Artiekee

Recently the biggest challenge for me is clarity. I've finished the LP course a couple of weeks ago (still need to read a bunch of books though), and I find it hard to create a solid structure in my daily life. Most of my life there has been some form of structure in my activities. You got to school, get homework and projects and you know what to do. With poker I scheduled where I wanted to travel and when I wanted to play and study. This gave me some structure, some clarity. With this new path though, there is much less clarity. I dont have a very concrete plan yet, and this makes it hard to decide what to do during the day. And this results in a lack of motivation, procrastination and just not being super productive. Also I became a bit lazy with some habits like yoga and meditation. So I've created a list of 30-day goals, and if I dont complete those goals, I need to give €1000 to my friend. This way I'm sure I'll complete all my goals. The goals are: (30 days / 3x skip maximum allowed) Wim Hof Technique (Breathing + Cold Shower) 30 Minute Meditation (Rupert Spira) 15 Minute Sleep Meditation 20 minute Visualisation (5M Affirmation / 5M contemplation / 10M visualisation)(0x skip allowed) 10/15 minute morning meditation 1 more goal: Yoga 30 minutes+ (minimum 18x in 30 days) __ @Rowanrecommended me to get the book Unique Ability 2.0 to help with identifying the Zone of Genius. It should arrive somehwere in the upcoming week. I like the idea in @Average Investor's topic to add a couple of items you are a grateful for, so I'll add that here aswell Focus Points: Creating more structure in daily and weekly activities Finishing framework for mental coaching Going over all the notes from the LP course I'm grateful for: Making the 30-day goals Starting to feel more energized again Good weather! Starting with a new book (7 habits of highly effective people) I'll probably start posting more frequently from now on. I feel like it helps to actually write down some stuff and post it.

@Monkey_in_suit Oke goodluck with your journey! I didn't really had the plan to stop playing poker a year ago. But somewhere last year there suddenly was a very strong urge to pursue something else. Maybe it was not really suddenly since I was watching Leo for 3/4/5 hours a day, meditating 1h+ a day and watching and reading spritiual talks and books from Rupert Spira and Eckhart Tolle. And that translated into the realisation that it's time to start a new adventure. So if you dive deeper in certain material there will possibly be a moment where you are very certain it's time for the next step. If you'd like some help / coaching on the mental game part, just give me a PM. I'm very interested in this area.

hey ??, Yeah this is a issue for many players, the results determines their happiness too much. Yeah it can be hard to find something you’d like to do. The LP is a great tool to help you get on the right track. And I wouldn’t worry too much about letting go of skills you aquired over the years. A lot of those skills are still valuable in other area’s of your life, and poker brought you to this point in your life. And about the fear of not earning as much with something else as you do with poker; this is a nice topic to contemplate on. Why do you want money? For food and shelter sure, but what else? It eventually all boils down to trying to become happier right? Currently you’re not 100% satisfied with your life, thats why you invest time in alternative options. Maybe you are much happier if you do something truly meaningful while only earning 1/3rd of what you currently earn. most poker players have a very strong attachment to money, but maybe its not the source of happiness. also, there is a big chance you’ll earn much more then you currently do. Probably not at first, or even the first 5/10 years, but if you keep investing in yourself and your ideas it will eventually pay out handsomely. When I decided to quit, the idea was to play about 1.5 hour every day online, with the idea of keeping my financial situation stable while I transit to other ideas. This way there is less pressure (although, maybe a bit of pressure is good). And this 1.5hour a day won’t really affect my mood or energy since the game I play online (shortstack plo) is relatively easy to play. My advice would be to slowly start spending more time on your own personal development and life purpose, and less time on poker. You don’t have to abondon poker all in once, you can just slowly transit.

I want to focus more on my breathing and my body throughout the day. To do so I'm gonna let an alarm snooze all day every 9 minutes, to remind me to focus on my breathing. Has anyone done something simular to this? Any tips/tricks/insights?

Oke that sounds like a nice guidance. That's exactly why you want to create a framework and find structure in your approach. You want to have clarity in your mind, and now its just a chaotic mess of possibilities, without a clear plan. This lack of clarity also makes you procrastinate much faster by the way. If you know what you can do, you will do it much faster. Yeah that sounds about right. But when you do, keep in mind the question: What can i study today that will earn me the greatest value over the long run? Analysing and seeing your mistakes is only the first part, the next step is to improve on those areas. Have you read the book Talent is Overrated from Geoff Colvin? In this book he discusses the concept of deliberate practice. If you haven't read it yet I highly recommend to read it right away and really apply this idea of deliberate practice. Do you play better during the LSD trip or after?

Hey, just read through all your posts, just wanted to say that it's inspiring :). You seem to work hard to improve yourself and your goals. Are you still doing Toast Masters? Can you maybe give me a little description on how it works? I'm considering joining them, seems like a very valuable training.

First I would start with approaching the study part much more serious. What is your current playing/study ratio? If you are really serious about getting better it's not weird to have this ratio close to 1:1. For the study itself, you want to create structure. You want to create sort of a framework, a blueprint of your game Break the game down in all the fundamentals, all the required skills Rate yourself on each skill Value the importance of each skill (some skills are required all the time and generate high value, some skills are rarely used and dont generate high value) So this process might take some time, but will defintely be worth it. This gives you the bigger picture of your game. What you want to do with this framework is ask yourself the question: What can i study today that will earn me the greatest value over the long run? Study is an investment of your time to become better, so you want to spend your time as effective as possible. To answer this question you want to compare the importance of each skill with your current level of that skill. And with this information decide what will generate the highest amount of value for you on the time spend on this skill. And keep in mind that most learning processes have a logarithmic growth, meaning that for example it will take you 10 hours to bring a skill from 0% to 80%, but it will take 50 hours to bring it from 80% to 90%, and to get it from 90% to 95% will cost you a couple of hundred hours. So this process is the first step. Let me know if you want me to go on haha

Oke, let me go back to poker for a bit, since most mechanisms are the same with gaming. So with poker I've seen a lot of people struggle with the motivation part, including myself. It was supposed to be a fun game at all times, and I hear people complain it feels like a grind, like work, just playing hour after hour. And yes, this is sometimes gonna be the case. But then I'd like to ask the question; why are you playing? What is your drive, your motivation? Often the answer will be money. So then the next question, why do you want money? what do you want to do with it? Because this is eventually their motivation, money itself is worth nothing, its about what you can do with it. And then they realise what poker brings them; freedom, opportunities, control. Often they lose track on the bigger picture, the reason why they decided to take this path. They focus too much on the short term results, and when the results are not going their way, they get de-motivated. So for them it's really important to have a clear vision and keep this vision in mind. So for your situation; Why are you playing? what is your motivation? how much do you care about short term results? So you want to become challenger, why? You also say that your subgoal is to hit masters rank first and then you start to write content for your site, why are you waiting with the writing? If you want to write content, start writing it right away. You don't have to post it yet. Then about getting better at the game. The way most poker players study the game is like this: they watch a couple hours of videos on training sites in a passive way. And that's just all they do. And this way of studying is simply not productive at all. I'm not sure how you are currently trying to improve your game, but if you're interested I can share some productive ways to study, just let me know.

You seem to be in the flow Exciting times ahead!

Hey Raptor, You seem to be struggling a bit recently with some emotions around gaming. Anxiety, anger, tilt, feeling lost. This made me wonder, is there any high quality material for serious gamers to improve their mental game? I used to play poker professionally, and it always surprised me how little effort poker players put into their mental game. Poker is a game where a lot of emotions are in play, and many players are very poor at dealing with them. With gamers the same is going on. Gamers spend a lot of time playing and studying the game, but dont spend a lot of time in improving their mental game. And since emotions can affect the quality of play drastically (and also the joy of playing), it seems like spending time in the mental game is by far the best investment of time for many gamers. Is this the area you want to focus more on in the future? with your writing? Im really interested in these topics, and gaming and poker have a lot of similarities, and before poker I was a dedicated gamer. So maybe I can offer some insights to help you improve on some areas of your competitive gaming.

@Dutch guy many people fall asleep yeah haha, no need to worry about that. good suggestion about the yoga nidra, ill give it a try soon.

Last week the local floating place here opened again, so it's time to float! The way I like to describe floating to new people is "meditation on steroids". I used to go twice a week for 60 or 90 minutes, and now it's re-opened I will continu doing so. Most times I'd like to know beforehand what I will do during the float session. A list of potential things I do during floating: Meditation Bodyscan Letting Go Observer Aware of Awareness Visualisation Vision/Goals Negative Value Release Overcoming Fears Affirmations contemplation I usually pick 2 different things, so for example today I did about 30 minutes negative value release and after that 30 minute Letting Go. So I really like to use floating as a tool to go deeper in myself. Sometimes I feel very relaxed after floating, but what is more often the case is that I feel kind of tense afterwards, mostly in my forehead. The feeling is not really unpleasant, it's more like an exhausting feeling like after focusing deeply on some study material for a couple of hours. Does anyone else have this same experience? I personally see it as a good sign, like Im digging deeper in myself and exposing some negativity in me, which creates this tense feeling for a while. But I'm curious what you guys think. Also I'd like to know what you guys do during floating. Since Im doing this twice a week I'd like to explore new possibilities. Do you experience any big benefits (short term and long term)?

Hey Rowan, The ZOG still keeps you busy haha. Same here As you know from the LP course, the ZOG is ideally phrased in just a couple of words. How does this resonate with you: Eminate inspiring, playful and creative energy. May I ask, do you know your Ideal Medium? When I was (still am) working on finding my ZOG, I didnt focus so much on the ideal medium. But after I identified my ideal medium, I also made progress in finding my ZOG.

Have you heard of the ayurverdic clock? And is that the way you try to arrange your schedule?

Settings goals at the beginning of the week helps me to keep track of the stuff I want to do. But I notice that it's also important for me to make daily schedules. Without a proper framework on how my day is gonna look like, there is a lot of wandering on what to do next. And my wandering mind tends to prioritise short-term fulfillment over longterm fulfillment. But I feel some resistance in making daily schedules. On the one hand i really like to have a very clear hour by hour schedule on what to do, so I dont have to think about it and just do it. On the other it makes me feel a little constricted, giving up some of my freedom. So I'm looking for a way to combine having a schedule and clarity, while still having some freedom. So perhaps not scheduling hour by hour, but in 4 blocks of 4 hour a day, in which i do certain tasks. For example: block 1 is between 07:00 - 11:00, tasks: affirmations, yoga, breakfast, shower, 1h learning mental coaching, 20m deep breathing. And I can decide the order of those tasks myself. If someone has some suggestion here please let me know! To learn more about mental coaching, I wrote down all the possible concepts and ideas I can study on this topic. I divided those items in 8 categories and made a framework out of it. So far I've come up with 47 items to study, this may change when new items pop-up or some items are so related that they can be merged. This framework gives me a general idea on what to do. My next step is to rate the importance of each item, so I know what items I want to study first. Schedule for the week remains identical as last week: Daily: 1.5h reading books 1h learning chinese 10m affirmations / 10m visualisation 30m meditation 15m morning yoga 30m afternoon yoga 3h learning about mental coaching 1.5h online poker cold shower weekly: 1x 30m negative value release visualisation 2x 60m floating 2x 60m writing about my past 2x 20m deep breathing wake up time from 08:00 to 07:00 at end of the week (didn't manage to do this last week)

Nice to read it's going well :). I'm also aiming to wake up at 06:00, really curious how this will effect my energy level / mood etc.

Last week I spend a lot of time thinking and researching about the idea of Games + Mindfulness. I told a friend about this idea of combining mindfulness with gaming. Later that week he had a chat with another friend (poker player) and the topic of mental coaching came up. He semi-jokingly suggested to hire me as mental-coach. When I heard this, it got me excited right away. In the last 10 years I've experienced the whole spectrum of emotions that poker brings; frustration, fear, euphoria, uncertainty, excitement, anger, disbelief, shame, pride. Knowing how to deal with those emotions is essential for success as poker player. In the Life Purpose there is a concept called "Making Small Bets" (very fitting with poker ), which suggests to start working on little projects, so you can explore how much you like it before you go all-in () on this idea. And since this idea of mental coaching got me excited right away, it seems like a good idea to take this on as a project. If my friend eventually wants to have mental coaching from me or not doesn't really matter. It's a topic I want to dive in deeper anyway, with interesting topics such as mindfulness, personal development and psychology. Some goals for this week: Daily: 1.5h reading books 1h learning chinese 10m affirmations / 10m visualisation 30m meditation 15m morning yoga 30m afternoon yoga 3h learning about mental coaching 1.5h online poker cold shower weekly: 1x 30m negative value release visualisation 2x 60m floating 2x 60m writing about my past 2x 20m deep breathing wake up time from 08:00 to 07:00 at end of the week

Since I was a child I liked games, playing with marbles all the time, pokemon cards, gameboy. When I was in elementary school I joined a chess club for a year. I played the card game Magic The Gathering for years, even going to the gameshop every sunday to play and trade with others. Many thousands of hours playing videogames like Wc3, Dota, and WoW. Only after discovering poker I eventually stopped playing videogames, and most of my time the last 8 year was centered around poker. So basically my whole live up till this point was about games. And the last 5 year or so I started to develop a growing interest in mindfulness, and for some reason this idea didnt come earlier to me, but it only makes sense to combine those 2 interests somehow: Games + Mindfulness I don't know yet how and what I exactly want to do with it. There are many possibilities to explore. But the main idea is to raise awareness of the benefits of mindfulness among gamers (videogames, poker, chess, etc.) and help them integrate this into their lives.

I'm always curious about vision boards, want to share it? It seems like making a plan, goals, a daily routine, and writing it all out gives you the clarity, inner peace and motivation you've been looking for. Good to hear! Do you have the intention to create a new schedule at the beginning of every new week/3months/year, to keep this clarity?

Hey Codrina, how is it going?

Ahh you have done that one? That makes me even more curious about your thoughts on the mindvalley course

Hey, Has anyone here done the superbrain Quest from MindValley? Im looking for independent opinions, but most articles and reviews have referral links in them so that doesnt seem to be a neutral source of information. If someone here has done the program, can you please give me a little review? much appreciated

Great! let me know what you think of it. I decided to first do a course called Learning How To Learn on coursera, that one is totally free so won't hurt to give it a go.

Still in the process of finding my Zone of Genius. I've done two strength assessments (Gallup and Kolbe), they are a bit more difficult to understand than the original strength assessment I did, so it requires some more time to get value out of them. Other things I'm currently working on; -In order to get a better understanding of my strengths, weaknessess, values and interests, I've started to write down everything I can remember from the last 10 years (18-28). I'm especially trying to focus on my emotions and motivations of that time to get a better understanding of what fears I had and what negative values motivated me. Diving deeper in the indentified negative values, and trying to release them with a visualization meditation. (about once a week) Learning Chinese - Started about two months ago. The classes moved to online about a month ago due to COVID-19. I spend about an hour a day on homework and there is a 2-hour class each week. Learning how to learn - I always felt like I have a terrible memory and I'm learning kinda slow. I've never learned how to learn, so I decided to take a course on learning how to learn to improve my learning and memory. (about an hour a day) I have a buch of books at home about Life Purpose, Personal Development and Spirituality. I really like reading them and get a lot of motivation, inspiration and useful information out of them. But for some reason there is some blockage to start with reading, especially after just finishing a book. Preferably I read about 2 hours a day, but I've probably only spend about 5 hours on reading in the last two weeks. To solve this procrastination I'll set a goal for myself Goal - Before May 1st: read atleast 12 hours. (1.5h/day) Current books; about to finish The Nature of Consciousness by Rupert Spira and just started with So Good They Can't Ignore you from Cal Newport

Thanks for sharing!