This post may be way too personal, but I’ll risk it just because it’s meaningful to me.

I’ve been struggling recently in poker, which, like a typical poker player experience, has been depressing. It’s especially tough considering how well I have felt like I’ve been playing and how poor the results have been of late. There are so many financial pressure coming up, taxes, the WSOP, etc. that this downswing has been especially taxing (Ha! no pun intended).

I went to a therapy session this morning to try to become more clear on exactly what about the downswing bothers me and work through it. Going into the session, I felt like what I would probably get out of the session is that I can’t be attached to the monetary ups and downs, and need to stay objective about when I’m sitting down, if I’m playing well and am in a good game or not. But as I talked to the therapist and she helped me work through my thoughts, I realized that my skill of looking at my poker game objectively was fine, what wasn’t fine was my ability to look at my own life objectively.

I looked back at what life was like when I didn’t have money. What I realized is that I wasn’t as liked as I am now. When I had mild poker success, as far as I know people looked at me like any other guy. I wasn’t anything special, but I was a pretty decent friend, brother, son, grandson, etc. This assessment of what people thought of me could not even be true, as my Mom always says, you never know why someone likes you or how much they like you. But this was the impression I got from everyone, and there was nothing wrong with that. But when I really took off in poker, made a shit ton of money, had a major tournament score, and got on TV, people noticeably started to think of me differently.

Some people started to think of me as super human, especially admiring friend poker players. Some started to think I was destined to become a multi-millionaire. Suddenly ,I started to hear how amazing I was of a person. People seemed to want to be closer to me simply because of my small town celebrity. It all made me feel just like that. And I got attached to that, and was afraid doing badly would cause those high esteemed opinions of me to change.

What I came to realize though is that no one knows me better than myself. I’m not as cool, stupid, smart, jerky, nice, or superhuman as people think I am, so using others as a barometer of my self worth is flawed. In poker, the short term results can make you think things of yourself that are far from the truth; that you are a perfect poker player when getting lucky, and a terrible poker player when running badly. In life, what people think of you can make you think things of yourself that are far from the truth; that you are superhuman or a terrible person. But in both cases, to recover, what I must do is go back to my objective analysis of myself, and trust my own judgement.