I've been playing poker seriously for more than 6 years. I read somewhere that it takes 1 year for someone to get proficient at something, 3 years to get good at it, 5 years to get professional and 10 years to become a guru.
I consider myself a very talented poker player. Why? Once you start using poker analogies in life, you know you are a serious player. My friend, John, has been having problems getting girls after his break up with Ashley 6 months ago. So I thought to myself how I can help my bud. I came up with a great solution-teach him poker.
John isn't a gambler, I knew that. I had a hard time convincing him that poker will help him to get laid. After 5 hours of intense poker insights he was getting poker.
He asked me how it will help him since he wasn’t gonna try making 1 million playing poker. I said 'now you are ready for the real lesson'. He leaned forward and was anxious for what I was going to teach him.
I broke it down to 4 stages:
1. The preparation
2. The approach (the pre-flop)
3. The build up (the flop)
4. The close (the turn and river)
Preparation: State of Mind
It is all about state of mind. If you feel great, you are great; if you feel like a loser then you are one. You really have to convince yourself that you are up to the challenge. When you talk to yourself don’t say ‘I WILL try to succeed’ say ‘I WONDER how much fun it will be to succeed doing this’. Also, I wouldn’t suggest using statements like ‘I am the BEST poker player in the world’ or something of that sort, why?
Because your brain will be in conflict with itself all the time and it wouldn’t be able to process it- the brain is way more powerful than you think. For example if you say ‘I am thin.’ But you are overweight, then your brain will be in conflict because it knows you are overweight so the statement will not be that effective, you should try something like ‘What can I do today to lose this extra weight?’ or ‘I wonder how long it will take me to take off this extra weight?’. Questions are way more powerful than statements. The brain will try to answer any question you ask yourself, if it doesn’t have the answer then it will find a way to answer it.
What state of mind do you need in poker?
The state of mind that you need is that of an aggressive mind reader that owns wherever he walks in. You need to act as you know it all, act like you can read that individual, make deep eye contact, and act like you know what will happen. After a while of acting it will BECOME you!
In your mind there is no room for failure, if you say to yourself ‘I will try this’ then you are preparing yourself for failure, whenever you TRY something it means there are 2 outcomes: success and failure. You should say ‘I will sit down, have fun and squeeze every penny from these weirdo smurfs.’
This state of mind will eventually translate in your body language which your opponents subconsciously absorb and will fear.
How does this apply to women?
Again…state of mind. Before you go out on a Saturday night with your boys visualize yourself around all these women that are just dying for a chance to talk to you. Imaginehow great it will feel having that power over them. You have to really believe in yourself and that YOU are giving THEM opportunities to get to know YOU, not the other way around.
As you will say to yourself before playing poker that you are going to steal everyone’s money, you would say that you are going to get ALL the women that you want that night. When you see HER don’t think too much, just say to yourself ‘I will invite her to join my great world.’ DON’T say ‘I will TRY to talk to her.’ She will feel your confidence level in your body language and voice, they can smell it.
So that’s the PREPARATION stage I taught John. That’s the first stage of four that I taught him. All this I learnt from poker.
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