Burn Out! Hitting the Reset Button

Well, the struggles of this month have continued for me. I just had about a 14BI downswing over about 10k hands. It was a pretty steep fall and I can tell you that it hurt like hell.

Of course, I've been there before. Every poker player has. There really isn't anything special about stuff like that happening. If having this bad ass thumb that is hitting my space bar makes you a human, then downswinging makes you a poker player. However, there is a sense of entitlement that I've developed. I feel that I deserve to win. I've worked really hard to get good at the game and I feel like automatic winning should be my reward moving forward. Obviously, this is not right thinking.

The problem now is that I have let things spiral out of control to where I have to take some serious time off from playing in order for the reset button to be pushed.

I allowed myself to have thoughts that I knew would eventually lead to me having issues with tilt.

I allowed myself to say things that I knew would lead to me having issues with tilt.

I allowed myself to stop proactively doing things that would decrease my tilt issues.

I allowed myself to play when I wasn't on my A-game, which is, in and of itself, tilt.

(Now, let's be clear, my tilt generally isn't crazy-monkey-I'm gonna spew a stack into this pot-FML sort of tilt. I just tend to be focusing on results and thus not playing my A-game.)

So I've decided to take a hiatus from playing poker. I'm not sure at this point in time whether I will extend that hiatus to coaching and doing videos or not. My first impulse was to not touch poker with a 10-foot rod, but now I think it may be fine to just focus on other areas like blogging, coaching, and doing videos for a little bit. I think I just need to get to the point where I feel like playing poker again. I honestly don't feel like playing at this point in time. I will play it by ear and see if I feel like coaching/doing videos. If I don't feel like doing it then I am going to clear some time out to just hit that reset button.

I wish like hell I had not ignored all the warning signs and just taken some time off and refocused. It would have been much easier to do that then than to do it now. Poker is a tough game and your mind can only take so much. You can condition your mind and be able to play more and more as time goes by, but you have to recognize when enough is enough and to then let it rest.