I'm finding that I've switched my poker goals from love of the game to love of money. Ever since then, I've only been able to motivate myself via negative-self talk and it's really wreaking havoc on every area of my life. I'm now understanding how important life balance is. Maslow's hierarchy of needs is directly related to finding balance in my life. I ask myself what am I missing the most and where am I trying to overcompensate in other areas. I've been missing out on a deep connection with family members for so long, that my television interests are trying to supplement them. My favorite shows as of lately have been Frasier, Yes Dear, and Everybody Loves Raymond. All shows that deal with families that don't have it together, but spend lots of time with eachother and love eachother despite what they say. I've realized I've never really made big connections with them. There's a few major problems: the distance (all my immideate family lives about 3 hours away), the lack of history (we never really talk deep before), and the lack of common interests. How can anyone maintain close enough relationships with their family when they seem them once every two months? I'm finding your body is really smart, and the only way to be happy is to communicate with it properly. I'm considering starting a meditation routine and get in touch with my inner self.

I'm also realizing that tilt-free poker comes from being fulfilled in all areas and only using positive self talk as motivation. Negative self-talk: why am I so stupid, I got knocked out of the FTOPS event #10 in 44th place b/c I shoved with Q6o preflop after a raise, is the kind of talk that just affirms you are stupid. It's completely detrimental to your overall happiness to telling yourself you're stupid. You should treat yourself like you would treat a best friend. Any errors you make on the poker table are OKAY and great. Identify them and be happy that you found a place to grow as a poker player. Review them and identify them for what they are. Review them like you'd review a peer. No reason to be harder on yourself than anyone else. Some of these ideas are probably painfully obvious for happy poker players, but I'd be willing to wager there's a lot of poker players that try to get too much of their identity as a great poker player. I'm a lot more than just a poker player, and I need to work on most of other parts of my identity even more. I don't have meaningful relationships with most of my family. I'm starting to think many people don't have close relationships with their family, and they supplement that missing part of their psyche with many false happinesses.

I'm starting to think identity is one of the biggest problems in the world today. People have a hard time identifying who they truly are. Identity is stopping as individual identity and has become the sum of 1000 pieces of consumerism. Look at how people generally identify themselves. We're a facebook society, and we're identified as the sum of our pop culture interests, with a slight amount of collective beliefs (politics and religion). The problem is each group has been identified and everyone desperately tries to fit into the group. The funny thing is other people tell each group what to think.