Tag Archives: better life

Changing Your Life to Really Live

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John sees his life as a struggle. One day after the next John feels the weight of the world on his shoulders. Going to work every day at a job he does not like. Getting laid off or fired every other year does not help. Wondering daily John never knows how he is going to pay his bills next month. John’s marriage is constantly in jeopardy, almost always on the rocks. He talks about getting divorced and starting over. Then he talks about wife and his three kids.

Carol sees her life as one of always coming in second. She was born a female in what she sees as a man’s world. She never considers herself pretty, and says she had few friends during her school years. Carol works as a waitress in a local coffee shop. She has two kids and wants to better herself, but Carol says she can’t find a way to take care of her kids, earn a living, and go to school too.

Frank worries about his health. Poor health seems to be the norm in his family. Frank says most of his family has health problems ranging from minor acid reflux to the very serious cancers. Then Frank said he had an uncle die from drinking, and aunt die from a vein disease. Frank eats a lot of fast food, drinks a little too much now and then, and sleeps a little less than he should. In Franks eyes, he is going to die young anyway, so what does it matter how he lives.

Looking inVictor was born without much hope in his life. His mother had him when she was fifteen. His Dad may be alive – somewhere, or maybe dead. He does not remember ever meeting his Dad. Victor had trouble in school because he started school not speaking english and it was hard to keep up. Some kids made fun of him. One day Victor said he knew that he wanted a better life than his friends and neighbors on his street have. Living a life of selling drugs, violence, and shooting is not a life to have as far as Victor is concerned.

Even though these people and their lives are on different life paths, they seem to be locked into living the life they have right now. These folks feel this is their lot in life, each one wants something better, but lacks that little something to go out and get it, and has put changing their into the ‘only a dream’ category.

Life can be described as a challenge, struggle, experience, useless, or any of a thousand labels. These labels describe what we think our life is is, not what it may really be. There is a silly home poker game usually played when drinking. Each player puts money in the pot and is dealt one card face down. The card is then lifted and held to each players forehead without the card owner seeing their card.

A round or two of betting follows where the bets are made going by the card each player sees on other players foreheads. Whoever has the highest card against their forehead after the betting wins the money. The game is funny to watch, and may be funny to play too depending on how much you enjoy gambling.

Each of us plays a life based form of this funny poker game. We go through our life with a sign we do not see telling others what we have decided our life is. We have each created our own life and we can change our lives at will. Changing our life sign takes will power and endurance mixed with determination and creativity. Sometime it is not easy to change because we do not know where to start, but if we keep trying to change we will change and usually for the better.

Most people live life in with their sign on their forehead to show to the world. They either do not know or forgot the words on their sign can be changed any moment. If you are going through life with a sign having words you are not happy with, get out a can of spray paint, some lettering, and put words on the sign that describe the life you think you want to have. Once you know what you do not want, getting to what you do want becomes easier. Don’t settle for what your life is if you want something different for your life.

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Play poker to effectively improve your life skills

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Everyone should learn to play poker. Playing poker teaches life skills. Playing poker gives a player immediate feedback for important life areas such as decision making, focus, and life management. On a lower level poker can teach anyone basic logic and math skills.

I have found and other poker players have also confirmed that the game of poker has changed or improved major areas of the rest of their lives too. What you learn at the poker table, or in some cases are forced to unlearn carries over into other parts of life that seem to be unrelated.

Decision making and poker go hand in hand. When you play poker, you have to make constant decisions about your hand. A poker hand is a good hand for one round of play, and the next time you are dealt the same hand you throw it away and are glad you did. During the play of the hand, other players actions cause you to evaluate your hand and go through the decision making process again. After some time the decision making and constant evaluation of your next action becomes second nature.

As this process is ongoing, decision making and constant hand evaluation carries over to personal life. One day you realize you are making life decisions based on different criteria than in the past. You find you are using a new toolset, different criteria, and thinking about the consequence of action or non action before you make it.

For a good poker player focus becomes an important poker playing skill. A good player will focus on the game in general and the other players in particular. Just as in life, everyone at the table goes through mood changes which changes their decision making, and focus. A player with good focus picks up on these subtle changes and turns them into an advantage. Over time focus spills over into personal life. You start noticing situations that may be important that before poker you never payed attention to. Your work life will become more interesting and satisfying as you are more attuned to opportunity and challenge which used pass by unnoticed.

Playing poker is also great for life management skills. Poker provides immediate feedback on many areas of every day life. Playing poker teaches money management by default. Play every hand, and within minutes you will find yourself out of money and leaving the game. Play too few hands, and you still lose your money, only slower. Play the hands you should play and play them correctly, and as time goes by you realize you have extra money.

Where I think poker really makes valuable life changes in life management is in anger management. At a poker table emotions are something every returning poker player quickly learns to manage. One learns quickly that letting your temper take control of your chips, leaves you angry and broke. The feedback is immediate and apparent when you play angry poker.

Being too emotional also receives immediate feedback. After winning a pot or two in quick succession many new players forget that it was a turn of events that made them successful and not superior poker skills. When players forget this they often turn a good win into a devastating loss. Often an inexperienced player starts playing on emotion, loses all their chips, and digs into their wallet or purse for more money with the idea of recouping their losses.

Recouping losses that resulted from emotional play leads to more loss, and eventually they run out of money, and emotionally crash and burn. Some players realize a day or too later what happened, others never do. Those that realize what happened to them start working on their emotional play. Changing emotional play at the poker table also changes life management skills from making emotion based decisions.

For a few people, poker has negative connotations. For many players, poker has improved their lives in ways they never would have had the opportunity to have exposed to so quickly and clearly. Where else can one immediately see the results of incorrect decision making, lack of focus, and life management skills and not derail their whole life?

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Desire a full content life? Here is a secret

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I have been hearing and reading a lot about the book, ‘The Secret’ in the last few months. I can not say I have read this book yet. I feel I do not see a need to read this book or watch the movie. There is no secret to ‘The Secret‘, as it has been around in some form or another for as long as we modern humans have been around.

I first saw this principle being used by my mother when she sold products for a home based business as she generated extra income for our household. I first read about this idea many years ago, in a book written by Norman Vincent Peale , “The Power Of Positive Thinking”. I have seen this idea in many different shades during the plethora of books being dumped on the market during the, ‘New Age‘.

I have listened to this principle being hinted at at every marketing scheme and get rich quick program my friend dragged me to. Unfortunately for my friend, he never listed to the part of the pitch where work and giving were mentioned.

That being said, you may be more satisfied with a business oriented book, Napoleon Hill’s book, “Think and Grow Rich“, was published in 1937. You can go into almost any bookstore and they will probably have at least a few copies on the shelf. I know Napoleon Hill had a strong understanding of The Secret. Napoleon Hill writes a number of times that he learned the secret from Andrew Carnegie as a young man, but had to figure it out for himself. He leaves those who read his book to figure out the secret for themselves, even though the knowledge needed is on almost every page.

Why are so many of us struggling to make sense of our lives? Why are we not all benefitting from this or other form of the Law Of Attraction? If we take the time and most importantly the honesty to be able to examine our own individual lives we would realize we are receiving exactly what we are attracting. We would also understand why we have what we have in our lives. For most of us, we are getting out of our lives exactly what we are putting in.

Life mimics life, and most of us want something good out of our lives. For the most part we need other people to give those things to us. That is the tricky part, is finding people who will give us what we want. If I do not give anything of myself, I can not expect anything of value to be given to me. If I have a need I want filled usually I have to do something. It is no hush hush secret about how to have the things in your life that are most important to you.

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