A new start

A new start,

Monday, May 26th 2008

It has been 4 months since I embarked on my internship as an exercise physiologist specialised in Adapted Physical Activity. On Monday, February 4, 2008, I arrived in Rochester, NY, with two suit cases of clothing, a gym bag of miscellaneous items, a French passport as well as Mauritian passport which was going to provide me everything I need for the entire duration of my stay in my new unknown home before having a 6 month lease signed without even looking at the apartment.

First of all, I want you to know a little about my background before we got straight to the heart of the thing. Bottom line was I had to go through an internship which would be worth as more than half of my final examination. This would be ending up a five years master's degree in the field of "Sport, Performance and quality of life" in France.

After being quite enthusiastic about my job for the first couple of month, I quickly became disillusioned.

In late April, I had put myself unconsciously into a position where it would be hard for me to be dedicated a hundred percent to my job. The mistake I made was trying to force myself in adapting too hard by becoming obsessed with the new culture up to the point where the smallest problem becomes so overwhelming that It was really hard to cope with.

And then, I progressively cut myself off from taking part into cultural habits, language and so of my host country for reasons beyond my control

At some point, the burning desire for me to pursue new goals in my life had literally started to take over me, and I knew the only person who has the power to stop me from achieving my goal was myself.

From this moment on, it was time to get my life a turn around. After all, this is America, I thought, and in this country you can do whatever you want, right?

Indeed, Isn't there any other better place on earth than America where you can decide to make a big swing in your life forever. The timing couldn't be more perfect as I decided to break the news to the staff telling them it was time for me to take June off by pretending I needed to spend time to travel.

I didn't need anyone else permission to decide whether the decision to do something different in my life was right or wrong. It goes without saying that, if I failed there would be anybody else to put the blame on but myself, I knew the responsibility would inevitably fall into me.

As a matter of fact, turning a truly challenging human experience into a success wasn't the hardest part of my aim.

I believe that the most challenging aspect would rather be to carry through with my initial plan within a few weeks. The real concern I had was to figure out how much time I needed to achieve a particular level of performance.

To achieve these goals, I had to start with setting performance goals, and to do so , I'd better have a very accurate idea on how to organize a series of actions that will help me to step toward specified outcomes as :

Getting qualified for the WSOP Main event and ultimately taking down the title.

However, there is a very little chance for me to go through with my plan unless I have a good idea about how to focus and concentrate my time, energy, and resources on a single objective over the course of the next few weeks.

An other difficulty, I will have to face up throughout my solo voyage, is that goals in poker are very hard to define since search alone is insufficient to master the game, meaning there isn't anything to do about the cards you are randomly dealt neither the other player's cards, all these parameters are beyond your control.

Then, I should keep in mind that achieving a high level of performance in poker is not only a matter of making correct decision but can also depend on many others factors that can strongly modify the outcomes. There is nothing more frustrating and dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons beyond your control.

In poker, reasons could include plain bad luck.

The point is that in poker you're betting on an uncertain outcome in every hand that you enter.

Needless to say that I know I will need to focus my efforts working on my game rather than sitting back and hopping to be lucky.

So now let's get to the heart of the thing and see how to set up specific and difficult goals that will lead me to better task performance and make myself a genuine success.

There is below my setting goal schedule:

Goal setting:

Ø S.M.A.R.T.

- Specific : Means the goal should be precise and clear toward the target

- Measurable: Being able to measure progress over the course of time is the biggest motivator I can think of, set up milestone

- Attainable : Get qualified for participating at the WSOP Main Event 2008.

- Relevant: Prepare myself to a new career as a professional poker player.

- Time-bound : 28th June 2008, Freeroll WOSP Main Event.

Note on goal setting:

On a scale from 1 to 10, assess the following parameters through goal setting:

Goal difficulty: Level of difficulty to achieve the goal : 9

Goal commitment is the extent to which I am interested to reach the goal: 9

Goal specificity: 10

Goal acceptance is the extent to which I adopt the goal as my own: ?

List 5 positive and negative outcomes that will occur when you achieve your number one goal:

POSITIVE NEGATIVE

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-

There is below my setting goal schedule purely related on Poker:

q One tournament/day (Multitable, short handed, sit'n'go)

- Multitable

- Sit'n'go

- Freeroll

q Analysing two key hands, either loosing or winning hands = Feedback

q 2 books/week : Harrington on hold'em : Tournament strategies, Barry Greenstein, task: Reading carefully, taking notes.

q Post one entry on my blog/day : ____ lines describing my emotional state, feedback on my challenge, how do I perceive the difficulty of the task so far, remind of why you're putting in all this effort to keep you motivated.

Besides poker, what kind of physical and mental preparation I need to win the battle:

q One hour aerobic programme : Bicycle, running out, SETTING GOALS = gO FurtheR, FastEr ! Define a circuit training

q Half an hour resistance training : lifting weight, push-ups, pull-ups, triceps.

q 15 minutes stretching

q Define specific milestone/daily challenge to work on improving discipline and patience :

Ø Breed discipline:

First cigarette at 6.p.m.

Wake up at 5.a.m. each morning

List all the possible sources of distraction that could threaten your efforts and get rid of it:

- Internet

- Listening music

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q Keep your blood sugar between 1.20 - 1.40

q Follow a good diet

q One hour mental prepareness