Waves.

So, I've just been reading about this concept called 'radical honesty'. It chimes with a lot of what I already realise to be true, the article is here, but the brief outline is that it's basically about the benefits of telling the whole, unvarnished truth to one another.

Socially, this can obviously be awkward. And even if we were to take it on as a life goal for a while, we'd probably all have our limits. Not telling the truth to one another does create a disconnect, there's a falseness in the relationship that means both parties never quite trust one another, but I'd probably stop at telling someone how bad they looked or how they've wasted their life or whatever.

Imagine if we could though? I mean to be fair I do have this relationship with a few people, at least to the 95th percentile or whatever. I have other friends though, even very good ones, who I feel a certain 'fakeness' with- there' just not that connection of true understanding and it's fairly unsatisfying. I get bored very quickly with people trying simply to put out a certain image of themselves.

I think it's more interesting though when we think about telling the truth to 'ourselves'. Kidding ourselves creates a lot of suffering. The way this manifests is in running away from how your body feels. Burying your feelings is the cause of anxiety and depression more than anything else- we wish we could act on how our body feels but we're afraid of the consequences.

It can also create stress, the stress of trying to run away from our feelings and 'fix' them through some external means that in theory allows us to simply solve them and never feel those feelings. So long as the pain is not 'felt' though, the pain will linger and the necessary actions to fix the pain will not naturally arise. This is the way I've been feeling for a while now.

In my case I've been feeling really awful about money for a few months, and trying to run away from that feeling by grinding long hours to 'fix' it. Despite being up around $48k on the year so far I owe people money, I haven't been able to travel or do anything, bills have been a stress, I'm playing 100z on a low roll and fucking hate it. I have been feeling like a loser, but burying those feelings and attempting to simply grind them away.

Poker though is such a metaphor for life in so many ways, with the caveat that poker is more like life on steroids. If you're trying to fix your life but running away from your feelings, then you ultimately will probably be unsuccessful. In poker, it's simply impossible for me to run away from said feelings and still be able to play poker. Particularly when I've seen poker as my 'way out'- the vehicle by which I never have to face my feelings of hopelessness.

A friend commented on the state of my car today. Basically awash with empty cartons and litter, and I realised that the state of my car among other things often perfectly represents my inner state of mind. When I'm a mess, my car is a mess. Similarly my garden gets way overgrown, and I stop opening letters. It's been so long since I opened a letter, but I'm 99% sure from the last time I opened them that I've missed several court dates in relation to driving offences, non paying of council tax, etc etc.

People knock on the door and I never answer it. I sit still inside and feel worse and worse, before attempting to block the feelings out and 'get on with poker'.

So back to poker, well, I'm realising that my goal in writing this blog was in order to play poker well, but the truth is that I need to sort my whole life out and poker is just one small aspect of that. I can feel the idea of facing all the shit in my life a very daunting one, and the urge to run away is strong, but I've already made a start in some regards.

The most important thing is to truly feel what your body is trying to tell you. In doing that, the body will then tell you how to resolve it, or if it can't be resolved, give you peace that it cant be resolved.

How this pertains particular to poker is huge too. Basically, if we're forever running away from our feelings, then our feelings are not going to be present when playing poker either. And I've droned on about this before, but I doubt there are more than a couple of high winning poker players in the world who do not function predominantly based off feeling.

Even the hard core GTOers like Sauce, if he's not in touch with his feelings in the moment of a hand then his body simply won't be able to react and present the correct aspect of GTO knowledge necessary in that spot. Maybe if you have every PIO solution memorised though, it's possible, and Sauce is maybe the most likely successful person to only utilise absolute technical knowledge in every hand he plays, but I digress.

I am not a hardcore GTOer at all- me and the people I respect most in poker are generally of the opinion that in today's games the concept (being unlearnable by humans) is increasingly useless as a foundation on which to base your play. For me the feelings are crucial. When I'm making a training vid, sure I can narrate the reasoning for the decisions, but the truth is that I have a feeling that villain has XYZ in his range before my mind has realised it and described the technical reasons for it.

So burying my feelings has simultaneously lead to a burying of true poker intuition. Not intuition as in 'lolz, he has exactly this combo' but the natural holistic intuition that arises when in proper tune with your body and the world around you.

Feelings also pertain to poker massively in regard to the non-technical factors. Understanding when we're not playing well and need a break, knowing what technical leaks have crept in. Having the patience to watch a video and learn rather than just uber grind and try to be free of the pain.

Writing this has helped me realise that poker isn't the solution to my pain, and has been cathartic. Thanks for reading.

Don't fear your feelings!

Yoda Knows