The fear of the past

Thinking about whom I fear the most, it is actually mostly people that already know me for a while.

I am not scared of entering a room full of strangers and telling them I am a professional pokerplayer or I am a lifestyle-coach.
But when I talk to my uncle/my old neighbour/old friends from kindergarden I find myself searching for different things to say.

It somehow feels wrong to tell them I am a pokerplayer. It is not very clear to me if I don't want to tell them what I do because I make more money than they do and have more freedom or because I somehow feel ashamed that I left the conventional life.

It seems to me that people forget that humans change along the way. I am not the way I was when I was 5 years old and so are you. But somehow people remember that you ate too much chocolate when you were 5 years old or you lied a lot or you never used to brush your teeth. Whatever you did 25 or more years ago doesn't matter anymore. But people tend to forget that. They look at you and immediately all their memories from 25 years ago get projected on the "new" you.

So, when I stand infront of an "old" friend, my 5 year old self shows up and I see all the things I did back then and I assume that the person infront of me judges me that way ( which very often is actually true ). Then I feel ashamed, because 25 years ago I lied to him to impress him, when I told him I received that new Lego Star Wars fighter for my birthday, and he knew I was lieing.


Get rid of that!
First of all. If you think this way, it is because you have not seen that person for a long time. Meaning that neither you nor him tried to get in contact with eachother. So you lived your life happily without this person and you most likely will stay happy without him/her. If you both decide to keep in touch you are most likely going to laugh at the things of the past and be impressed at how you both changed over time. and discuss the great things you both learned.

You are great! You have experiences to share that are valueable for the world.
Even if you think you don't. Believe me, you do. Even if it is only that fire burning in you that you need to light up.

Don't be ashamed of who you are, what you do or what you are about to do. Life is there to serve you.
And you are here to serve yourself.

I wish you an awesome day, full of hard work, love and passion.

Pedro Goncalves

What we want to do in life?

Hey everybody,

so for a few days now I've been deeply thinking about what I want to do for the rest of my life.
Poker is going pretty well. I didn't manage to win anything major since February this year, but I guess we have to be happy there is some variance in this game.

But besides that I have been listening to Elon Musks Biographie and I think it becomes very clear how brilliant this man is. He has a clear vision of what he wants to accomplish and then just destroys everything in his way. That book really got me thinking about myself and what I want to acomplish.

Way too often do I sit infront of my PC and grind full weeks and don't really spend any time with other human beings besides my girlfriend. The people I talk to over skype could as well be AI and I wouldn't even notice it. This gives me a false feeling of "not" being alone.



I have, for a long time, been thinking about getting into real estate and investing in stocks.

In 2013 and 2014 we actually generated about 40K in winnings each year in renting holiday apartments in portugal.
But  because we did that for other people we only received our share of 20%. But not bad considering we had never done this before.

So I thought: "man, you have some money saved up and you do know the market a bit now. Let's call our bank and buy 1-2 apartments and make 50K per year."

And again this is the wrong start. Again the money came first.

What I really want is to have more fun, to spend more time with other human beings. I want to provide value to the world. Create Jobs. Make people happy.



So the questions are:

1. what am I really good at?
2. what do I really love doing?
3. what can I imagine myself doing for the rest of my life?


So how do we solve this?

The solution had to be to dig deep and envision myself doing lots of different things. And then ask myself how happy I would feel doing what I envisioned doing.

"That has to be pretty simple and easy to do!" - I thought.
Just lay down, relax and Imagine being a real estate beast.

Not really. It took me hours to really relax and be able to feel everything that would go thru my mind when imagining my (alternative) future.

- Pokerplayer
- Real estate BOSS
- Investor
- broke dude :)
- .......................

In the end, after hours of laying down and thinking I had that random thought of twitching and having a very active youtube channel.

- Interacting with people.

Something I always loved to do. I envisioned sitting infront of my PC and stream for hours infront of 10000 people constantly. Having fun and doing lots of charity stuff.
Getting into trouble with friends and make videos out of it and stream it with you all.

For the first time that day I felt really really happy. I opened my eyes and thought:

"This is what I want to do! I want to have fun and provide you all with a great time and then invest my money into people who provide value in areas I can't spend my time in."

So here I am now. Starting the grind again! Years earlier I started the poker grind and it took me away from germany and brought me to the beautiful beaches of southern Europe and Brazil. It allowed me to meet amazing people from all over the world and learn a lot.

I listened to some interviews and I would like to share something that Steve Jobs said to the CEO of NIKE in a phone call about quality:

" Look, you guys at NIKE produce wonderful products. But you also produce alot of crap. Get rid of your crap and focus on the good stuff."

( it starts at 5:40 Rule no4 )

So now my new journey will be to produce high quality every single second I spend time with other people and have more fun than I could have ever imagined along the way.

If you are interested in helping me out and having fun along the way with me just contact me or leave a comment here.


I wish you all an awesome week. See you soon.

Pedro

You are sick! Actually we are both sick!!!

We are all sick of too much information!!! Every day you search for better ways to live your life, better and more effective ways to spend your time! Let me tell you how the opposite site looks like.
( I wanted to start to teach these things people look for every day )

I started my website: Changethewhy with a good friend and  we had the idea to share all the things that allow us to live wherever we want, learn anything we want, get out of the boring life. Very soon after we started, people started to criticise us and really attack us.

SO:

About 2 months ago I stopped coaching, adding new students, answering any question, and socializing with anyone besides my already existing friends/family and students.

I was so pissed that I couldn't stand anyone else stealing any time of my life!

Then I listened to a Tim Ferriss Podcast, where he got asked how he deals with clients who are acting weird and his answer was genious:

" Everybody says: Customer is King. Bullshit!!! There are alot of stupid people out there. Treat your loyal customers better than yourself!  "


That really caught my attention. Not every customer is King. Only the good customers are King. Why should I allow people to attack me? I am not attacking them. And the point here is not that it is not their right. It actually is, but the point is that I don't want to deal with these people. As long as all I do is to help other people and provide insane value to everybodies life, then I shouldn't spend my time with negativity.

If you want the best of me, then I want the best of you too ( most people confuse "the best" for being money, but it is actually, you not acting like an asshole and respect me and my time like I respect you and your time ).


There is so much information out there that no one knows which lead they should follow.

What should my nutrition look like?
How should I workout?
What to do with my money?
Whom can I trust?
How do I make more money in my Job?
..............


There are soo many important questions and to me it feels like we are getting to a point where there are more answers than questions.

Today I saw a commercial on TV where a guy promoted his "NEW" body-weight workout. " Only 3 times 20 minutes per week. And all you need is your own body weight and within 8 weeks you will have your perfect body."

I mean..., really? Are you kidding me? How is it possible, that people still believe this BS?

No one ever heard about Elliot Hulse, the 5x5 workout routine, Frank Medrano, or anything compareable? These guys don't BS you.

It takes time. And media wants you to believe that it is easy if you follow these 3 steps for 7 days....you will have huge biceps, more money, more success, better sex....

COME ON!!! Wake up!

Anything you want takes time. You can not treat your body like shit, eat unhealthy stuff for 10 years then follow these guys for 1 month and then be discouraged if you don't find the results you want.
Start with these things, but continue!!! Do it over and over and over again!
If you lift weights 1 time per week and stop eating chocolate chips and cookies every day, that's a good start. That is a big improvement and your body over time will show results.

The magic words are : over time!

The main difference between you, me and the most successful people is not that they got insanely lucky.
The main difference is that these guys consistently do the right things. They have habits and follow them every single day. They have values and don't allow anything in their lives to interfere.

So I am going to start something here on my blog. It will help me taking track of what I do, the ideas I have and I hope it will help you find some aspects in your life you could improve too.

The first thing I will do is listen to all Tim Ferriss Podcasts again and take notes and share them with you. You will be able to read all my notes and find all programs, apps, books and many more stuff that I use to be more productive and effective in my life HERE on my blog.

One very special thing that I never did for free is giving away all my ideas. So if you are interested in using my ideas to start a product, a site or anything else just contact me. I will be more than happy to share ideas with you that can potentially create you a new source of income.

Let's start. Life is great, and I hope that my blog will prove you how great it can be.
Please share with me your story.


I wish you all the best.

Pedro

Unique

Over the years of coaching I have had at least 20 people living with me in Germany or Portugal between 1 week and 8 months.
I am still friends with all these people and I am always interested in hearing how their life went. I love to see what life has given them.
However, very often I find myself in a situation where I have given tips to a person and shown a working path, but that person then walks out of my house and starts ignoring it. I wonder why. I don't understand that need of uniqueness.

I want to be my own boss! I want to show the world how big I am!
I can do it on my own! I don't need any help!

I admit here in front of everybody, now and forever:

I, Pedro Goncalves, need help. I search for help, and I accept help forever.
If I have leaks in a certain aspect of my life and I search for help from someone who is better than me or/and has more experience than me, I will do exactly as he taught me. I will ignore my own ideas and habits until I fully understand the way my new teacher taught me and I will change or alter the given advice once it worked for at least 3 months.

It is funny sometimes. People reach out to me for help and when they get the help and see that it works, they start changing the system. Because they don't think it matters much. Altho it is fact that following a working path is the way to go. Why change a working way?

- Because I want to improve -

In Poker very often people want to get coached and start winning immediatly. I am sure if you coached people already you also experienced this phenomenon. But after some time they start loosing money and blame it to variance or " the others play terrible and hit ALWAYS".

The truth is: You changed!!! The game is always the same. The ranges are always the same. And the spots are also: ALWAYS THE SAME!

My search for reasons for why people do this in the end come down to this:

We think we are smarter than we are. We don't want to accept the fact that we suck at lots of things in life. I mean, who wants to admit to his wife that he sucks at managing the money? Who wants that?
Who wants their friends to know that they can't afford to go to the movies? No one wants that! So we lie. We lie to others and to ourselves.

Constantly. We wakeup in the morning feeling like a little piece of shit. We take breakfast alone, and hate it. If we have a person to take breakfast with. Sometimes we lie and do as if we are ok, but most of the times we say shit like: I am not awake yet!

One thing I started to say in 2013 to all my friends, students and family:

We are all idiots! We truly are.  I searched for help so many times before 2013 and I ignored it. ALWAYS. Think about yourself. How often in life did you ask for advice from someone, so that in the end you could ignore it and do what you chose to do before you asked?

In October 2013 I contacted Andrew Brokos and asked for coaching. But before that I looked myself in the eyes infront of the mirror and said:

Shut the fuck up you idiot and listen to what that man has to say. AND follow it.
The moment you start doubting it and want to put your ideas into his concepts you shoot yourself in the head!

From that point on I started winning in Mtts. I cashed constantly. It was the start of a new life.

With help of friends and people who are way smarter than me we launched a new site: www.changethewhy,com where we launched a video series for 52 weeks so we could guide you thru a full year. Be constantly in contact with you. Force you to get better.
We don't accept you to give up.

I already know, that people will start with our program, follow it for 1-2 months, earn more money, read more books, save more money, do all the things that allow you a rich and fullfilled life. But after some time the old habits will kick in. Because we forget about one last and most important thing:
We suck! Not the system. We need to constantly remind ourselves to follow the working system.


In the end all that matters is YOU. I want you to feel good, to live an amazing life. I don't want you to suffer in avoidable situations.

But you decide if you want to do the things you did already and pray for different results or change and get new results that might lead to the ones you actually want.

Your friend,

Pedro Goncalves

Consistency compared to the BIIIIGGG BAAANNGGGG

Hey everybody.

Some of you might know that I am right now producing my first Video Series for changethewhy. In order to provide the best content possible I have been reading hundrets of articles on psychology, nutrition, money management, health, and much much more.
During this research I have found myself answering one big question over and over. I would like to share this question with you here.

If you could get 1 million dollars without any preparation and any work at all or prepare yourself to earn a million dollars in future and learn what it takes to reach that goal along the way, so that when you reach your 1 million dollar goal you keep it. What would I choose? Would I take the headstart? Or the loooooong road to my goal?

Before you answer, let us consider the pro's and con's of both options:

1. Headstart:

Pro:

- I'd have money immediately
- I'd have more money to get good advisors and accountants right from the start
- I'd have more options right from the start overall

Con:

- Easy to fail and spend the money I have, too fast, to profit enough from it
- We have bad habits right now, because if we had better habits we would have achieved higher goals already
- Teaching other people our way to the 1 million dollars is not possible

2. Looong Road to my goal:


Pro:

- I'd be prepared when I reach my goal and it is less likely to loose the money again, since I already am on the success track for a long time.
- I'd gradualy have better and better and stronger habits that assure me to keep and actually make even more money out of the profits I made up to that point
- I'd have amazing habits on my way to my goal, because it takes dedication to reach such a big goal.
- We could teach other people how to get there

Con:

- Takes very long to reach our goals
- I might not live until I achieve my goals, therefore I would have worked for my goal, but never achieve it


I am sure there are more Pro's and Con's but these are the most important ones for me.

So did your answer change now?
Think about this for some time, because this question reflects you as a person.

Do you take instant small profits over big longterm success?

One thing we learned on changethewhy is that steady and guaranteed is always better than fast unnatural results.

Just think about the fat guy in the gym. Most want to loose weight fast.
They workout for one week every day 1 hour and the second week they don't see the gym at all.
They don't see the results so they get discouraged.
Success comes when you do something over and over and over and believe in the Plan you set for yourself.

I would like to share this amazing Video with you because it is still one of the best Videos ever made on this topic.

This man is absolutely amazing, and altho I never spoke to him in person, he spoke to me for years now and we know eachother.

For me, and many smarter and more successful people than me, the answer is: steady and guaranteed is the answer to any question in life!


I wish you an amazing week.

Make sure you don't loose the start of our 52 week Success Program launch on changethewhy.
On our site we also release lots of free videos and Content to help you in your everyday life.

The first podcast will be released on the  2/Feb/2015 so stay tuned.


I wish you all the best.

Life is about..... LOVE, Passion and ENERGY!!!

Hey everyone,

so first of all:


Happy new year. I hope you all survived the New Year's Party with a huuuuuuge headache. haha

I spend my Party in Rome with good friends. We flew from Germany to Rome for 1 day, and wandered around this magnificent city.
Beautiful by day and by night for sure.

The old City center is amazing. These old Romans were just super crazy good in building that area.

Here are some cool Pics we made on our trip:

 Arrived in ROME at Noon 31/12/2014

 PIZZA is mandatory in ROME of course. Was not as good as I hoped, but still pretty awesome!

Yes, it was really really cold down there, but look at this beautiful area and sky.

Every year we spend New year somewhere else, so looking forward to 2015/2016. Where do you think is the best country or City to spend it? I'd love to hear your stories and Party with you.




Since the Start of this Blogpost had nothing to do with the topic ( haha ) let's talk a bit about Energy.

Over the years of coaching People in Poker, Lifestyle, Finance and Personal developement I have invited every single Person to come down to Portugal and spend time with us at the beach and re-gain much needed Energy and enjoy Life with us.
I think I got really lucky over the years. We had People from Poland, Lithuania, USA, Costa Rica, Romania, Germany, Africa, Netherlands and Spain here ( I hope  I didn't forget a country ). Great, amazing people, all of them.
What I realized very often when we talked 3-6 months after they left Portugal is that the energy often got lost after that time, and mine always stays up.
I get asked this question alot: How do you stay so high-energy?

It is very very simple: I just don't stop!!!! I think it was in a very cool song by Linkin Park where they said:
The hardest thing about stopping is starting again!


Especially when I had students here all they needed was to recharge their batteries.

Most People did not come back to Portugal, I assume because they felt bad and thought they let me and my beliefs in them down, which clearly is not the fact, because they honored me with their time and company. So I feel very blessed actually and if they come back I don't think stuff like: Oh look how great I am, these people come back to me. ( What type of person actually thinks like that? )

Today I watched a cool Video that one of my students posted on Skype and I would love to share this video with you too. This man is so much more than just an entrepreneur, he is a huge inspiration for me and many more people all over the world.

One of the key things he mentions on the way to success is "the amazing people you gather".
He mentions several times that a company is a group of people and the quality of the company is determined by the quality of people in it.
So the way to do anything big and amazing, that will increase the value of anyone's life, are the people you surround yourself with.


The next thing is the energy these people provide to eachother.
You could compare it to a Live concert compared to listening to an album at home.
The Live concert has an amazing energy. All these people enjoying their Life and their time for 90 minutes with this great band.

In the end I realized that I actually do have alot of great people in my life.
I am fortunate enough to be able to call them: friends.

Now all I/We need to do is gather our forces and create big things.

Let us all create big things ladies and gentleman. Together it's easier and we can achieve more.

Let's forget our fears and our barriers. Let us all do something big and help as many people as we can along the way.

I believe in ME, I believe in You and I believe in US.

Your,

Pedro Goncalves

Saturday 320$ KO and Huge progress on changethewhy

Hey everyone,

I hope your year started as awesome as mine. Last saturday I was fortunate enough to get second in the saturday 320$ KO for a sexy 23000$ score. It was a rough grind, with amazing opponents.
They never gave me any easy chips from last 4 tables down to Headsup, so I am very proud of myself.

Especially T-Macha I think played amazing till at some point it looked like he tilted or got tired, I think the MTT lasted about 11hours or so.

Well deserved 1st place for Davy...


Outside Poker we are working extremely hard on www.changethewhy.com and we have two awesome announcements for all of you.

1. We will be launching our Podcast on the 1.February.2015. Our first guest will be Daryl Jace, who reached the sunday million finaltable 5 times, won it twice , won the ftops ME for 385000$ and many more.... The interview with him was very interesting and we covered topics like: bad moneymanagement, grinding too much, how lifechanges can affect your goals.

2. www.changethewhy.com will stay completely free even after february's added new features.
All videos will be free and we will start off with a full 5 year financial Program on how to get financially independent as a poker player.

All of this completely free!!!


We are almost finished with a 52 week program for poker players that will allow you to focuss 100% of your time on poker and everything else will be taken care off.


In terms of where my Girl and me are going to stay in 2015;
I am currently talking to a friend in Rosarito/Mexico, and I am very positive that we will go there pretty soon.

The pictures and the weather look amazing there.


I can't wait to see Mexico and Los Angeles.... Yessssss

As always I wish you all the BEST !!!