We know that happy people are happier than sad people! Still, for many people, especially Texas Holdem players, staying happy in the face of bad luck or a series of bad beats is very hard indeed! Here we will explore some ways that really good players stay happy no matter what!
Experience the Great Outdoors
If you are going to spend a lot of time during the day playing poker, which means that you’ll be sitting down for very long stretches of time, you should start the day by dong the exact opposite. Go for a walk, a swim, a bicycle ride, a hike, or some other form of physical activity especially outdoors.
Even if it is very cold outside, we suggest bundling up and at least going for an invigorating walk. Ice fishing is also a good cold weather activity! The experience of physical activity does wonders for our bodies and it also helps our minds. Even if we don’t feel the endorphins shooting through our blood, we will feel a lot better for having done the activity.
It is important to not call the activity exercise. Exercise is a downer, while good, healthy physical activity gives us a happiness boost.
Skip Breakfast if You aren’t Hungry
In the old days, farm families got up very early, milked the cows or sheep, did many other chores on the farm or ranch and came to breakfast hungry as a bear. In some parts of the world, they may actually have seen a bear but that’s a different story!
Western society took the lesson of the hearty farmer and concluded that breakfast was the most important meal of the day! American nutritionist, Adelle Davis, said to “Breakfast like a king, dine like a prince, and sup like a pauper.”
Still, if we eat when we aren’t hungry, we feel too full for the rest of the day! There is nothing wrong with a person in a western society to skip breakfast entirely or to eat a very small meal, possibly just a single piece of fruit.
The rule is that hunger should be genuine to trigger eating. It is too easy to grab something to munch on while playing online poker and it is even worse when we have easy access to a buffet at a land based poker room! Eating less and less often makes people a lot happier than overeating when the clock strikes twelve!
Stand up as Often as You Can
We can see a pattern emerging. Doing a full physical activity in the morning, even at the expense of pancakes and syrup, is one thing. But when we are working at our poker game, we also need to stretch our body. The best way to stretch is simply to stand and stretch. If you are playing Texas Holdem, you will fold before the flop very often. Every so often, stand and stretch.
Stretching is good not just for your body; it also reinvigorates the mind and the mind is where your happiness lies!
Stay Comfortable at All Times
It is amazing how happy people can be when they are simply comfortable. Online poker gives players many more options than poke at land based poker rooms. For instance, when you play online, you can play barefoot. We think that you might be asked to put on shoes if you tried that at a land based poker room!
Even if you feel that you need to wear shoes while playing online, you can wear the most comfortable shoes you can find. We suggest spending a little extra money to get the most comfortable clothes for the long poker sessions you will be playing.
The same applies to the chair you will be sitting in. Spend more money for comfort. You will be light years more comfortable and the subtle way that simple comfort translates into happiness will be in effect.
Start Slowly
Everyone who has ever started an exercise program knows that it is easy to do too much too soon! There are many physical ailments that accrue to those who exercise too long or too hard when their bodies are not in shape for long exercising sessions.
Our poker minds are also not ready for hours-long session. There is nothing wrong—and, in fact, there is a great deal right—with starting slowly. Make your first poker session for 30 minutes or less. Then involve yourself in any of hundreds of other activities that you either enjoy a lot or just need to attend to.
Tilt is the Bane of All Poker Players
Whether you won or lost in the poker game, stepping away will make you feel mentally energized. The phenomenon that describes what happens to players who “lose it” over poker losses is “tilt”.
Everything we have said in this article to this point has been in an effort to not just avoid tilt but to make tilt virtually impossible! Starting slowly is one of the best ways to teach yourself to see life in its fullest form and to love activities other than poker. This is the best way to teach our minds and our emotions to refuse to surrender to tilt.
Practice, but Not Too Much
The modern cliché for someone who does something too much—be it work, exercise, poker, or any other activity where one’s commitment is over the top—is “get a life”. We all need to get a life. There is a lot of life outside of our poker bubble. We need to escape the poker bubble as often as we can!
A young chess player many years ago told his friend that, if a person truly wants to be great at chess, they have to devote every waking hour to the game at the expense of any semblance of a social life. This is the exact opposite of what we say is best for poker players.
The pursuit of happiness is one of the tenets upon which the United States was founded. Being so dedicated, devoted, and committed to one pursuit, namely, poker is, in our view, a detriment to the general pursuit of happiness.
So, we recommend finding a happy medium between poker play and poker study and all of the other things you could be doing with your time! In other words, spending an afternoon watching flocks of birds flying north or south is actually better for your poker game than spending the same amount of time practicing and studying some more!
Keep a Poker Journal
Actually, we think that keeping a journal is probably good for most people. Even if you don’t read what you wrote years ago, someone will come along and will find your entries truly fascinating!
A poker journal is good for removing thoughts that invade and pervade in your mind and placing them on paper where you can reference them at a later date. This will help you sleep more soundly and more fully.
Sleep is one of the most important aspects of the happy personality that we want to cultivate for its salutary effects on our poker play! So, a journal can be anything relating to poker. Keep the notations legible, make short entries, try to avoid using a code as much as possible since you will forget the code later on, and consciously think that once you have ideas and insights on paper, they don’t have to be at the forefront of your thoughts any longer.
Juicy Stakes Poker Offers Great Poker Gaming
We try in all of these poker articles to look slightly outside the box in our effort to help you become better poker players. We also suggest playing at your skill and financial level. Even an excellent player should play in low stakes games if that is their financial level.
A player who is still learning the nuances of poker should play at a lower level even if they can afford financially to play with the big guns.
All in all, make Juicy Stakes Poker YOUR online poker place! Join NOW and find out why so many poker players are already members of the Juicy Stakes Poker family!
