Goal Review

Right... time for a goal review. Part of me wants to write this... well pretty much all of me does now, some of me didn't before. Taking a bit more time on it than some of my posts- I've got my goals that I set out at the start of the year in front of me and I'm reviewing it.

Wealth wise, I'm doing alright up to press. Decent offensive play in earning money, and good defensive play in saving it. Have to remember in general to keep pushing my comfort zone, trying new ways to earn and save money is fun!

Sales... I think overall so far this year I have performed fairly well. Saying that, I haven't totally smashed it. Let's be direct- pretty recently I left one of the biggest and best companies in the UK for sales. I could have stayed there longer, but I felt that the sales process wasn't ideal (aka it wasn't really workable for the product I was selling... to be honest selling any kind of product in this way in the UK is very difficult now I believe) but more importantly, I wasn't enjoying it.

I left the company on probably the best terms I've left any company and they said they'd be happy for me to work for them again. I've had quite a few other sales jobs ring me up and offer me interviews (some practically giving me the job) but I'm going to be very choosy on what job I take if I'm going to go into another sales role.

Fact is, since then I've been putting more energy into my goals than I have been before really- putting in the hours in poker, surveys and ecommerce every day. Poker has been going pretty well this year... I'm running much better than last year. Cashed in 7 of the WBCOOP events, cashing in a lot of tournaments, cashed in the recent Sunday Storm. SCOOP is coming up and I have plenty of tickets. At my cash game peak, playing very nicely... have to rememebr just to put in the time at the cash tables, the results will come. Truth is, if these things go well enough that will be enough to support me financially anyway- even if I decide to do something else I'm developing great areas to achieve money 'on the side'.

I'm glad I've got a good group of people who're supporting me. Still want to meet more, and I still want my friends to achieve their goals too.

Thanks for reading, and feel free to get in touch if you think we can help each other reach our goals I'm Mark Howitt on Facebook and @MarkHowitt on Twitter.

Breaking Free of Social Norms

You only have one life.

As I've alluded to before, up until around 3 and a half years ago, I over thought things quite a lot. That's what playing chess, writing fiction, studying philosophy does to you. There would be so many thoughts bouncing around in my brain that I wouldn't TAKE ACTION on many of them. I also subconsciously probably had a mentality that I was alright enough to be 'good' at something but not amazing.

Like most people, I was stuck in my comfort zone. Although to be fair, I did push myself more than most. The principles still apply though, I was letting overthinking and social conditioning hold me back from interesting experiences.

As long as subconsciously you know what you want, and you have the right thinking behind wanting it, you should practically always trust your instincts. The default option is to ALWAYS trust your instincts- you will either be right or wrong, and personally my instincts are right about what I want at least 90% of the time.

Malcolm Gladwell's Blink has a more detailed and analytical explanation of this if that's what you're into. I personally found the book a bit complicated and long (although good overall!) and will maybe come back with an Amazon link to it. Not going to do that now though, want to keep the flow.

When a thought forms in your brain usually it's something which should be just acted on. There is a LOT of social conditioning going on in the UK which people don't realise. A lot of it is termed 'political correctness'- in a nutshell, if you're politically correct you're basically giving into a leftist doctrine. If that's what you want, that's OK for you, but it isn't for me. Quite often going around the UK now, when I feel alright at least, I feel like I'm doing what I want, DESPITE an element of 'Big Brother' watching me. Hi CCTV... yeah I'll just do what I want anyway.

I hope you're enjoying this post... now go take ACTION!