The Hawaiian House

This may be my first post were I deviate slightly from the main theme of this blog and touch on lessons we can learn from poker that cross over into our life. Just recently I came across an article on the web about a young Portuguese poker phenomenom under the alias GIRAH, apparently this guy was 18 years old and had more or less appeared from knowhere and had quickly progressed up the stakes and was winning at the highest levels and all this in what seemed double quick time.

This totally fascinated me. I did some research on him and found out his real name is Jose Macedo and he started playing poker for fun with play money on Facebook when he was just 16 years old and also admitted he wasn't very successful, in his own word he says he was continually getting "hammered" and now just 2 short years later he is mentioned in the same breath of Durrrr, Jungleman and OMGclayaitken.

Learning that Girah started off getting hammered on FB poker for playchips and saying he had zero natural poker talent intrigued me even further, how could this be? what does it take? what was his primary motivator? how on Earth could such a young man make such rapid progress? eventually I found the answer...

He had a DREAM.... and that dream was to own a house in HAWAII

To quote Jose, "It's a nice house in Maui and I REALLY  want it"

That quote above is the key, that quote reveals the secret of Girah's success and of any person on the planet who wants to achieve massive success. How can an 18 year old boy hold the secret to success in every walk of life? did a mystical guru from antiquity reveal the secrets of the ages? No, quite simply Jose Macedo had a burning desire to to own a home in Hawaii and poker was the vehicle that was going to take him there.

Everybody has dreams, we all want to be, have and do something more, however, how many people are prepared to put in the time, effort and money to achieve their dreams? by gathering info on Macedo one thing really shines through, his WORK ethic, he worked relentlessly for hours on end grinding  poker games and taking copiuos notes, he read book after book after book, he watch training videos created by the players who he respected the most, not only that, he actively sought these guys out and used his creativity to enlist the help of these elite players to further his goals.

Reading the above paragraph doesn't really capture and do Jose's determination and work ethic justice, you have to put yourself in his position, imagine the time and effort the endless hours of playing and studying, pursuing your heroes to extract the required knowledge, ignoring all the general day to day distractions and the merchants of doom, who we all have in our lives, who try to bring us down at every opportunity... wow its a massive undertaking but this young kid did this consistently day in day out.

I am pretty certain that when Jose started his quest as a 16 year old kid he had no idea how he was going to achieve his dream but he just kept taking the next step.

"The HOW doesn't matter, because the WHY will find a way"

Jose's WHY was the house in Hawaii, that was the fuel that drove him forward that enabled him to take massive action and make constant and never ending improvements.

Question:

"Whats your WHY?"
"Whats your house in Hawaii?"

I'm going to take inspiration from Jose Macedo and find my WHY and let that drive me forward and I suggest all who want to improve their lives follow Jose's example too.

Further reading: The Monk who sold his Ferrari by Robin Sharma
                            Mindstore by Jack Black.