Coming back!
I first of all want to thank you guys for respecting me for taking some time off streaming and the continued support in the meantime.It is so cool to see how Discord for example grows and becomes more active, with high quality comments, blogs, strategy discussions.. it really is special.
So the past week I spent some time on taking a step back, reassess, recharge, enjoy family, friends and the nice weather. Thinking about how I can improve myself, what I can do to be more valuable, but also to not go down the same path. In my previous blog posts I already talked about prioritization and the time blocking that comes with that. About taking more quality breaks to maintain the machine, the reinforcement of frustrations and doubt because of streaming. As you can see it is a lot of recognizing what has been going wrong and what I can do to try to solve those things.
Currently I am reading the book "7 habits of highly effective people". There it got pointed out to me again, that it is important to not look for quick fixes but to go down to the roots of the problems and put in the work. In the book it makes the differentiation between character and personality and it gave a nice analogy with it:
If you are trying to get to a certain destination in Chicago, but by accident someone gave you the map of Detroit instead. Which of course is really ineffective. You can try to work on your behavior and double your speed, but it only gets you to the wrong place faster. You can work on your attitude and think more positively. You still don't get to the right place, but perhaps you wouldn't care. Your attitude would be positive and you would be happy wherever you are. The point is, you would still be lost. The fundamental problem has nothing to do with your behavior or your attitude, it has to do with the wrong map. If you do have the right map of Chicago, then those things do start to matter.
So far it has been a great read, currently at the first habit which is to be more proactive. I have noticed that I am still really reactive, I am not always in full control. The way I stream and play should not be dependent on how the chat or the grind is. Of course it is going to effect it, but we should not focus on it as it is out of our control. What we can control is our response to those things that are out of our control. "It is very often not what happens to us, but our response to what happens to us that hurts us." Which guess what.. are the downwards spirals I have been getting into, caused by my very own response. So I have to shift my focus with more things, from things that are out of my control to things that I can control. A nice analogy is: "Chasing after the poisonous snake that bites us will only drive the poison through our entire system. It is far better to take the measures immediately to get the poison out." I think it is fairly easy to apply that story to the stream for example, cannot stop the snakes from showing up and biting. But I can take the right measures rather than chasing the snakes.
I also should try to go back to the beginners mindset and enjoy the game and not worrying too much about whether I made the right play or not. It is normal to get expectations when you have put time and energy in something, but as they say: Happiness is reality minus expectations. What was so great of when you started playing poker, is that you couldn't really do wrong. You opened a terrible hand or made a terrible bluff and you shrugged it off thinking it was unlucky. I at least did. Currently it is just so easy for me to get caught up in always wanting to make the right decisions and because of that limiting myself and being afraid to get out of my comfortzone. This is not a plea of: stop trying to improve, just be more able to detach from the outcomes. There is no right and wrong, just room for improvement.
I have had multiple of those mindset shifts or reminders, but like I always say... it all starts with recognizing, next step is executing on it. So other than just making those mindset shifts, which for sure should help getting the right perspectives and keeping my sanity, there are other measures that need to be taken. I currently feel like the stream is too repetitive, it is too dependent on how the grind goes. The focus of the stream has been grinding, while becoming the number one poker player has never been my goal. So I will be going back to 6 tabling, full focus on creating quality content, engagement with chat, commentary and being the best version of myself. I will also be planning other forms of content for the stream, but that really is work in progress so don't want to promise anything.
Anyway, it is time for me to go to bed and work on that sleep schedule. I really want to block off my streaming time and try to stream 9am till 5pm Monday to Saturday, just currently not having the sleep schedule to do so, but it is the plan to get there! Some days it may be a bit later, but that's what I have in mind at least. I should then have enough time in the night to create content, study, do work for RYE and play/stream some Fortnite. Think scheduling till 10pm is going to be the best so I have enough time to wind down and get a good night of sleep to be energized the next day. Looking forward to the stream tomorrow, work is in progress, I will keep you up to date!