Friday, May 9, 2014

Poker & Life balance (part 4)

The last blog I wrote is already 6 months ago. In the past half year a lot has happened in my life and I have made some changes. I have met a lovely woman who is now my girlfriend. I travelled to countries like Russia, Guatemala and Mexico. Seen beautiful places and met interesting people. Last time I wrote I planned to go to Colombia, and that's where I am now writing this blog. In my previous blog I was searching to find my way in life. This blog will be about how I have found balance in my life in the past year.

I remember when I started playing poker as a professional I was a bit obsessed with it. I grinded many hours and when I wasn't grinding I was studying poker or at least thinking about it. I neglected many aspects in my life, like the relationship I was in, friends, family, health and probably more. I was making money doing something that I loved to do. So during that time I thought I found happiness in poker and I thought it would be enough. It was enough, for a little while..

On the other hand I had periods where I wouldn't play at all. Either sick of the game, or sick of my current life, I would sometimes spend days, weeks, even months not playing poker. During that time I would mostly travel and enjoy the (financial) freedom this lifestyle offers. Once I would be in that state of mind, it would extremely difficult to get my ass back to the digital tables. The tables where I have to sit at to make some cash.

These two “phases” are the complete opposit of eachother. I have spend the last year of my life finding a balance for poker and my life. To explain how i tried to find life balance and how I achieved it I would have to seperate it in two catagegories; Internal & External.

Internal:
  • Mind: Challenge yourself intellectually VS. Give your mind time to rest
  • Health: Eating healthy food, exersize VS. Rest and treat yourself with snacks
  • Heart: Give love VS. Recieve love
External:
  • Poker/work: Set goals and try to achieve them VS. Realise my fortunate situation and enjoy it
  • Fun: Find time to do the things I want VS. Doing everything I want immediatly!
  • Social: Seeing friends & family VS. Spend some time on my own

So how does this work in my life right now?
Internal:
  • Mind: With poker I constantly challenge my mind to calculate on the spot and make accurate decisions. I try to keep devoloping at other area's, by reading books, watching documentaries or trying to learn something new. Right now I'm studying Spanish. I also have enough time to give my mind rest by watching TV shows or just chill. I also meditate on a regular basis, which is great to give your mind the rest it needs.
  • Health: I eat healthy every day, I exersize regulary. In the evenings I mostly relax. Obviously I treat myself to a snack on regular basis. Damn I miss the Dutch junkfood!
  • Heart: I am fortunate enough to give & recieve love from my girlfriend, friends & family
External:
  • As for poker I have a fairly balanced life right now. I put in enough hours to grind and i have study time, although this varies per week. I have set longterm and shortterm goals and I am working towards them. I also explore the world and the various things it has to offer. I am not solely doing one or the other, but I think I have found the right combination between poker and enjoying the freedom it gives me. So this is a combination of the extranal factors Poker & fun.
  • When I am in The Netherlands I make sure I see my friends & family. I make regular trips to Holland to make sure I see them often enough, even though it is still not as much as I would like it to be. When I am not in the country of Cheese and Tullips I spend a lot of time on my own. Ofcourse I meet travellers and some months of the year I share a home with roommates. I still get my fair share of “me time”. This is how I try to balance the social aspect of the external category.

So at the moment I have a fairly balanced life. How did I achieve this?
Last year I travelled for 3 months through south-east Asia by myself. I took the time to reflect on my life and my state of mind. I felt like I was neglecting certain aspects of my life and I tried to figure out how I can give those area's more focus and attention. I tried to be as honest as possible to myself (this is hard, because your mind is always biased) and tried to figure out how i could spend more time and energy on the neglected area's, without neglecting area's I was currently happy with. This took some months of trial and error, but right now I feel like I have a well balanced life. I have spend countless of hours thinking about positive things in my life, and how I could get as many positive impulses in a day as possible. And ofcourse I tried to think about what was negative in my life, and got rid of those things. I can only speak for myself with this statement; “poker is a source of a lot of negative energy”. If you do it for a living it is a very stressfull job. Probably in the same range as stockbrokers at wallstreet. It is a very lonely job, since I am staring at my screen all day. It does not give me any satisfaction at all. I found ways to balance this by focussing on the positive things it provides me with like freedom and money. If you spend your money in the right places, you can get a ton of possitive impulses from it. At the moment I am satisfied with internal & external aspects of my life. For the first time in my life I am looking forward to the future.

I have not been unhappy since I became a poker pro, but I have never been as happy and at peace as I am now. For years I have lived “in the moment” and not give much care or think much about the future, but I guess we all mature at some age. It just took me a little while longer than most. I am 28 now and I just started making solid plans for my future, with a realistic timetable in which I want to achieve certain goals. I used to have a picture in my head of what my future would look like, and having a timetable to achieve that between 5 or 20 years. I narrowed it down to making plans for the next 2-5 years. I don't live on a day to day shedual anymore, but I make plans for 2-3 months and make sure I achieve my set goals in that window of time.

I think it's important to balance all different aspects of the internal & external categories to feel fullfilled and happy. You can focus on one or two aspects more for a period of time if you feel that is very important to you. But in the course of life it's important not to neglect any part of these points I have discussed above. Most grinders will say it's important to have a balanced poker game, I find it more important to have a balanced life.


Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others. – Buddha

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