poker at the end of this year.

I thought I'd give you guys some pointers (most are probably obvious) as to how you can manage the stress of poker...

1) Exercise before or after your sessions. A good life before your session will help you feel stable and have good energy through your grind. For me personally, it relieves a cloud of guilt that would linger over my head all session. Exercising post session is also a great way of disconnecting from the session.

2) Go for walks. Surely there is some good nature within a quick walk or drive from your residence. Assassinato gave me some really good advice when I wrote an email to him in ~2012 (depressed and in a struggle) that just said to make sure you at least get out for a 20 minute walk every day. If you can't do anything else...just go for a walk. That became a habit for me to this day. Walking through nature and just taking deep breaths really eases the mind and helps you get some key self-reflection.

3) Weed. I don't really recommend this and I have never played poker high. However, it could be considered a decent way to disconnect from your sessions and to aid in relaxation. Way better than drinking obv.

4) Meditation. Have struggled to find the time to do this lately but can say meditation before a session can work wonders, meditation before every session can work miracles.

5) Float Tank. I now do this once per week and find it massively helps my relaxation. Would be tough to explain the feeling but it's very noticeable.

6) Breathe. When you're feeling stressed take a bunch of deep breaths or study breathing exercises. This is one of the first things they teach people with anxiety.

7) Use your breaks wisely for a legit BREAK. If you felt really stressed in the last hour of play use the break to refocus yourself and understand why you felt stressed.

8) Probably the most useful thing for me personally...just understand/enjoy the game. Know that you're going to make mistakes along the way, bad beats will happen, and not everything will go your way (unless you are girafganger maybe). Just finding peace in the fact that I gave my best effort and made the best decisions I'm capable of goes a long way.



I just wanted to say that it's a stressful AF game and it's important to realize/understand that. Hopefully some of those tips help!

Feel pretty **** atm. Not sure if it's because I went out drinking last night and had ~4 hours of pretty bad sleep or because I had a half ass grind and felt out of it all day and really feel like I let myself down again. (By the way I read some stuff that alcohol has a lot of negative effects on REM sleep and and overall negative effect on sleep. Probably a big factor of why one doesn't feel well rested even if they did sleep 8 hours.

Anyways, back to letting myself down. I guess last night I hadn't seen a few friends for a while and they were doing a campout at my buddy's cabin. My original plan was to just make an appearance for ~2-3 hours have a drink or two and then head home and get a good rest before my Sunday grind. As per usual, having one or two drinks and then leaving good company is tough. Temptation got the best of me and 1 or 2 drinks became 9 or 10, and a good night sleep became a 4 hour nap.

I definitely do recognize that being social and maintaining healthy relationships is a big part of my happiness/well-being/goals and it sucks that the most social night is Saturday. Most of the world hasn't a care in the world on Sundays and have no problems giving half their Sunday to the previous night. I've been very good with staying disciplined before my sessions but slipped up yesterday which I guess I'm semi-ok with because it was for a good cause.

Anyways, as I was half in the bag this morning I flicked some tourneys. After making a few big mistakes and losing every 90/10 to 10/90 and everything in between, I figured I should cut my losses and stop registering. RIP Sunday.

Oh yeah, back to letting myself down. I worked out like twice in the past 7 days and ate a diet that would make the heart attack grill spokesperson look like Brandon Carter. Anyways, I guess it's somewhat normal to fall off the wagon a bunch of times and the most important thing is getting back on it. Gonna get the week started right tomorrow early: workout, float, groceries, clean place, grind lower variance night session.

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So I wanted to make little post about some random stuff I was thinking about this week:

This time of year is really good for sports fans. There is NBA and NHL playoffs most nights and if nothing else, usually some good MLB games to watch. When you really think about how big the professional sports market is in North America it's absurd. Why is it that these sports which are just activities created by humans viewed as some type of holy grail to society?

Fans (short for fanatics) will dedicate hours of their time every week to watching games, conversing, researching, or even thinking about their teams. If somebody is a fan of an opposing team they are viewed as an enemy and if somebody is fan of their team they are viewed as a friend.

I'm really not sure where I was going with this post nor have I done any research on this stuff, so I'm just going to hypothesize what I think the reasons are for this craze.

Over human history there has been battles and wars consistently over time. Quite often human tribes or colonies face off against one another. It's sort of likely that fighting and war is one of our first instincts when facing conflict. I mean, chimp tribes battling is sort of a microcosm of mankind. It's in these times of conflict where people pick a side and fight for it.

I think people love choosing a side and feeling like they are a part of the battle. Me cheering for the Toronto Maple Leafs does zilch in terms of them winning hockey games. However, I frequently find myself in conversations with fellow "arm chair quarterbacks" who feel like they also have all the answers to solve the issues facing the franchise. "They should have traded JVR at the deadline", "Babcock and Matthews are clearly beefing" "Hiring Dubas was genius" "Hiring Dubas was moronic". There's people who the outcomes of their team's games will literally make or break their week. Actually, there has been cases of fans killing referees or players of their teams out of outrage.

All of these sports are really just glorified games and really don't have any actual effect on improving the world...yet every body is so attached to them. Are they great for the economy of a city and bringing together the people and entertaining them? Absolutely. I guess when people watch sports they gain a sense of "fighting for their team" and joining a "us vs. them" mentality.

Sports serve as a microcosm of war and battle where there is a winner and loser. These battles evoke our most primal instincts.

Anyways, not sure where I was going with all that. Sooooo Cavs money line next game?!?! haha. Cheers, GL this week guys let's get itttttt


Here's a couple hands:

https://www.boomplayer.com/27931935_16E6AEFB3C
You guys call river here or nah?

https://www.boomplayer.com/27903667_08AC081AF7
this is sooo tilting when it happens. Idk I guess we have a hand that should just be running it?

https://www.boomplayer.com/27898383_A0BAED32DC
great blast on FT lol. uhmm EP opener was quite loose wasn't sure what to do regarding ICM with this hand. I think when suited it's a mandatory VPIP? Prob off suit also. Awkward stack depth but I think jam is usually best?

wassup wassup,

Actually have a bit of an interesting proposition for the thread this week/challenge to myself so stay tuned.

So I've been out in the wilderness at my cottage for the past ~4 days and had a lot of alone time to really consider where I'm at/where I'm heading and just get back in sync. I was able to get in touch with some of the stuff that is really bothering me deep down and sort of make a plan to fix it. To sum it up, I'm feeling motivated, recharged, and ready to active BEAST mode.

https://gyazo.com/c986cc9f4129a3c939...6e48e9d2916fec
there's my meditation view

Ok, so what's the challenge?

I was really thinking about how to spruce this thread up a little bit, how to motivate myself, and how to give back to some of the readers/people who have given me their support through the year.

My challenge:
-This will last for 8 weeks, starting tonight at midnight.
-Follow the slow carb diet, with no exceptions other than milk in my coffee
-Minimum of 3 gym sessions per week, and a minimum of 2 other physical activity sessions per week.
-Post in this thread on Sunday nights.

The Freeroll:
-For any time I break a rule in the challenge I will donate 25$ to the most recent poster ITT (or potentially just reward what I think is a good post, but we'll go on first response basis for now).
-At the end of every week I will be donating 25$ to a poster/reader, regardless.

The Trick:
-Anybody who wins a 25$ prize MUST use it towards something that is used to better/improve themselves. This can be: a book, a gym membership, primed mind, a small bankroll, money for healthy groceries, etc...
-You must post ITT what you are using/used the $ towards. You don't have to be honest but just know you should feel ****ty about yourself if you just punt it on black or something

So yeah, challenge starts at midnight so first guy to respond after midnight gets the first 25$. I look forward to hearing what you guys use it for and hopefully it ends up bringing a lot more than 25$ of meaning to them.

Why am I giving the freeroll? Well, the minimum that this is going to cost me is 25$/week for 8 weeks, aka 200$. If I get out of this with following the diet perfectly and hitting the gym 3x/week and it only costing me 200$, I will be ecstatic. I also want to incentivize myself to complete the challenge+help some people along the way. I also really wanted to give back to some of the readers from this thread. I've gotten way more than 200$ of EV by blogging on 2p2 over the past ~4 years. This gives me a place to de-clutter a lot of noise in my head and get some motivation from like-minded people who understand some of the struggles of being a pro poker player. So yeah, this is a way of giving back, making my thread more interesting, and assisting to activate beast mode.

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Now that that's all out of the way. I'm happy to say that my hard work and grind efforts of the last few months are starting to pay off. In the last 2 weeks I have 1st hot 16, 2nd bb55, 3rd hot 55 (todya for 6k), and 2nd late mini ST. Quite a good little heater and getting deep everywhere. I'm also feeling very recharged and going to look at rescheduling my WSOP flight tonight.

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Anyways, that's about it for now. First freeroll giveaway is in 1 hour 12 minutes @ mid night my time. I might come back later tonight for a rant or something depending on my fatigue factor.

Here's a good track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVEyUtz_VoM

"A real man in the dark when nobody watchin', he puttin' in work."

Gl with the challenge!

How do you feel about not going to Vegas now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kb7_E12FFLw

Lesgooooo

In for freeroll, I'll use it to renew ICMizer sub

Gl, really nice couple of posts

gl sir !

Gl sir, really like the idea for the freeroll, hopefully you get some interesting replies.

Thanks! Feels great lol. Although I'm feeling recharged and ready to get out there next week You win the weekly freeroll btw. lmk your stars name or xfer details and post ITT what you're gonna use it towards.

great vid!

close but just a little bit behind for this week

thanks!

haha thanks man yeah ill try my best to get some more soon!

yeah I was really excited about the idea too when I came up with it. Cheers

Hey guys I have some bittersweet news:

I re-booked my flight to Vegas for Monday evening and staying @ the Gold Coast. Due to the nature of Vegas and living out of a casino hotel room for several days implies that following my challenge would be very difficult.

I want to focus the best I can on poker/rest/being healthy but I know I will have to make a few sacrifices to my slow-carb diet rules. I'm making the executive decision to hold myself to 4x workouts per week while I am in Vegas and eating as healthy as possible, however, am going to postpone the challenge until I get home.

So, the challenge will go as normally until this Sunday, and will then be postponed until I return home from Vegas. Sort of sucks to do this but I think it's for the better. Meh, I will only be in Vegas for max. a few weeks anyways so not the end of the world.

Anyways, I'm excited to print some sklansky EV in Vegas and be conscious of health as much as possible through the trip. If anyone wants to meet up down there hit me upppp!

Always have trouble sleeping after hockey on Wednesday nights so felt like a fitting time to come in for a post.

First, here's a hand that's kinda bugging me from local home game:

Villain is a big blaster and routinely swings up and often swings up and down 500BBs in a night. I have definitely gotten the better of him in the past and recently made a ridiculous hero call for like ~2 buy ins on the river with A high and was correct. He was still aware of this and I think he may have been a little bit hesitant to try bluffing me in a big pot again.

Hand starts with a 5$ straddle from player in question on the button. UTG limps, I am UTG1 with AdKx and raise to 30$ (large sizing giving blaster on BTN does not like folding his straddles). BTN makes it 105$, limper folds.

I was 400$ deep to start the hand and he was ~1k deep. I really felt like he wasn't squeezing much at all here as this player is known to mostly call everything pre flop as opposed to taking aggro lines. Decided to call which in hindsight I think is an inferior option to jamming.

Anyways, flop is 554r, I check, he bets 125. I think here I should just be all in or fold really but idk, he could be bluffing/I beat all his bluffs+jamming just gets called by over pairs basically. I ended up peeling.

On the turn I checked in the dark and it brought a 6. He snap checked. River brought the Qd, with 3 diamonds on the board. In my mind I really thought his snap check on turn was quite telling of a hand with showdown value but not super strong. Realistically I felt he would probably think at least a little bit with over pairs. At this point I ranged him on like some type of pre flop bluff actually that paired on the turn or something idk.

Anyways, I had 200$ left, my flush blocker isn't relevant vs this player really but I felt I can just make him fold like 6x or weak pairs. I decided to jam and got snapped by AQcc. Yeah I felt like a moron and I think river is probably just an easy check/fold in hindsight but idk I think my thought process was there? Let me know if I suck in the comments.

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Side Question: I am spending ~1k USD for 10 nights at the Gold Coast, the 18th to the 28th. Is this a ripoff? It is close to the RIO so I save a lot on ubers and transportation+a lot of EV in not being stressed and hassled about transportation all the time. Everyone at the home game said that is kinda a rip off at a hotel like that. I also tried calling the RIO and a few other hotels and they all seemed to be more expensive and less convenient. Anybody have any pointers?

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So I wanted to share some advice that I got reading a book a few years ago which in my opinion is a very GTO way of life. First, I'm gonna start out with a little story/background information.

My upbringing as a kid was what I would consider to be fairly normal. My parents were always very strict about manners, being thoughtful/kind to others, and in many ways putting others before myself. To add to the picture a little bit, I was a really shy kid and naturally empathetic.

As I grew older I really realized about how much of a "people pleaser" I had become. I'd often be overly agreeable with people, would avoid confrontation, would avoid edgy topics, would take the lion's share in group work, and other cringey stuff like that.

I guess somewhere along the line I crafted some "nice guy" personality. Ya know, nobody is gonna dislike you if you're a nice guy right? I think is partially due to my upbringing and mostly because of my nature and having a fairly solid emotional intelligence. I guess being a little bit of a shy kid I often did a lot of observation of people and really learned their preferences etc. On the bright side I think my listening skills became next level. People are often shocked that I can remember the smallest details of conversations from ~15 years ago.

So yeah, here we are at some "crafted nice guy personality" that I tried out for a few years. (BTW this was only really with people I did not know well, I was normal with close friends.) Often in my relationships I found people would repeatedly take advantage or walk over me and I felt like I was in scarcity/afraid to lose friends so I would just sort of allow it to happen. This brought a lot of anxiety and it often felt like I was walking on egg shells.

Somewhere along the road I was sick of getting blown off on my birthday by people I would have considered to be my good friends (when I never forgot their birthday and at least offered to take them out for a drink), I was sick of people canceling and flaking last minute, and I was sick of feeling like I was trapped. I decided that changes were going to be made and I was going to figure out how to improve the quality of my relationships and get people to treat me the way I would be expected to treat them.

(Small disclaimer: Not saying I was ever some prodical son friend. I was not always the best friend but I would run through walls for my homies when it's all said and done.)

So what changed? I read some material that I would consider to be a big "paradigm shift" for me. I learned about some of my behaviours were rooted from a low-self worth and scarcity. I learned that people who repeatedly find ways to flake on you/not hold true to their word do not deserve multiple chances. If you allow them multiple chances, they know they can get away with it and will repeat their offences over and over and over and over and over again...if you allow it.

I also learned that in dating girls who will **** you around and let you be some **** boy will ultimately lose respect for you. If your partners do not respect you your relationships will be hell.

Here's the anecdotal story that made me think about all this stuff:

I have not seen a girl I dated for a bit in a several months. Outside of the odd text/reach out their is basically radio silence between us. I had done all the driving to meet up (there is some distance between us). Anyways, she would reach out every few months and talk about coming to visit etc and when it came to it there was always some reason she couldn't come visit.

Recently she reached out and said she would be in a city half way between both of our homes for the weekend and that we should meet up there. I missed her and would have enjoyed to hang out and catch up over the weekend. So I said yeah sure I'll drive out there.

As it was Thursday and we planned to meet Friday I sent a text along the lines of "I'm gonna leave in the morning see u there." My text was met with "idk I might be bringing my friend with me now."

What does this message convey?
-I am not a priority.
-She does not value my time/weekend plans.
-There was no apology or anything.

The "old me" would have responded with "oh ok no problem just let me know".
However, without even one second of hesitation I responded with "I'm going to make other plans then, enjoy your weekend."

-I was not butt hurt.
-I am not going to be wasting my time with someone that I'm not even a priority for.
-Jerking me around is not acceptable.
-In the future I will never go out of my way to make plans or even reach out.

As much as I wanted to see her and spend some time I will not sacrifice my self-worth or have somebody not respect me.

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So yeah, I've noticed in the last few years with this subtle change in mentality my relationships have been rock solid and I'm growing my confidence and mindset every single day. It is easy to fall into the trap of becoming a people pleaser but just know that people see through it. People are glued to people who are authentic and have a high sense of self worth/confidence. If you become more genuine so will your relationships.


Wow, what a fkn rant haha. Hopefully anybody who didn't fall asleep after the second sentence can find that helpful

BED TIME

Nice post again. I really like your 'rants', sincerity and rationality in them makes me think about lot of suppressed thoughts and 'life concepts' that I take for granted - dont staph ranting

I am(/was) somewhat similar person altough i'm always justifying other ppls poor choices. I put myself in their position, understand their inability to see whole picture/consequences of their proceedings and then justify their scummy/immoral behaviour by their lack of conscience. This is obv very fertile ground for being exploited on numerous ways by short-sighted bums. It insults me little bit that they think that they can get away with it / they think I don't get it but what the heck. I usually accept the guilt for being that stupid and try to think about GTO ways for not giving myself chance to be put in that position ever again and move on. Couple of times (lets say 3/14) I did verbal/physicial confrontation and have realisied that turning another cheek makes me feel like a better man than beating the crap out of somebody.

Listen, i like everything about this post cus it remind me myself a lot !

Something u missed and i'd like to know, which book are u talking about? (or did i missed it?)

great great read !

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Something else i'd recommend for the plans that ur making is to watch some of his videos, i find them very interesting and ull never hear them in the mainstream media

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHKaygC0PnQ