I haven't played poker for a few months now. Probably the last time I played was when I was in Las Vegas in October. It might have been sometime before that or just after that trip when I last played poker online. The new update on Lock Poker took away all the fish, and I just don't have the time to play and to study like I used to, especially since I have my part-time news app gig as well as my clients to attend to.
At this point, I'm strongly considering withdrawing what I have left of my deposit and putting poker on the shelf. I certainly don't have the time to study and to improve my game, let alone play the game and assess what I did right or wrong. I have other priorities that require my attention. As much as I like poker, and how badly poker needs strong female players, I don't know if it's all that important to me to excel at poker anymore.
Winning a Few Titles Would Be Great But...
My heart is not in poker like it used to be, and I think I wanted the success of poker (the money, the fame, the accolades) for the wrong reasons. I made this realization when I watched a Marie Forleo interview with self-help guru Danielle LaPorte. The interview is over 20 minutes, and I understand that LaPorte might come across as a little too hippie for some people, but the basic takeaway I got from this interview was that goal setting was entirely backwards. Goals are set regardless of how we want to feel, so we set goals, fail to reach them, and feel horrible about it. We set goals, change our mind about those goals, and then feel horrible about it. We set goals, but it takes longer than we planned to reach them, so we feel horrible about the time it took to reach that goal. We set goals, exceed them with flying colors, and still feel horrible about it because we feel we should have set a bigger goal. The point is to decide on how we want to feel first, and then set goals that get us there.
This explanation of goal setting blew my mind, and caused me to evaluate the goals I have set for myself and to determine how I want to feel. That's why I think my poker goals were set for the wrong reasons. I think I set them because I thought the rewards would do certain things and would make me feel a certain way. I don't know if those thing would be true if I were to achieve those goals. Also, with our desired feelings (as explained in the interview), these feeling shouldn't be attached to external factors. Feeling a certain way shouldn't rely on someone else's actions or having a specific something. I think my poker goals relied on external factors contributing to my feelings, which is why I don't think I set them for the right reasons or wanted to reach my poker goals for the right reasons.
About Those Desired Feelings
I haven't taken the time to think about my desired feelings, but once I heard about the concept, I identified a few feelings that I didn't want to feel. They were negative feelings that I've been experiencing a lot lately, and I felt that something I could do now is to take actions that remove those negative feelings. For example, I don't like being stressed. That's a negative emotion, so I think about what I can do to remove stress. Usually, this has been accomplished by tackling an unpleasant task first, which helps a great deal in making me feel productive. Once I turn these small actions into habits, then I'll start thinking about my desired feelings and the positive feelings that I want to have. They can't just be the opposites of the negative feelings, like the opposite of stressed is relaxed. I don't know I really want relaxed or relaxation as a desired feeling. But, this is why I'm going to dedicate time to sorting this out on another day.