Mind State, How Emotional Are You?
After a whirlwind of variance, a 6-buyin downswing, and a nock to my confidence I decided to take a few days out and re-read my Zen and the Art of Poker; this time with a highlighter and making notes on the pages.
I really need to/want to improve my game, what I want to tackle at the moment is my emotions as they can obviously have a large affect on my play. I’m quite emotional, also within poker; when I’m running good I'm happy, feeling good. Now, I've read Aok's great tilting post a few times and don't have a problem with classic 'tilting'' as such.
Although if I’m running bad my mind state *is* effected, I may know I’m playing good and it’s just the +ev's falling the wrong way too much in succession - I can *take it* and grind through variance... but only to some degree... My mind state and emotions are affected, I'm not in a neutral mind state by any means - and I think this really affects my game.
A quote that springs to mind from Zen and the Art of Poker: "Take a step back from the game. Try to see both good times and bad with a detached, neutral eye."
Imagine playing without ANY emotions what-so-ever, almost as if the cards are doing the betting and you're watching the event as you would a contest in which you have no vested interest. You just sit there, making correct decisions, playing good poker.
This is a state I want to achieve and will work to get close to and maintain. I think it will really help my game; the less emotions running through me, the clearer the situations will be, with more focus and clarity of thought I can have.
Has anyone here studied any NLP? (non-computing NLP). I've browsed through some articles (I recommend www.nlpweekly.com), and from the few techniques I've learnt I think the 'swish' method could be applied here, to help calm down emotions within poker.
I used this method to help quit smoking, when a craving came I would picture myself with a cigarette then swish it into the background and replace it by swishing up a picture of myself and how I want to be (healthy and smoke free). The theory here is that eventually your brains response to a craving is changed and takes a different path, so belive it or not craving no longer leads to wanting a cigarette.
Instead of:
Craving ----> wanting a cigarette
you're conditioning your brain to take a different path and eventually it looks like this:
Craving----> feeling good and happy about being a healthy person and a non-smoker (the picture and idea you kept swishing infront).
This really does help quit smoking (or eating fatty foods etc etc), I think its actually the main approach behind Alan Carrs ultra-successful book of How to Quit Smoking the Easy Way.
I think it will be harder to apply to emotions within poker, but maybe every time I feel myself get emotional, swishing a picture of myself being happy or down in the dumps to a picture of myself calm and relaxed (and how I want to be) will help me focus on obtaining that neutral mind state.
This could be extremely hard because... obviously.. it feels good to feel good! When taking down a few nice pots, playing well etc.. the natural response is to feel good, if not great. Now if I want to feel neutral when running bad, I guess I will have to try and condition myself to lesson the emotions of winning as much as possible aswell; trying to calm myself down and obtain a natural relaxed mind. (After all these are *still* emotions that after all interfere with my play). Then hopefully I'll also be able to do the same when bad negative emotions pop up.. swish them to the background, swishing up myself at how I want to be; focusing on staying calm, relaxed and nuetral.
A few links on the swish technique:
http://www.manifestation.com/neurotoys/swish.php3
http://www.nlp-now.co.uk/nlp_swish.htm
