Posts tagged Real Reason
How To Recover From Your Mistakes
Jan 17th
I was playing in a Texas Hold-em poker tournament recently and won the final table… largely because I was able to put my opponent “On Tilt.”
That’s a poker term for when a player loses his emotional balance. They get angry or lose their confidence and start making poor decisions.
When it was down to me and another player, he had twice as many chips as I did. I wasn’t happy about that, but what could I do, but do my best with what I had? So, I determined to do that.
At one critical point, I bluffed by going all in when I had a poor hand.
When the other player folded, I did something that I rarely do; I turned over my cards to show what I had folded.
Why?
To shake his confidence.
And it worked.
He told me what hand he had folded, and it was clearly the better hand.
From that point on, I slowly began to take more and more of his chips. He’s a very good player and he started against me with great confidence. Then he lost it to some degree and never regained it.
Why?
Because he had made one mistake.
Well, that’s not really the reason.
The real reason was he made a mistake and wouldn’t let it go. He kept thinking about it, regretting it… and beating himself up for it.
So, he lost focus and he lost confidence in his abilities.
That experience reminded me of how important it is to recover from our mistakes as quickly as possible.
Everyone makes mistakes.
Sometimes we make big mistakes.
Maybe you haven’t, but I have, more times than I can remember.
When we blow it in some way, it’s good to remind ourselves that “there’s always another hand” to be played. We can get back in the game and move forward.
But to do that successfully requires a clear head and self-confidence.
Both are needed to enjoy playing the game of life or business. Emotional self-control, emotional intelligence, requires perspective
.We can put our mistakes or losses in perspective, stay calm and perform at the top of our game.
When we do that, our losses don’t hit us as hard and our success won’t lead to overconfidence.
So, the next time you make a mistake, don’t go “on tilt.”
Learn from the mistake, gain perspective and move on.
The Meaning of Life – We Only Limit Ourselves
Sep 23rd
?A physician made an appointed with me. I was surprised and wondered what he could want. He seemed so self-sufficient when I interacted with him in the normal course of events. He was in a very highly paid specialization; he had plenty of money. I couldn’t imagine what he wanted to see me about.
He told me that he was drifting away from his second wife. He had become attracted to someone who was very much his junior. It was ruining his marriage. He finally blurted out the real reason he was my counsel. “I just want to be a good person.”
He was not the first to make that remark. He wasn’t the last either. People so often limit themselves. This idea of limiting oneself does not only apply to marriage, but to almost every other realm of human activity. In other words, if you think you are not a good person, you won’t be. If think you cannot do well in a particular sport, you won’t. If you think you will mess up in the delivery a speech before several hundred people, you will.
I realize that you may have deep-seated emotional issues that need to be overcome before you un-limit yourself.
For example, my wife was at our condo association’s pool and heard a mother hollering at her small daughter. The mother shouted, “Can’t you do anything right?”
If you grew with that kind of attitude from your care givers, then you have hard work ahead of you. But it will be worth it. To liberate yourself from such childhood tyranny is a major accomplishment.
The method is simple and straightforward. Whenever self-limiting thoughts arise in your mind, embrace them, acknowledge them. Then add, “I am now an adult. I only limit myself. I will liberate my life and be and do what I want.”
I am not talking about being free to do whatever you please without regard for others and their rights.
I am talking about being free of self-imposed limits. We truly are the ones who limit themselves. You truly are your own limit-maker. I am my own limit-maker. You have seen this happen in your life.
Every time you have believed you could do or be whatever you conceived of, just so you accomplished that in your life. You know full well that whenever you told yourself that you were incapable of doing or being something, you did not carry out that idea.
So, simply enough, chose to stop limiting yourself with negative-self-talk. You can change the narrative in your mind to something positive. If you need help in ridding yourself of personal demons, get the help you need. (Sometimes you need to clear away those demons before you switch to self-growing self-talk.) Just remember to catch yourself each time you limit yourself and, instead, demand of your thinking patterns a self-un-limited thought.
