During my over a yearlong sales “career” there was one thing that was by far the most important – positive attitude. In sales you face a lot of setbacks in the form of rejection. Sometimes even 96% sales attempts don’t go well because people don’t need what you sell, can’t afford it, don’t trust you or you plain used the wrong approach or you asked one wrong question. But even with 4% conversion rate you make a good living.
Now why is positive attitude important in a profession where you deal with a lot of setbacks?
Well in sales, you’d simply make more sales as nobody want to talk to a depressed dude with a frown on his face. But what was the real importance of attitude and what made the difference between the short comers and the people that stayed on and were successful was the effect of the true inner positive attitude – perseverance.
Because when you stay positive and you believe in what you are doing and you know it will lead you to the goals that you set for yourself you just don’t give up, no matter how many setbacks face you keep working hard, keep working on getting better and what’s more – you are enjoying the process itself.
Now I always imagined my attitude as an inner canister that gets depleted with every setback, every negative thing that happens, and gets replenished when positive things happen. Using immense computational power of the most modern computers I have analysed this thought and can bring you the results of my scientific approach in the form of the following diagrams: Stage one: your cup is full
Remember last night? It was your first threesome. One of them was Asian. You just found out that you win the 25k AI shootout on stars. Your parents called, they overnight studied mathematics of poker and only now realize you have the most noble, not at all gambling like profession in the world and they are proud of you choosing dropping out of college.
Now your attitude is way there, you are confident, positive yet strangely in control. You went to a club and tried the most awesomest chat up line “feel my shirt –can you feel that? Yeah baby. Boyfriend material” while flashing your manly hair fluffy 150kg body. 10 girls told you to fuckoff yet you didn’t flinch. Stage two half emptyfull
Well you woke up alone, had an okay breakfast, missed the bus but no big deal.
You go through your day as usual, nothing creative comes out of you your work just to do what you got to do and it feels fine. But then...
Stage 3
You skipped breakfast and decide to eat entire KFC bucket to “catch up”. Open your cashier – 2k is missing. Your mum called – did you get a normal job yet so we didn’t waste our money on your education? But wait it gets worse. You open the ROFL thread as every morning – all reposts. What’s more, you just found out that your revolver doesn’t fit her holster
Our attitude is really down now, any setback just sends you into frenzy or depression, everything seems forced you feel beat and don’t want to do anything. Stage 4
Well it was too much, so many negatives that you depleted your reserves and you became this :
And we all know how that ends.
The fuck is your point man
Well why do I tell you this? I tell you that because poker, very much like sales, is one of the professions that actively drain your attitude. Human brain is dumb not logical, and no matter what you do the pain from losses will always be higher than the gain from wins: + Show Spoiler +
In other words, you are facing setbacks hundreds of time every day in your profession that deplete your attitude, your cup is being drained and as you all know if something external adds to that your results directly suffer. There are many processes that have influence on your performance but one thing setbacks have an effect on are the levels of neurotransmitters in your brain and you can fall into the vicious circle of setbacks causing lowering positive attitude and the processes in the body behind it and worse attitude causing setbacks as you lose control more often, give up faster and stop believing in what you are doing. You can just look at poker forums and you shall find all the negativity you need.
What to do
Well I’m not your doctor? This is my random midnight ramble of an idea that just popped into my mind from a career I failed in because I lost my attitude. But I was always a super depressed person and now I can act normally, and even be one of the best people to be around when I manage to get my attitude levels full. Things that work for me are generally those that are believed to raise the levels of neurotransmitters like serotonin in the brain – cardio vascular exercise, healthy carbs throughout the day, a social contact, but also accepting who I am and where I am, not being friends with negative people and instead of watching news reading a good book, or constructive audio. The most difficult part is not knowing what to do – but doing it regularly, as with depleted attitude comes depleted self-control and people that always have their attitudes levels high that do things right keep moving forward keep refilling their attitude cup and those that come near depletion often struggle to summon enough energy to keep it at present levels and not allowing it drop and balance every new bad beat, every new setback in life with something positive that will help keep the balance.
So the question I have for you is – how do you regain positive attitude?
How do you keep going when things are rough?
What tips do you have that people that are down from the latest downswing/regulation lockdown/too tight vagina discovery could use?
man my database is fucked takes like 2 minutes to loads can't play zoom with it, had to purge hands.
Last look at my graph after I came back and started grinding from$50 (this month not included-keeping that to track time)
mostly micros.
I hope purge+vacuum analyze will help, if not does re-installing HEM1 help at all? Or do I have to reinstall that database thing too (postgres)? It cost me a lot of money when I had the wrong stats for a couple minutes at normal tables but at zoom it's just a disaster.
man my database is fucked takes like 2 minutes to loads can't play zoom with it, had to purge hands.
Last look at my graph after I came back and started grinding from$50 (this month not included-keeping that to track time) http://i.imgur.com/lRERTEQ.png
Since I was ill and spent time moving and played hardly any poker first half of the month I set myself a challenge of 100hrs in 2weeks.
Managed only 71hours.
I'm far off the mark now, and played a tilted session today, royally fucked after sauna last night, so I'm throwing in the towel and won't be getting my reward - best floorball goalkeeper shoes in the world
I kept a spreadsheet where I record amount of hours, exercise etc. summary:
- huge reserves in time played. There were 4 days where I put in just 1-2 hours.
- too many distractions, watch shows/browse net a lot especially when tired.
- managed good volumes FRI+SAT at 7+hr/day average both weeks, low Sundays.
- managed around 30 hours of excercise or training.
- had 4 beers after gym+sauna without eating last Tuesday, family meal+just overeating on Sunday and it totally threw me off physically both of them.
- watched a lot of shows/movies in freetime instead of naps/studying/spending time with friends
November aims
- Reward for time played - 40hr/week ticker. first 2 weeks - Ima get them shoes when I manage to hit the goal 2x per week.
- limit on shows/dota watching/facebook etc - 20hr/week ticker. punishment: 3x400m laps on Monday morning for each extra hour.
- 2 beer cap per night, 4 per week cap*. punishment: 30 push ups/mountain climbers etc for each extra beer on Monday morning.
*note: one beer in weekly sauna doesn't count:D
won't set more goals, this seems more than enough to get me started in November.
I have a floorball game on Saturday, a league grudge match between two neighboring cities. Since I've been excercising and overloading my system some 12/14 past days I'v been total shit in goals but hopefully with some rest I can reap the fruits of my hard work on Saturday hopefully. Winnings league matches not my priority now, getting fit is but exercising to the max 12/14 days just left me shaky in goals, so I'll just do standard 3x2hrfloorball training, had swim yesterday and will do light gym in Friday before resuming hardcore regime.
woke up 6:20
7:00 Gym
protein shake
bought loads of vegetables 2kg of lean pork/chicken frozen spinach and 1kg plain Muesli with nuts to last me whole weekend.
no distractions, just family lunch on Sunday. Might go for a run tomorrow morning
lets get this grind started, 30hrs is the goal this weekend pow pow pow. if I manage 55hrs in the next 8days I get to buy these puppeys for $160 (would finish my 100hr/14days thingy)
I moved finally - almost 3 days without Internet boys and girls :O
Here are some pictures.
Just to recap
- $185 rent including all bills
- under 10 minutes everywhere (shops, public transport, family, sports hall where I train)
- All stuff like microwave, washing mashine, shower in the flat already
- share flat with 2ppl - professionals work in factories nearby, hardly in the flat during the day
- own storage space downstairs for bike, suitcases
- balcony's mine, not shared
- blinds in windows, asked landlord to remove drapes for a more office like feel
th ebedding is from grandma/totally shit so I'll replace it soon
Got 8th in the monthly stars free roll for $1200.
Busted 77 v 88 with 3.5bb against 7bb LP shove
This is kinda lol since I am moving, spent money on deposit and ran super bad this month my BR was super low at around $600 and was looking at temp jobs today- jesus clearly wants me to gamble.
EDIT: Shouldn't rly whine tho, it's my fault since I played just30k hands and acted like I was on holiday. Well I was on holiday but it wasn't good anyway
Starting in October I am sharing a flat with 2 hardworking 30+y olds and all my life will be poker and floorball baby :D
Wow how'd I miss this?
I've been very results oriented recently not feeling like I'm moving forward, always got tilted by bad beats and took plays v players so personally. And I was bored/frustrated.
Since my long break I forgot one totally fundamental part of my thought process. When I was at my best I was influenced by "where the buffalo roam" series and my thought process was very much like that. Basically I'd think about the spot and consider what I want to do here with all my range ignoring my holding (in that series they have cards covered completely) and when I decided the cards just fell into that range, and I could move on when I made the decision
I guess that's totally standard for you guys but I somehow forgot or got lazier and lazier until I stopped doing that completely and just played my hands, putting more thought process on the villain his range, dynamic and how to play it with these two cards.
=>CONSIDER WHAT RANGE YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH, not the hand. Hand just falls into that range.
The time flies by when I think like this. No
time to think about beating bastards, when I go all in I made my decision and it's nor good or bad when I lose. When I do this, when the spot comes but I have different cards, I have already thought about it before which takes a lot of pressure of my brain
The session is done, and I can be 10 byins down but I wouldn't know nor care, the time flies just like ages ago before that thing called normal life with jobs, girlfriends and career trouble took the joy out of the boyish grind that I loved so much during the heyday of my poker career.
I know this sounds like bullshit to you guys and it probably is but today poker was more fun than it has been since I first interrupted my career, because of a "career"
On a serious note, I finally got a flat in Liberec, Czech Republic where I returned to after 8 years in Scotland, it will be a share. Place i'm going for:
- 18m2 room with carpet big window, cupboard, table bed.
- own storage space for bike etc. outside the flat.
- $185 final cost/mo (internet, electricity, water, city tax etc all already included)
- private landlord, cool guy retired doesn't live there - something breaks he will come next day.
- I can take guests in no problem, no rules apart from no smoking and not antagonizing neighbors too much
- share flat with 2 more ppl. I get to agree them first since I will be first moving in. So I can say no to total weirdos
- new bathroom added in a couple months
- I only need to give 1 month notice if I want to leave
-3 mins by bike to sports hall where I train. (with outdoors lap, ice hockey team plays highest league there, there's bowling etc.) 3 walk mins to big shop , few pubs around, a couple minutes to public transport. 15 minute walk to where my grandma lives who cooks for me sometimes
I must say I am relieved, I've seen quite a few flats that I could rent for myself and in the city you can easily get $190 rent+ around $100 bills 40-43m2 flats but they are hollow as in you have to put carpets in, fridge, even have to install lights as there are just sockets and frankly right now I can't be arsed with that stuff.
And all shares I went to were not with professional landlords like the one's flat I'm taking and that are standard in the UK but dickheads that already live there, own it and just rent a room and it was like fucking XFactor going for an audition and the pricks have their rules sme were weird and don't even call you and overall were super unprofessional. This is a proper landlord with experience that treats it like a business.
However if I decide to stay long term I might take one of the hollow flats - I mean $300 with bills for your own flat with big room and separate hall, kitchen and bathroom is dirt cheap too but I need to know I'll stay there a couple years so it's worth equipping painting carpeting etc. They are cheap because it's not through agency - I can either get my own flat through my cousing who works at a building association or from a local businessman directly who owns around 1,400 flats in the city.
Seems like a good option if ever get serious with a local honey
So I took advice of some of you and as my job ended, my roomate moved out of the flat in the UK I packed my bags, entire setup apart from speakers and flew to Cxech Republic.
44KG of bags on plane, my desktop and 2 24'' screens in them along with all my things - needless to say it ws an adventure. Regrettably I have to say that en route somehow the letter to the left of x on my keyboard got lost.
I parked myself in my sister's bungalow as she is away for 18 days and after that will stay in upstair flat where in my Grandma's house in my hometown. Hello expense free life, well virtually.
And what will I do for money? Well gamble of course
I have been playing quite a bit, but when you crush NL16-NL25 but then have to withdraw half your BR just to pay rent it gets a bit discouraging, knowing you pretty much can't move up safely just sucks.
But now I have a schedule, already arranged for floorball training next thursday and all my and most my family is here so I have no doubt about this being the very best conditions to give it one more shot (besides, working in Cxech Republic sucks, if I do fail I will with poker move out again but shht to my family xD)
I already have a group of microstakes players where I post regularly, if there is interest of making one for LP only let me know - it would be only known folk mostly from LP.Net, not one with randoms.
SChedule
This Weekend im stting myself up, just playing free for all but plan is to have 1 day off for family stuff, one day pure studying/sweats and play only if I really want and on playing days have a target of 7 hours+ more if I feel like it.
MOrning is always breakfast and excercise, and I will try not to eat much after 6 and keep a schedule around +-1hr constant every day
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