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Nice job, I've been considering looking into meditation lately, mostly because my life can get stressful at times with the combination of classes/work. Could you give a brief overview of the process of meditating? I don't know much about it. I would be interested in reading the book but I doubt I'll have any time to do so in the near future.

Don't leave LP once you move to SF for your new job.

On November 01 2012 01:37 Luhos wrote: Nice job, I've been considering looking into meditation lately, mostly because my life can get stressful at times with the combination of classes/work. Could you give a brief overview of the process of meditating? I don't know much about it. I would be interested in reading the book but I doubt I'll have any time to do so in the near future.

It's hard for me (as a novice) to really condense it in just a few sentences. Essentially meditation involves sitting with your eyes closed and directing all of your attention and focus on breathing. There are different meditations for different tasks (e.g. there's "compassion meditation" wherein you meditate and try to channel being compassionate to yourself, your loved ones, acquaintances, randoms, etc. which is mostly just so that you get in the habit of being a generally compassionate person to everyone).

It sounds lame but by literally focusing on your own breath (i.e. how an inhale physically fills your lungs, and the feeling of your physical exhalation, etc.), it clears all the other junk in your head that lingers with you. A past-due bill, the hand you played poorly, what your exam results are gonna be, gf problems, blah blah blah. It brings your mind to a present-tense contemplation and you learn to accept the realities of the world - which is the main thing. As in, it's OKAY to be worried about that exam coming up, but it pays far more to be cognizant of the fact that you're worried and if anything, at least diminish the level of worry because that will only serve to bother you when you're trying to study.

Breathing meditation can be a little long, especially if you're dealing with some heavy shit, but if let's say someone on LP just berated the shit out of you, I guarantee if instead of insta-replying with some hateful words, if you just took 10 seconds to close your eyes and breathe and think about being the best person you can be, you'll come back to the post and be a lot more calm. Even if you still need to tell the guy to stfu, at least you don't need to be agitated by it. And that's really the tl;dr of it all, that in our lives things ARE going to affect us (make us angry, sad, regretful, jealous, etc.), but we don't need to actually let those things bother our mind/body, and almost certainly we shouldn't let those things affect our interactions with people, our poker game, our current well-being, etc.

It's really hard for me to give a meditation build order that works if you haven't really been introduced to the concept before, but I generally just sit cross-legged on the floor somewhere, put my hands on my knees, sit up straight, and close my eyes, focus on my breathing like: Inhale, count "1" in my head, exhale, count "2" in my head. Inhale, "3", exhale, "4", and so on. Just focus on your breathing/counting and if other things start to pour into your mind, then go back to being mindful of your breathing/counting only. After some time your mind becomes a lot less hyperactive with all sorts of useless junk and your mind and body become calmer. Generally after a certain point it pays to just start thinking logically about certain things like, sure, you might've played a hand badly and you might think of other lines you can take, but then your mind will also start rationalizing things like "it doesn't matter that you think you played the hand poorly because you already played the hand, it's in the past and you can't change it. Instead of dwelling on it, focus on just playing 100% the next time around"

On November 01 2012 01:49 PuertoRican wrote: Don't leave LP once you move to SF for your new job.

I stuck around LP even after black friday so I'm here for the longhaul buddy

...with an hourly like that, why wouldnt you just play poker. You'd make a hellovalot more. Put in a 35 hour week, 140 hours, 20k month, big bank.

I ran pretty well. The hours counts only my hours where I was dealt hands too, doesn't factor in my commute (~30 min each way), waitlist time (sometimes up to 45 mins). Plus, despite the obvious time/freedom/money advantages, I never enjoyed being a poker pro/playing poker doesn't make me happy. Getting older now to the point where that's actually starting to matter

good decision. just make monies when you have the time to play poker live. then poker becomes beautiful again. once you do it day in day out it really changes you for the worse (statistically speaking). the only reason i would play poker for a living again is if i earned so much consistently that everything else is negligible (100 to 200k a year). i didnt even get to 100k ever so ive always looked for an out after my 1st year, which then resulted in my half-assing my whole poker journey

On November 01 2012 02:07 PanoRaMa wrote: Show nested quote + On November 01 2012 01:49 PuertoRican wrote: Don't leave LP once you move to SF for your new job. I stuck around LP even after black friday so I'm here for the longhaul buddy

GL Dude =]

Good blog. I have started meditating myself although I haven't dove into "full meditation", yet. Check out www.zencast.org. They put a new podcast up every Sunday on meditation. Also check out zenhabits.net, they have weekly articles on how to improve/be a better person.

You might like reading Seneca.

Seems like you really know what life's about. A lot of people with success in poker seem to forget about that, really happy for you. Gl in the future