I think we don’t achieve enough goals in life. We don’t push ourselves and achieve enough successes in my opinion. And I think the reason for this is because we have many, many other conflicting goals and we don’t make the right decisions to enable our most defining goals to shine through.

Pick someone at the top of their game, say a sportsman who is considered the best in the world in their field and they will have most certainly made sacrifices along the way. They will have made good decisions to enable defining who they are to shine through, and no doubt some of these decisions will have been very hard. The people that remain in their life will have been chosen, their support and understanding no doubt will have played a part in this. But there will have been many others shut out, ignored, sacrificed. If you want to be the best in the world you will have to hurt people.

It comes down to understanding that you have a very complex tree of goals and then learning to make decisions within that tree which will give the right attention to the right goals at the right time. Understanding that some goals need to be sacrificed to make way for more important goals, and some of those sacrificed goals are the people in our lives.

I can appreciate it’s not always clear what is for the best. The sportsman who is the best in the world, their tree of goals could be quite simple to follow, no doubt there would be a huge defining goal and almost ignore all else. Their decision making would be clear. For the rest of us though there could be many goals on a level but a lack of direction and a lack of good decision making will lead to us not achieving what we want from life. In my opinion goal setting is vital to achieving success and happiness.

‘Do it like your life depends on it… and you know what? It does! It’s YOUR life!’
- Bill Perkins (on Joe Ingram’s Poker Life Podcast)

I especially like the idea of becoming someone who adds value to others. It’s a confident, positive outlook which I find inspiring…

Set your goals.
Choose your circles.
Maintain your integrity.

Define who you are.

As I got older I would incorporate that way of thinking into gym sessions and things like that but I guess much less and to be honest it has faded away where I have lost it somewhat nowadays. I’d like to bring it back in a healthy way.

The concept of a Parallel Universe interests me; it exists simply because we have choice. Our decisions can take us on different paths to different places, both physically and mentally, with altogether different results in life and happiness. The trick is to do your best to choose your highest happiness.

So consider a Parallel Universe where there is another you living life the same as you except from now on it is a competition of who can live it better. Who can achieve the most success and achieve the highest happiness.

What strategies will you have for your life and what decisions will you make now? There is another you over there who wants this and is making great decisions. Which one of you will take this down? Step up and compete.

Always do your best, every day.

Here’s the irony, the most common way to achieve money is by giving up your time. For the purpose of buying back time? Or as they would say, to have enough to retire. Weird.

When all is stripped back all we have is time, and we are all equal, we all have the same time to begin with, i.e. we all have 7 days a week etc. Then when we are an adult we are forced to sell some (most) of it. We are forced to; we have to give some away for the purpose of money. To be able to live. You could say it is the law to go to school so we give time away as far back as this but this is something we should choose to do anyway so we’ll skip that, besides, using time to gain intelligence is no waste of time. So anyway, as already mentioned it is possible to buy this time back, albeit very expensive, say £2m minimum to achieve freedom, probably more like £4m to be honest?

Take someone like Ronaldo (this doesn’t have to be a celebrity) who is worth a fortune. He uses his time (playing football) the same as when he used to sell it, although he no longer sells his time. He is free. It’s just choice now. It just so happens that how he spends his time continues to earn him more money. The money aside, it’s the freedom bit that must be a good feeling. I guess the question is would he still use his time this way if he wasn’t paid? I’m assuming he would (although a ridiculous notion) but if the answer is no then he is missing the point. Something to bear in mind for ourselves.

Freedom isn’t about not doing anything with your time; it’s about owning all of your own time and never selling it to anyone ever again.

Here’s an interesting (yet debatable!) idea, we look down on the seedy parts of the world, take prostitution for example. We say they sell their bodies. Yet you sell your time. Time we have defined earlier as the most valuable commodity, so what’s worse? Leave aside that the prostitute also sells their time I guess. In fact you could say that if the goal is to achieve enough money to buy back the time you constantly sell then it should be commendable for her to sacrifice her body as opposed to (let’s not judge here) receiving less money using her waitress skills instead. As long as the money is spent on time in the end. I’m not saying this analogy with the prostitute is my opinion but it’s interesting to note the value of time vs other things we apparently value.

Obviously that paragraph is deliberately extreme but to highlight that people are so preoccupied that they miss what’s it’s all for. I guess the trouble is, most people sell their time and will never see it again. They will never be able to afford to buy it back and are resigned to this fact. In fact they haven’t even thought about it. So they end up ‘playing a new game’, they choose to just work a job they can bear and set random new goals within their game and just live, well not live but just exist. Because the real goal is unachievable. And that’s what I mean by being preoccupied.

They say money doesn’t buy you happiness. This is so false. It buys freedom which completely raises the ceiling on your happiness index. You stop being preoccupied. You can now achieve a level of happiness you couldn’t achieve before. People don’t like to hear this because it’s fear, it’s fear of being inferior I guess. With freedom you are leaping above them. Money is not the root of all evil, it is the root of, not all, but a higher happiness. But it’s about intelligence, even with money it’s lack of intelligence that doesn’t buy you happiness.

I guess the real goal is to achieve happiness, or the most happiness I think is better. But this is achieved by acquiring money and buying freedom which brings us back to our first goal.

I think in summary we never stop and see that we sell our time for money for the purpose of buying time. Life is baffling really. The goal for me is to buy freedom and never sell it ever again.

I’ll keep you posted.

The end.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, I mean, I usually do but my dad is currently recovering from surgery he had to remove his cancerous prostate and it certainly ups your thinking game. His surgery has thankfully proved a success; the cancer has gone from an aggressive nine to a completely removed zero. Fantastic news where that is concerned, especially considering the alternative outcomes, but there was also a sucker punch when the surgeon asked to see me to explain that because of what my dad went through my chances of going through the same have gone up to 80%. Lovely.

Stop wasting time!

Ok, so I’d like to start writing an article every month on here, they will be random thought provoking topics and hopefully I will enjoy getting some things written down. I want to learn about the things I want and who I want to be with the idea that somewhere along the way that clarity will lead to a higher happiness and fulfilment.

Find inspiration. Get motivated. Be your passion.

Start living!

#runlikekiddo

Ok, this is going to seem pretty deep, but this is the way I think of things, so here goes…

The first thing I’m going to do is clarify key points with regard to something being morally right or wrong. It’s merely just my way of thinking and is really just ever so simplistically associating words, but this will explain itself later:

• Team ‘Morally Right’ = Good
  Good = God
  God’s greatest gift = Human Life

• Team ‘Morally Wrong’ = Evil
  Evil = The Devil
  The greatest trick the devil ever pulled = convincing the world he didn’t exist… hold on, I’m getting side-tracked here…
  The root of all evil = Money

So what I’m getting at here is that ‘Good’s’ flagship representative (whatever you call it) is ‘Human Life’ and ‘Evil’s’ is ‘Money’.

So… disregarding or abandoning ‘Human Life’ is a one-up for ‘Evil’ and is spitting in the face of God so-to-speak. And disregarding or abandoning ‘Money’ is a one-up for ‘Good’ and is spitting in the face of The Devil (so-to-speak).

Ok, so this was kinda the thing I wanted to clarify moving forward…

The next thing is to (ignorantly) compare a Poker Player to a General in the military. Now what we are going to say here is that they are both Poker Players and playing ‘The Game’. What is important at this stage is to realise I’m not referring to a degen gambler (lust for money, well, in fact, lust for losing but that’s another topic) and a man passionately serving his country. We’re talking about elite decision making, based on the information we have, for the purpose of the end (it never ends) purpose. Get it?

Two General’s competing against each other in war could well be described as one of the purest Heads-Up confrontations.

A Poker Player’s weapons are his chips, the means to take an aggressive action and put pressure on an opponent, the means for his weapons to grow, the means to make his opponents’ weapons vulnerable etc. A military General’s chips are his army, in, for the purpose of this exercise, identical fashion. Can we see where this is going yet?

A Poker Player, I mean a true Poker Player, plays with a TOTAL DISREGARD for his chips, his money, and so spits in the face of The Devil and sides with ‘Good’. **

[** If we up-the-ante here and include ’freewill’ into the argument, along the same lines of when (for example) someone knows a crime is being committed and choses to do nothing it is often said they are ‘just as bad as the criminals’ (not sure I’m with them here but still), we could say that a Poker Player sides with ‘Good’ MORE SO than someone who chooses not to play (The Game, in this ‘Morally Right’ spot-thing).]

A military General, again I mean a true Poker Player (this is the important bit), plays with a TOTAL DISREGARD for his chips, his army, human life, and so spits in the face of God and sides with ‘Evil’.

Here’s the thing… I’m suggesting the General is ‘Morally Wrong’ and the Poker Player is ‘Morally Right’. Society would rank them worlds apart in the opposite direction, the General would clearly have a noble profession and the Poker Player is an outcast. And I know no-one else shares my view, and I’m not saying it is my view, it’s just a good question raised for anyone who understands The Game.

Hand 1 (TdJh)

http://bit.ly/SdydbJ
Date: 30/04/2009
Game: $5-$10NLHE, 6-Max
Pot Size: $300.00
Profit: $147

I’ve included this one as it was against Paul Wasicka, a WSOP Main Event Runner-Up and Heads-Up Champion. It’s a simple pot blind-on-blind whereby Paul Wasicka raises the flop with a gutshot, I choose not to believe, he chooses not to continue and I take it down at showdown with a pair of tens.

Hand 2 (3s3c)

http://bit.ly/SdymMk
Date: 20/11/2009
Game: $1-$2NLHE, HU Deep
Pot Size: $758.20
Profit: $379

This one I had to include as it was against Paul Merson, yes the former Arsenal footballer and now on the Sky Sports News football panel. It was in a heads-up room, we played for some time and chatted in the chat box which was cool. I 3-bet 33, flopped a set and never slowed down. He called me down the whole way having rivered Aces-up.

Hand 3 (QdTc)

http://bit.ly/SdysUk
Date: 20/11/2009
Game: $1-$2NLHE, 6-Max Deep-Ante
Pot Size: $815.40
Profit: $405

Now this is how fish used to be! Crazy pre-flop raise sizes and big stone-cold bluffs. Starting the hand with 200bb’s+ effective stacks, I call a 10.5x raise pre-flop blind-on-blind IP, flop second pair and call down a huge triple-barrel-stone-cold-jack-high-bluff for stacks on the river. That must have felt good!

Hand 4 (AcKh)

http://bit.ly/SdyBHc
[For some reason the replayer is not good quality, sorry!]
Date: 20/11/2009
Game: $1-$2NLHE, 6-Max Deep-Ante
Pot Size: $901.80
Profit: $450

What is interesting here is that this is against the same villain in the same game a couple of orbits later. So now starting the hand with 400bb’s+ effective stacks I 3-bet another bloated pre-flop raise with AKo IP and get called. I check back the (missed) flop and pick up a draw on the turn which he then leads. I call which I believe I would’ve thought I was good there. He then overbet-bluffs the river but I now have a Kigh-high flush and snap it off. A healthy $855 profit from this villain in eight minutes! The way fish were…

Hand 5 (KsKh)

http://bit.ly/SdyYSf
Date: 02/04/2010
Game: $1-$2NLHE, 6-Max Deep-Ante
Pot Size (Main): $606.90
Pot Size (Side): $356.80
Profit: $582

The last one I’ll show you is a relatively simple 3-way all-in considering the holdings, but against two other known regs and in a deep-ante game, so a big pot which I take down! Who am I to critisise other regs but as a side note looking at the hand again now the AKo should probably get away with a 5-bet in front of him knowing it is now for stacks, then the QQ faces a 6-bet all-in and me behind which couldn’t have felt fantastic. I’m not even sure I would’ve particularly lapped up the action but wasn’t folding and the board ran good!

So, to November 6th 2012!!! Thank you PokerStars!!!

Will be fun reminiscing… coming next week, watch this space.