Black Friday was probably the most terrifying day of my life. This is, of course, a great thing, as I wasn’t afflicted with some uncurable disease or found out I was impotent for life. That’s a lot worse. But I had around $50k stuck on the blocked sites and, on that day, I was really scared about my future and our well-being as a family going forward. I was imagining myself the worse scenarios possible. Like having to work 9 to 5… something I had sworn never to do again.
On that day, we went out to a shitty diner and had shitty food. I was moping the whole time not only about having a good % of my bankroll stuck, and possibly gone, but also about the shittiest pizza I had ever eaten. My wife had wanted to try the diner out for months, claiming it had gotten some good reviews online. Of course I told her that there is no such thing as a restaurant like this that is any good. I just had a feeling.
Turns out, I was right.. AND on top of the mediocre food, it turns out that the owner of the place is a Boston Bruins fans and was proudly displaying one of their jerseys on the wall. UGh. What a day.
After dinner I went back home to practice my F5 pushing skills once more. The apocalypse was here and I needed to feed my addiction to speculations. It’s all we really had at this point… and sharing our shock and fear together. The hornet nest had been disturbed and now everyone converged onto NVG to know what the hell was going on.
In the next weeks, things became a bit clearer and some of us got lucky and were able to play again online. It was really fishy for the first month and the games were really good. The situation, after all, wasn’t that bad I thought. I felt very lucky for myself but also really pained to see my American friends unable to play and stripped out of their freedoms. It was brutal for them and I really hope the situation gets better in 2012.
Anyway, over the next months I got really depressed about poker and what I was doing for a living. The games seemed bad everywhere with very few fish and lots of good players around. My problem there was that while I do not mind playing really good players, I was never a high volume player and thus with smaller edges I tend to just avoid the games as I seem unable to grind for hours and on numerous tables. It’s a leak of mine and I am quite upfront about when people ask me to play 3-4 tables.
The relatively dry games led to a very poor work ethic and a black cloud hovering around my mind. The new reality of poker had the opposite of a desired effect. I got lazy about my game, about studying, about everything. I had lost my desire to crush and instead just wanted to get by with the minimum amount of effort. Coincidentally, I had my lowest volume of hands in the last 2 years during last summer.
I was still doing well results wise so, at the time, nothing seemed to be wrong to me. I was down on poker without really admitting it to myself. But, money was still good and I was still winning, so no problem, right? Well, not so much. It had a couple of very negative effects, and the main one was the huge gap between the positive feedback I was getting from my results and the negative factors I was ignoring because it was comforting to me. These included having a very poor work ethic, low desire to succeed, having goals and being confident in my game. All very important things to long-term success.
In October, I had my first really big losing month with poker. I ran really bad and, of course, I blamed it on variance. However, in retrospect, I can see how Black Friday eventually led to my demise, not only psychologically but in a bigger and far-reaching way. The way I handled myself in the face of adversity was poor, at best.
In the end, after 8 months, I am very thankful Black Friday happened, and this, of course, on a personal level only.
In the last few years, I have been able to notice silver linings much better than before, where negative was negative, and that was the end of it. Black Friday forcefed me a couple of very positive realisations:
1. I was lazy and depressed because things looked bad to me. In these situations, being down about the way things are does only one thing: it makes them worse. How can someone achieve anything when negative thoughts have built a camping site in your head? In the last month I have regrouped myself and I have been working harder than ever before. Not only with poker but also I have approached the whole situation with the idea that indeed, pressure can create diamonds, but only when you have the right mindset: a positive, constructive and hopeful one.
2. This year has taught me that the way I approach EVERYTHING in my life is how I will approach my work. So now instead of half-assing something simple like folding clean clothes, I do it well and do my best to be on top of the chore. It showed me that if I want to perform at my best in poker, I need to do my best in every aspect of my life, instead of being one of those people that focuses entirely on one thing and fails miserably at everything else.
3. It humbled me. Past success is not a guarantee of future success. What I do right now, in this moment, is the only thing that matters, the only thing I control and if I want to be successful at poker, my actions need to stay in line with this goal. As a result, I’ve cut out almost all of my video gaming time. It was fun, but I’d rather focus on more important things now like writing, reviewing hands and studying.
A few months ago I would have never written any of this, but I realize now that every single time I have faced adversity or negativity in my life, it has taught me something extremely valuable. The perspective I take on the situation can be the difference between the apocalypse and an enriching and positive experience. Since I *do* have a choice and can control this, I now choose to take option B. I choose to make the best lemon juice I can make.
In the end, is there a better way to better yourself and know more about who you are, and what you could be?
