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Message: [QUOTE="ilostmysoul, post: 5448018, member: 130341"] I'm not sure whether to post this here or on General Poker, but since this has more to do with me than with the game, I decided to post it here. If mods disagree, well, I tried my best, feel free to correct my mistake :). Anyway... Little bio. I'm 23, currently studying accounting with plans to continue on and majoring on tax law (whether to work for the government or for medium to big corporations is still an unknown variable - would love both, still making my mind up - cue political debates). I'm a decent student only because I have so many hobbies on the sidelines. Poker, 3D design, app development, programming in general but tending more to apps/VR/AR, absolutely love reading, mostly technical business books and bios. So many times I'm not only studying for Uni, I'm studying, say, programming for 40 minutes, then break, then study for uni, then break, then study 3D, etc. My parents are still paying for my education (which is pretty inexpensive) but I'm helping them a bit, but not much. I work on weekends and have some money coming in from freelance work and from a few books I have published on amazon. But they are not enough to help them pay for my expenses, this money is usually only enough that I can drink and go out without having to pester them constantly for money. I could get a part time job, but this would mean giving up my interests and I'm not that willing, at least not yet... And then you have poker. And right now I don't see poker as a game. I see poker as a means to win money. And I don't think this is the right mindset to have in my situation. Poker is like this "Holy Grail" of making money in the short term. I take some money out of my account, sit down, play, and a few hours later I have 20€ in my account. Now I can transfer those to Facebook and pay for PPC ads for one of my books. Or maybe I put them away and use them on my audible collection. Or maybe I save them because I will have to pay to publish and then advertise a few apps I'm developing. So my mind is like a huge roadmap of what I will do with my money after I win them in the table... and this sucks. Short term and long term. Because poker stops being a game and becomes this serious task of getting money, and I become very results-oriented. So I'm extra passive in the tables and then my self-esteem and general way of being takes a beating OFF the tables as well. I have a very obsessive personality. I'm not making this up, I've been in therapy, she said it not me. If I'm after a given result and I don't get it, or worse, if I don't understand how to get it, I become very aggressive, mainly internally, and close down to everything and everyone and push everyone away until I get it. If I'm solving an exercise and I can't understand how to solve it, I'm almost physically incapable of sleeping until I do. She gave me a few internal and external strategies to deal with this and take responsibility for it and take advantage of it on situations it's helpful (ie. Studying/learning) and do as minimize the effects when it isn't helpful. But at the end of the day it's still there and it still pops up and I still need to make an effort to deal with it. What does this have to do with poker? Since I'm playing very results-oriented, not getting that result really screws me up for days. 3 weeks ago (3 weeks!!!!) I was in the bubble of a 55€ tournament with a medium stack. I didn't pay to join this tournament, so I didn't lose anything. 1 player to go and then we're ITM, I catch A7, flop A66, I end up shoving and lose. I still think it wasn't a bad shove, I have a 51% equity against any pocket pair above 6, and I do think that player would have called with 77+. But back on topic, just thinking on how I would have used the 80€ if I waited for 5 more minutes, or even worse, how far I could have done into the tournament, destroy me. There hasn't been one day for the past 3 weeks I haven't thought of that hand. Now even if I do get to play it again, I'm scared af. Not because I will be losing money, because I didn't really lost anything, but I'm scared to bust after making a stupid decision and having to deal with myself for God knows how long. Maybe I should give up poker completely for a while. What I've been doing is play a daily freeroll and watch a 1-2 hour video daily on poker theory. Eventually I have a few videos more specific on how to play at NL2 - NL5 (ie. People actually playing at those stacks instead of just giving random hand examples along with some theory slides like the videos on Star's PokerSchool), and when I reach those videos I think I will have enough information to hit the tables again. But given my current economic situation and mindset when playing I'm not entirely sure this is a good idea. Thoughts? Thanks for answering, have a great year!!! [/QUOTE]

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