Of the books I highly recommend "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" written by Stephen R. Covey.
Not surprisingly, it is said that it is the fifth best-selling book in the world, and I think many things reviewed in it can be related to poker. Let me show you some text from habit one which is called "Be proactive":
Being Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. You can't keep blaming everything on your parents or grandparents. Proactive people recognize that they are "response-able." They don't blame genetics, circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they choose their behavior. Reactive people, on the other hand, are often affected by their physical environment. They find external sources to blame for their behavior. If the weather is good, they feel good. If it isn't, it affects their attitude and performance, and they blame the weather. All of these external forces act as stimuli that we respond to. Between the stimulus and the response is your greatest power--you have the freedom to choose your response.
Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which they have little or no control, proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. The problems, challenges, and opportunities we face fall into two areas--Circle of Concern and Circle of Influence.
Proactive people focus their efforts on their Circle of Influence. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, problems at work. Reactive people focus their efforts in the Circle of Concern--things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather. Gaining an awareness of the areas in which we expend our energies in is a giant step in becoming proactive.
- guess you can see the relations to poker, especially if you're facing a downswing.
On the pokerplaying front, I again found myself in my so called "pokernowhereland" dabbling around in different sng-games; 45man, 18man, 6max and 9man turbos, unable to settle down and concentrating on one single game. At least I'm doing very well in everything - especially in multitables - although samples as usual are small:
Think it ends in a choice between 18man turbo and 9man turbo.
