How to go back in time

When it comes to poker, I’m still splitting time between coaching and playing.

This week I played 3 days for ~20 hours total, which is about as much as I ever squeeze in these days.

On days 2 and 3, I was excited to play the whole time. I started off stuck, but things turned around pretty quickly, and I booked a couple solid wins to have a 4k+ week.

Day 1 was a little different though.

Coming off a bunch of client calls, an ultimate frisbee game (which apparently is a whole lot more taxing at the age of 36 than it was at 22), and my own study sessions earlier in the week, my energy wasn’t very high going into the session.

I was a lot less excited. 

Being stuck and card dead at the start seemed to bother me more than it usually does.

My body felt a little slow and heavy, and I wasn’t too interested in making small talk with the people around me.

Even when I won a couple hands and got unstuck, I wasn’t filled with excitement.

But the reality is, the way I was feeling that day was just the way I was feeling that day. If I went home and watched YouTube, that feeling would have still been hanging around, although I might have been a little distracted from it.

I didn’t have to keep playing, but it was either feel like this at the card table, or feel like this somewhere else. Between the two of those, I very much wanted to be playing cards.

So I did.

I was a little less engaged, I probably noticed a few less things than I normally would, but I’d say I was playing pretty damn well. The game was decent, and I booked a small win.

I went home, made a steak and salad, and got a full night’s rest.

The next day I woke up feeling full of energy, and very excited to go play.

You know the rest from there.

Not the most groundbreaking story.

A few years ago, there’s a very good chance days 2 and 3 wouldn’t have played out like that though. 

Day 1 probably would have ended early. If it didn’t, it’s probably because I stuffed the feeling down long enough to keep playing. If that happened, it probably would have ended with smoking a bunch of weed, or at the very least, a midnight pizza from Doordash. 

Then the next morning would come, and I’d probably take a good long while to get out of bed because I slept like shit, and the next two days probably wouldn’t have ended like they did.

I can’t say for sure what would have happened, but I can say for sure that the latter scenario played out many times in my career.

The only difference now is that I’m able to stay present and accept everything happening inside and out.

I have no problems just being “here”.

When that’s the case, things play out differently. The ‘sabotage’ ends. The decisions you make are much more aligned with what you actually want in life, rather than just trying to cut off the feeling you can’t bare to stay present with.

If you can’t accept what it feels like to be you today, you’ll end up playing things out in an entirely different way than if you could. 

That’s it.

Being able to look back on the week and see that I stayed present with everything going on, whether I liked it or not, feels pretty damn good.

If all this is something you’re interested in for yourself, and you want someone to show you exactly how to do it, you can find me here: