Resilience and the Great Poker Player

Would you consider yourself to be a resilient person overall?  In other words, how well do you handle challenges, setbacks, rejection and failure in your day to day experiences?

Your ability to be resilient in other areas of your life will absolutely affect your poker game too!  Without resilience, you simply won't have the inner strength and determination to become a great player.  Instead you'll find yourself becoming easily unsettled by minor setbacks, frustrated with the learning curve, overwhelmed by your seeming lack of progress - and you'll be tempted over and over again to give up.

That doesn't sound like much fun, does it?  The good news is that strengthening your resilience isn't as hard as you may think.  There are three basic attributes you'll need to develop within yourself:

1)  Flexibility.

In order to be resilient, you need to be able to bend without breaking.  That means going with the flow instead of trying to swim against the current.  Rigidity in mind or body results in one thing: resistance.  You've probably heard the phrase, "What you resist persists" right?  The more you try to fight against something, the more pervasive it's going to become.  That includes resisting the process of becoming a great poker player.

Instead of fighting against something that displeases you, learn how to let go and deal with each moment as it comes.  Don't try to force or control anything, but rather constantly adjust and readjust your approach as you go along.  Very often, just adopting a more flexible mind-set can do wonders to turn around what initially seemed like an impossible situation.  As you learn to become more flexible, you'll realize that you usually have more than one option in any scenario - you just needed to open your mind to recognize it. 

2)  Thick skin.

Do you get intimidated easily?  Are you easily stalled by failure or setbacks?  Do you immediately adopt a victim mind-set when things go wrong for you?  In poker, you can't afford to let this kind of thinking pollute your focus.  If you do, you'll end up reacting emotionally and making bad judgement calls. 

Instead, learn to toughen your outer shell so that things just bounce off without upsetting you.  This applies not only to poker, but the rest of your life too.  The tougher and less ruffled you can be when facing challenges, the more in control you're going to feel and the better you're going to perform. 

3)  Persistence.

Are you familiar with the Japanese proverb, "Fall down seven times, get up eight"?  This profound bit of wisdom applies to all areas of your life, including poker. 

More than anything else, resilience is all about being able to BOUNCE BACK!  If you fall down and stay down, what happens?  You fail.  No questions, no second chances - it's a guaranteed failure. 

On the other hand, if you pick yourself up and try again, there's a very real chance that you will succeed.  Not only will you grow stronger through building your resilience, you will learn from - and be strengthened by - every setback you experience.  Over time, all that "falling down and getting up again" will pay off with better balance and a reduced likelihood of falling down again.

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