Life with a Balanced Range

Yesterday was my nephews 4th birthday and we had a brief celebration at my mom and dad’s house yesterday afternoon. He is my only sisters only child, and definitely fits the category of a child wanted against some steep biological odds. Due to some complications it was highly unlikely that my sister would ever be able to have a child, and yet, with some good fortune she had Mathew (my namesake). The path to that great first birthday was full of ups and downs, with the balance tilted toward downs. Trying to start a family was, to that point, the most disappointing experience of my sister’s life. Since his birth each birthday brings some reflection on unexpected blessings and the triumph over disappointment.

The amazing thing about human experience is that when your poor fortune changes, its very hard to go back and experience the full level of disappointment you once had. On one hand, you know it was hard, but the relief of your dream realized can numb you to the previous effects of frustration. This has some parallels to thinking about results in poker.

Recently, I saw a post with the subject line that was something to the effect of “help with 12 buyin downswing”. However, if you looked closely at the graph posted there was some steep climbs and dips but the overall effect from beginning to end was a breakeven picture over a relatively small sample size. Tendencies to view our results in such a narrow and negative way show, that while the game can appear cruel, we are the most cruel to ourselves.

Imagine for a second if we viewed a real life event the way some poker players view their challenges? Take my sister for a moment, If we graphed her level of happiness about starting a family it would be a large trend downward over time with a much more brief period looking up. Would we really say that my sister observed a long emotional downswing (with a footnote about a recent short upswing)? We would never focus on the negative portions with such intensity, especially since they were largely out of our control. Sounds familiar right????

In poker, we do some curious things, we record our frustrations, we write about them, we post about them, we take graphic pictures of them and even post the for public inspection. We rarely balance that out with positive attention. So remember…

your graph (or other real life result) is only partially viewable at a moments glance

we all have a tendency to highlight the negative experiences we have, but we can control our focus about them even if we cannot control the occurrence

there are others who have felt like you do now and can, by their presence, remind you that you will survive

and sometimes we triumph, but its up to us to plan the party!