Mark's Path of Improvement
This is essentially my non-poker op. I feel a bit like my self-worth is attaching itself to poker, and that that's unhealthy both generally and for my poker game (creating an obviously vicious circle). With that in mind, my current plan is to put poker on the back-burner a bit, and for the foreseeable future stay at 10NL and only require that I put in four hours play over the weekend and an hour during the week, otherwise just playing when I feel like it.
So, that's it from the poker standpoint, basically what I want to do over the course of this year is work on three things: Physical fitness, mental fitness and discipline. I feel like putting energy into these three things will help with all aspects of my life (which, of course, includes poker, which is why I'm justifying writing this blog here, along with the fact that I like you people).
I'm not shooting for any goals in any of the three areas, rather I just want to put work into all three. I should make it clear that this operation isn't "get these areas leveled up by the end of the year, then move onto something else" but rather I'm interested in creating habits that will continue indefinitely, hence the op title being a journey- Cliché, I know, but it's too accurate to describe it another way.
I feel that with things like poker there are definite success/failure clauses, so when I have a bad session (whether that means for me running badly or playing badly is largely unimportant) that has a negative effect on my life, which in turn increases the likelihood of poor play in the immediate future, and the cycle continues. This is why for this operation I'm trying to stress that there isn't really a way to fail, all energy that I put towards the three areas will be beneficial, so again the emphasis is on the process rather than the results.
Physical fitness
At the moment I'm in a prop bet ( http://www.flopturnriver.com/pokerfo...op-179111.html ) that requires me to run five days a week, and after this propbet ends I plan on continuing the same schedule, not really with the aim of raising my fitness levels, but just because regular exercise has such a hugely positive effect on everything else. To the same end, I've started going to karate again (I went for two years, ending two years ago) which is a great way to get exercise in.
Mental fitness
My main tool for this will be daily meditation. I began trying meditation three or weeks ago now, and am yet to get it as part of a consistent daily routine, but am from now on going to try and meditate for at least twenty minutes each morning. To help further with this I plan to start reading again, and will be hitting up second hand bookstores for good books on the subject, so if anybody has any recommendations, hit me up. I've recently read Zen in the Art of Archery, as recommended by spoon and Tommy Angelo, and enjoyed it.
Discipline
This could probably just as accurately be headed up as "work ethic" or "will power". Essentially I just want to build up my ability to get things done, rather than procrastinating, being too lazy, etc. etc. The simple truth is that when I overcome the temptation to not do something, I feel better for it than the pleasurable feeling gained from not having to do anything. So it's a no-brainer that building up my ability to overcome said temptation is a good idea. How I'm planning on working on this is more or less by practice, namely by doing the things from the two areas above. Motivating myself to run, to go to karate, to meditate, to attend class, these are all things which should help me build this up. I'm also planning on reading some books on this subject (after spoon's recommendation of Zen in Archery was good, I decided to check out another book he suggested, "The 50th Law" and am currently reading that) to help out. This is the area of the three that I feel has the most success/failure vibe to it, ie. if I only manage to run three times a week instead of five, that could easily be seen as a failure. So I'm going to try and not be annoyed with myself when I don't get things done, but rather just be aware that each time I do get things done, this is helping me out. There's no point in getting annoyed that I missed a day, but not being annoyed with myself for missing a day doesn't change the fact that not missing the next day will still be beneficial to me. Tommy Angelo's views on targets versus goals is more or less what I'm basing this on, for those of you who are familiar.
So, yeah, I guess that's me. I'll probably mock up a sort of daily schedule and post it below. If anybody has any thoughts, criticisms or recommendations, hit me up.
