Priorities and Decisions

Well the new year started and this was going to be the year my poker kicked on to a new level. The aim was to be a solid winner on the 6 seaters and become a much better player, with the obvious bigger profits to come. Well, I started to play on day 1 and I found it hard to pick up the enthusiasm to play. I stepped back and thought to myself "what do I really want to get out of this year" and I came up with a rather simple answer. Health and Happiness. Somewhere along the line, I have gotten all my priorities wrong. I've been spending far too many hours sat on me fat arse, grinding low stakes cash tables, for what amounts $500 a month. My health has suffered through lack of exercise and I have definitely not spent enough time with my friends and family. I haven't even hit a golf ball since November 2006, A game that I used to love so much, playing every opportunity I got, now just seems a dim memory. So I will be dusting the clubs down and hopefully give my good online buddy jat7065 a whipping.

So a decision has been made. My poker schedule is now going to fit around the rest of my life, not my life fitting in around my Poker schedule. I still intend to try and get 20+ hours in a week, but I won't be putting other things off now for fear of missing a fews hours at the tables, getting rakeback and grinding out some bonuses. Its all gonna be about quality rather than quantity.

Interesting enough, my very first session of the year, I played what I thought was my best poker ever, I felt I made the correct decision on everything I did. My stats were more aggressive than ever,making the right moves at the right time. Yet in the space of 20 mins, I got dealt KK twice and both times getting it all in pre finding my oppo with AA. i eventually left the session just over a buy in down and strangely feeling very good about it. I have managed to get away from a result focused mentality and left feeling good about all of my decisions, which in the long term will make me a more profitable player. I have managed to pull the loss back and I am in profit for the year, but not much.

I have started reading "The Poker Mindset" a book I had for christmas. Nearly all of the issues that it brings up that stop you being a truly big winning player I have and I desperately need to expel these thoughts from my head while I am playing. I def think I will need to read the book a couple of times at least to try and put into practice the ideas that they are trying to put across, hopefully I can use my time more wiseley to do this.

So my first priority now has to be my health. This time I am going to try and reprogram the auto pilot in me, so that I will not stray off the right course. Too many times I have just grabbed the steering wheel and headed of in the right direction for a period of time, then soon as I let go of the wheel, the ship just turns right back to where it is comfortable going. With my background in swimming and training full time for two years, I have all the mental tools to do this and all of the knowledge I gained sudying nutrition over the years now needs to be put into place for ME, not just dishing out advice to others.

As part of an incentive to change, I have started taking a weekly photo in just me tracky bottoms, visual stimulation of seeing your body change can act as a real spur. If all goes well, I may even publish it at the end of the year, maybe for all you fans of my facebook "speedo" pic, do another one, this time i'll tuck me bush in !!!

So for the first song of the year, its one about decisions.

Sleeper - What do I do know.