Looking forward to traveling the entire
month of January. I plan on traveling to NYC, Miami, D/FW, and Costa
Rica. I might sneek in a week of skiing at Lake Tahoe in as well.
Life's too short to work all the time. I like to stay
moving...visiting friends and family all along the way. Grab a half
a dozen books and travel around with my girlfriend,...eating out at
tasty restaurants and watching movies late into the night.
I've been going to a holistic doctor
for nutrition, herbs, and weekly massages. If you feel overly tired,
it's possible your diet and exercise routine (or lack thereof) needs
an adjustment. I exercise seven days a week (twice a day 3 days per
week)!!! It doesn't take much to get started...put on some tennis
shoes and start walking around the block.
Ari and I had around 10 players living
with us during the Venetian Deep Stack tournaments. Literally, more
than half of them got sick...I know that my diet, supplements, and
exercise has helped keep me from getting sick. Especially if you
have aspirations of playing live poker (WSOP for example), you'll
need to increase your immune system to feel healthy and energized on
a consistent basis. Whether intensively grinding live or
online...being in the best possible physical shape is a must.
It's been a bit of a joke the names
that have come in and out of Ari's house as of late. I had the
privelege to have a(nother) former #1 ranked pocketfiver sit down and
watch me play tournaments for about an hour last week...we have a
WSOP bracelet winner living with us...and the one of the world's top
PLO cash game players has been gracing us with his presence as of
late. I respect their privacy and would rather not name names, but
some of our guests have been the creme-de-la-creme of the poker world
and I couldn't be more pleased to be surrounded by such talent on a
constant basis.
Again, I'd like to quote from the
preface of Robert Greene's The 33 Strategies of War:
Depend on your
own arms.
But true strategy
is psychological – a matter of INTELLIGENCE, not material force.
Everything in life can be taken away from you and generally will be
at some point. Your wealth vanishes, the latest gadgetry suddenly
becomes passe', your allies desert you. But if your mind is ARMED
with the art of war, there is no power that can take that away. In
the middle of a crisis, your mind will find its way to the right
solution. Having superior strategies at your fingertips will give
your maneuvers irresistible force. As Sun-tzu says, “Being
UNCONQUERABLE lies with YOURSELF.”
Elevate yourself
above the battlefield. In war,
strategy is the art of commanding the entire military operation.
Tactics, on the other hand, is the skill of forming up the army for
battle itself and dealing with the immediate needs of the
battlefield. Most of us in life are tacticians, not strategists. We
become so enmeshed in the conflicts we face that we can think only of
how to get what we want in the battle we are currently facing. To
think strategically is difficult and unnatural. You may imagine you
are being strategic, but in all likelihood you are merely being
tactical. To have the POWER that only STRATEGY can bring, you must
be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your
long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the
reactive mode that so many battles in LIFE lock you into. Keeping
your overall goals in mind, it becomes much easier to decide when to
fight and when to walk away. That makes the tactical decisions of
daily life much simpler and more rational. Tactical people are heavy
and stuck in the ground; strategists are light on their feet and can
see far and wide.
Keep working hard, keep your spirits up, be kind and appreciative to
those around you and make the most of everyday.