Hey fellow grinders! Story time! I have been playing online poker for the past 8 years. I started off on Carbon Poker, then moved on to ACR. Lucklily i live in Pa, where online poker is legal, so now I play on Pokerstars. Unfortunately, I am still stuck in the micros. It has gotten to the point where i am embarrassed to admit it, but i am still stuck in lower stakes. I have put a lot of effort into becoming a better player. I come from an educated family, where my dad had a phd in Eurpoean history, and my mom a Masters in education. I was diagnosed with ocd when I was 12, and have learned i have a tendency to go all out when i get into different HOBBIES. I have looked at this game from many differnet angles. I have learned via books, playing, youtube, and hear say. Peter Clarke made a great video explaining how the cycle of expecting the same results while doing the same thing can lead to insanity. Unfortunately, in poker it can be difficult to pin point what that same thing is. For the first time in my 8 years of playing I took a long break from poker. I was so frustrated that no matter how hard I tried at figuring out what the solutions to my game were, they never worked in the long run. Fortunately, during my break i started to see a pattern. Every time i stepped away from poker, then came back with a new idea, it worked! I realized the problem could be how often I was playing. I have always had this idea that this needs to fix everything in my game NOW!! That is not the right aproach. I decided this time around to sign up for some training. Thankfully, Phil made the lower stake course extremely inexpensive! No $999 pay up front bullshit. I was studying more than playing. I went to go apply these new techniques, and like always, they worked right away! However, my old bad habit crept right back in. I had moved to .25 .50, and i decided to play just one more session at 1am. My roll ended up cut in half, almost immediately after the first hand. I had told myself, now that i know i do not need to play like a nit and wait for every single hand to connect, No excuses, I can educationally bluff when i do not have it. I ran into a wall! Just because you know how to bluff and also know how to value bet, does not mean you will always should win!! Seriously! If anyone else can relate to my tale of woe, please let this sink in. No matter what you learn, you will not always win!!! It takes time. If you can relate to this story, just take a break. Cut your play time in half. Coming from an educated family, I believe I convince myself taking a break is a copout. I am making some kind of technical error. While this maybe true or maybe not, the errors will always pile up if you do not give your mind some rest! In order to concentrate your brain needs a break. Expecting to win every session, at every table, every day, is not a realistic expectation. I look foward to finally having some accountability for my impulsive behavior, and finally moving on to mid stakes! Thanks for listening and good luck to all!!