Jared Tendler's Blog, page 2

Goals Set the Stage at Any Stage

All of you are here because you want more. More success. More improvement. More control over your emotions. More mental freedom and more peak level performance.

Energy is the driving force behind your pursuit of more. Whether we call it passion, motivation, enthusiasm, or ambition – the intent is the same. This is the energy source that fuels us to learn, improve, prepare, reflect, and execute.

As I near my 20th year of coaching, my conviction around the value of setting goals has only strengthened. Yes, it’s true that you don’t need to go through a formal process like what I advocate for regularly with my clients and in this blog, but by avoiding that, to me, you’re gambling. You’re hoping that you’re among the few who can realize atypical results through the sheer power of your will.

I’ve written and talked about goals a lot over the years. In this blog I’ve pulled them together in one overview so you can focus on the piece most relevant to you at this point in time. And I promise, that regardless of where you are in your pursuit of more, and regardless of what domain you seek it in, there’s a resource below that can help.

This is also a great blog to bookmark or snooze the email to pop back up in February as a reminder – just in case you’ve procrastinated at the start of the year.

 

Resolutions Are Stupid, Here’s Why

Read this blog to get a deeper understanding of the difference between announcing an outcome (I will run a marathon this year) and having achievable goals (I will run 5 miles a day and then add 1 mile each week).

 

Goal Setting Overview Video

While this video is one hour long, you only have to watch the first 10 minutes or so where I give an overview of the goal-setting process, as well as some examples. Make sure to download the goals worksheet to follow along.

 

Are You Working As Hard As You Need to Be?

Sometimes you need a reality check. I’m not trying to be negative, but rather remind you why honest assessments matter for how you set your next goals.

 

Finding Your New Why

This blog speaks to the motivation aspect of goals. Getting very clear on your “why” provides much-needed stability when you’re tested and your motivation starts to lag.

 

You’re Standing on A Mountain of Skill and Accomplishment

Celebrating wins isn’t a goal, but it is a great way to help you stay on track. If you didn’t do this for 2024, start paying more attention to acknowledging your progress as you go. Plus, if you aren’t finding the wins, it’s important to know that early so you can make necessary adjustments.

 

Be Your Own Coach

Solo professionals like poker players and traders are not only responsible for playing or trading, they wear all the other hats – risk/bankroll manager, trainer, nutritionist, educator, etc. But a role you need to pay attention to is being a great coach for yourself. Who else can sustain the needed accountability, focus, and discipline? It’s not easy, but it can make a big difference in defining and hitting those goals.

 

Resiliency 

Even when you have clear, achievable goals, some days are just tough. Life gets in the way, a plan falls through, a trade/game doesn’t go the way you expected – the list is endless. In those times, you have to lean on your ability to be resilient.

 

Inspiration

While you can’t just sit around and wait to be inspired, a little bit of inspiration can go a long way to keeping you engaged. Think of how you might listen to your favorite song in the middle of a run because you know it will give you an extra energy boost to keep going. Knowing what inspires you and when to seek it out can be a great tool in helping you meet commitments.

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I’m personally very excited for 2025. I’ve practiced what I preach and I have defined goals I’m looking forward to achieving. I hope this summary helps you get to the next step no matter where you are and what you’re looking to achieve.

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Don’t Expect to Ride Momentum

 

We’ve reached the end of the year, and I know many of you can look back on your mental game work and claim solid progress. Congratulations! With progress comes momentum and I want to give you a few reminders on how to capitalize on that momentum vs. falling into some of the classic traps that come with it.

Regular readers here know that I often focus my advice on strengthening your weaknesses and identifying mistakes – with good reason. So much progress comes from your C-game. But the point of eliminating C-game mistakes is to ultimately take your A-game higher. And when you have momentum behind you, it’s a powerful time to plan for what’s next, especially as we finish up the year, take some time off, and look forward to 2025.

If you’re booking successes with your technical skills, your results, your overall mental strength, this is an ideal time to think about where your focus should be for the next 6-12 months. Right now you have a good understanding of what progress looks like and how you did it, which means you’ll be better than you previously were at predicting what an effective next phase looks like. It’s obviously still just a prediction with no guarantees, but putting your increased knowledge to use can keep your motivation high.

Motivation is what’s most important at this stage. If you don’t identify your next set of priorities, or goals, you run the risk of getting complacent. 

If you don’t continue to focus on maintaining and improving your mental game it will inevitably slide backwards. As you climb up to the next level of mastery, you will be met with different challenges. Success doesn’t mean you are on easy street, or that the next level is assured.

For some of you that means your motivation, focus, or clarity of mind can dip and you slip into more of a B-game mode because you are satisfied with where you are at. Or, more often the case, you simply haven’t updated your goals to properly reflect your increased capacity. B-game is good. But A-game is better. By being planful and practical, you can reach your A-game more often.

On the flip side, there are some of you who will get a taste of success and try to ride that momentum into huge leaps forward instead of planful steps. You can’t just ride the momentum and expect that everything from now on will turn to gold. You still need to have a practical plan to ground your actions, otherwise you risk becoming overconfident. 

Your goals and plan can, and should, be aspirational. But they need to be achievable. Stop and ask yourself some guiding questions:

Where do you want to be in 6-12 months?Are you clear on the specific steps you are taking or are you just expecting success to occur?If you are clear on those steps, do you have them written down and know how you will measure if you’ve completed them?What are the risks (including in your mental game) to your plan and how will you mitigate them?

A balance of inspiration and pragmatism is the recipe you’re looking for right now.

If you approach your momentum with a view of being inspired to move forward while having a practical plan to execute, you’ve got a better chance of continuing to succeed. So as you think of 2025, find that balance and make your momentum work for you vs. just trying to ride it.

Lastly, some of you are still striving to build momentum. If you haven’t made much progress with your mental game, and you’ve been trying (you’re not just new here), it’s likely you haven’t quite gotten to the root of what’s causing the problems you are experiencing and this blog is a good place to start.

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Training Your Mind for Distraction

 

Modern tech has produced an onslaught of information from such a constant and varied range of sources that it can directly impact your performance, even when you are not actively engaged with it. 

Consuming a random assortment of content on top of your personal and professional responsibilities, relationships, and interests, trains your mind to constantly seek out novelty – and this can lead to being more easily distracted when trading, playing poker or golfing.

Have you found your inability to focus becoming a bigger problem? Does realizing this now make you uncomfortable and make you want to look for something else to read, do, or focus on?

I purposefully asked you to consider this as a test to see if you’re willing to keep reading. If you’re not, focus is either not a problem or you’re not ready to face the truth of your distractibility.

I realize that some distractions are unavoidable. You can easily get thrown by the flu, car trouble, a family crisis, you name it. Shit does, inevitably, happen. That’s not what has driven me to write this blog. I’m concerned about the increasing daily battle to preserve mental clarity and willpower for that which you care about most. 

Trying to fend off the barrage of attention-grabbing stuff can wear you down mentally and make you more susceptible to emotional volatility. Mental energy fuels self-awareness, recognition, emotional control and our ability to correct our emotional reactions. Dealing with distractions can directly lead to underperformance in trading, poker, and golf when you arrive with less than ideal energy.

Plus, thinking can be more cloudy, fuzzy, and erratic. You’ll have more random and irrelevant thoughts. Your decision-making process can lack the usual depth and might. You’re also less likely to get into the zone and if you do reach the zone, you’re more likely to get pulled out prematurely.

In short, you’re either training your mind to be more easily distracted or you’re training your mind to have deeper focus. Technology has forced our hand – you must choose. There’s no in-between.

I hate to be a downer. I really try to be more positive and focus on opportunity. But I’m worried. Not just for all of you, but for the next generation – I have a daughter who’s clamoring for a phone and it scares me. I’ve found myself talking to more and more clients about the idea of dopamine addiction. So perhaps the better I can help you, the more confidence it’ll give me that I can help her to avoid some difficulty in this area.

 

Performance Distractions

Everything I’ve mentioned so far addresses the general problems we can have with focus, but what about once you start trading, or playing poker or golf? 

From a trading standpoint, it can be hard to properly filter relevant data/information from noise. There’s a constant stream pouring through, especially if you’re a member of a Discord group, rely on Twitter for news, or struggle being isolated and need to connect socially. Or, if you’re trading part-time, you might use trading as the distraction from where you ought to be focused, leading to poor preparation and mental engagement when you do trade. 

As a poker player, you can generally cut off more of these external streams of data, but when you’re card dead or bored by the game, the allure of something more interesting can drive you to social media, or to play marginal hands looking for action. You can only go so long without anything exciting – it’s like watching everyone else have fun at an amusement park while you sit on the bench. There’s only so much of it you can take.

Or on the golf course, how often do you check your phone even when there’s no reason to. If the pace of play is slow are you more likely to check email or scroll Instagram to pass the time?

The reality is that a certain degree of distractibility is acceptable over the course of a trading day, poker session/tournament, or round of golf. There are usually natural waves of focus where it ebbs and peaks. The question is, how much do you open your mind up to extraneous distractions? 

You already know what optimal focus looks like and that doesn’t include attending to things that are irrelevant to what you’re doing.

 

Start Small

For those of you who are trying to level up your performance there’s an opportunity to do some cross-training. Build some strength in both your personal life, and in your respective area of performance, and there will be an additive effect where progress can accelerate faster than if you’re only working in one area.

Try these steps:

Start by finding a couple of instances where distractibility is a more notable problem in performance and in your daily life. Write down why these situations are harder to sustain focus and be clear on the importance to improve.At the start of every day, and when you start trading, or playing poker or golf, remind yourself of the situations where you typically struggle and the reason why improving is so important. Don’t just go through the motions. Bring some urgency to your preparation, in the same way that you would if there was immediate danger. You’re going to be tested and taking just a minute or two to prepare can significantly increase your odds of success.When you recognize your mind is looking for a distraction, or already consumed by one, remind yourself of the reason why you want to improve and how your goals depend on your focus. The momentum from your previous habits is strong and to push against that is going to require some force. The motivation behind your goals is what is going to give you strength.  

You might fail – that’s OK. Keep at it. Like building a muscle it may take some time and repeated effort to build enough strength to hold your attention where it needs to be.

Or, if you make some quick progress, don’t assume your focus has been quickly fixed. You’ll be tested again and again, and you need to prove that you’re strong enough every time. Do this enough and you’ll prove you have the command and control to tackle the next distraction.

Sometimes your distractions aren’t really distractions. You simply don’t know how to properly use your time. That might mean learning how to be bored. 

Think of boredom not as a problem in itself, but rather allowing your mind to rest so you have more energy for the things you truly care about. For instance, the next time you’re standing in line at the grocery store, don’t reach for your phone. Let your mind chill out for a little bit.

Lastly, remember, you’re not a superhero. You can’t be on top of everything, everywhere, all the time. And when you try, you lose focus, which hurts your ability to reach the goals you have a reasonable expectation of achieving.

Now go be bored. It’s ok. It might help you consider my words more deeply and finally take action on a problem that’s been steadily worsening.

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Bringing “The Zone” Down to Earth

 

Everyone wants to be in the zone – a state of heightened mental functioning, awareness, and concentration that allows you to deliver your best, seemingly with ease. This peak of mental performance can sometimes feel like an ethereal, intangible thing that you stumble upon randomly. The potency of your performance in that state is intoxicating, begging you to return if only you knew how to get there…

Alright, alright, the zone often seems mystical but it’s time to bring it back down to earth. Because, like every other aspect of the Mental Game, the zone is predictable and achievable once you understand more about it – which means you can then reach this state more often.

To point out the obvious, the zone is such a desired state because when you’re there everything feels easy, you automatically make high quality decisions and your execution is precise. In the zone you also:

Have gut instincts, senses, or feelings about the right decisions, but can’t explain their rationale.Are able to consider more factors than normal, and process them more quickly.Lose a sense of time and your perception of it is altered. For some, time flies by; for others, it slows down dramatically.Are totally engrossed in the action as if it’s the only thing happening in the world.Are focused purely on execution and care less about results.

It’s obvious why you want to get into the zone and you’ve all gotten there at some point in time. But, since you often don’t know how you got there, you think you can’t influence or control your ability to reach it and many of you have given up on trying or don’t know where to begin. 

The truth is, it seems random because there are many variables at play in reaching peak mental performance. Once you better understand those variables and your response to them, you can build a formula that will increase your likelihood of reaching the zone.

 

Two Key Variables

The two main factors that influence your ability to reach the zone are energy and clarity of mind.

You need the right mix of each to get there. However, the ratio can change day-to-day, and over time. Think of this a bit like trying to bake cookies. The recipe is pretty straightforward, but if you’re baking at high altitude you need to make adjustments. Or consider how the material of different baking sheets alters cooking time or temperature. 

We all know it’s hard to get it wrong when it comes to baking cookies, but if you want perfection you need precision. To reach the zone, not randomly, means you have command of the internal variables at play and know how to generate more or less of what you need. This is what elite performers are able to do.

The zone cannot be reached without the right amount of energy. This is true in a mentally demanding activity like poker or trading, just as it is in a physically demanding sport such as basketball and golf. If your level of energy is too high or too low, you might be able to perform well, but you won’t be able to reach the zone.  

When it comes to energy, we’re also not just talking about physical energy, emotion and motivation matter too. Sometimes you’re just not that inspired by your goals and your energy can be too flat. On the other hand, if your emotions are too jacked up, you are not going to be in the zone either. The rare convergence of these examples is using anger as fuel if you are too flat or lacking intensity, an approach used expertly by Michael Jordan.

Each person has their own theoretical optimal level of energy. Yours might be super intense, or zen like, or having a highly engaged state of mind. Energy can also come and go–especially because competitive dynamics can shift quickly. 

While a common characteristic of the zone is a sense of ease, you’re actually burning a lot of energy to produce that experience. This is one of the reasons you can’t be in the zone all the time. It’s incredibly difficult to sustain that level of energy and this is why elite athletes structure their training to try and peak at certain times of the year.

The other key factor, clarity of mind, occurs when you are primed and ready but not overwhelmed – you’re like a sponge that is slightly moist and ready to pick up the maximum amount of water vs. one that is dripping wet and no longer absorbing anything. When your mind is full, which can happen from being in the zone, you have to empty it out. While that happens naturally when you sleep, sometimes your mind needs more encouragement to empty because you have learned so much or absorbed so many details and data about what’s happening around you.

Clarity is also affected by how much you have been learning and working recently. This is why it’s not a great idea to have a long, intense preparation where you are “cramming” or actively learning right before trading or playing. And if you’ve been actively learning a lot, whether that be backtesting, reviewing hand histories, or putting in a ton of practice on the driving range, all that work can fill your mind with a lot of info that can make it harder to be intuitive and responsive when it’s time to trade or play.

On the flip side, you don’t want your mind to be empty, like what might happen if you went on a one month vacation. You want to feel like you are able to be intuitive, responsive, and have your thoughts flow.

 

Find Your Formula

Given that the mix of energy and clarity of mind is individualized, the first step to getting in the zone more frequently is creating a zone profile. I’ve included a trading example below so you can see how it works.  

 

 

Completing yours is rarely done well on the first day. Do a draft and then reexamine your past experiences to see what you can find. Then after times when you spontaneously reach the zone, look at how you got there–while your arrival there may have felt random, it wasn’t and you can uncover the variables that helped you.

You can’t reach the zone every day and you can’t stay there forever. But by understanding the important factors and leveraging them well, you can reach it much more often.

If you want more on this subject, check out my free Intuition ebook. You can also receive The Mental Game of Poker 2, which includes in depth details about the zone, for free with the purchase of The Mental Game of Poker or The Mental Game of Trading via my website. Just click the option in the payment cart to include it (see screenshot below). 

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Maintaining Your Progress

 

There are different cycles that you go through while working on your mental game. It’s very rare that mental game progress follows a straight line upwards – even in an ideal world you’ll still go through peaks and plateaus. Or, as traders see in price action, periods of expansion and consolidation.

During this consolidation, or maintenance phase, mental game progress can easily start to fall off if you are not paying attention. 

Your mental game, like a car, is easier to maintain than it is to fix a problem. With a car, you get your oil changed regularly, pay attention and replace your tires as necessary, and address many other little things in order to prevent bigger problems, which can consume a lot more time, energy, and money. Regular maintenance has its advantages. 

Some of you, however, don’t know how to maintain mental game progress. You’ve never been in that position before, so not only is it new, you didn’t even know it was necessary. Or, you’ve been here before but haven’t quite had enough punishment, in the form of losses, problems, and emotional chaos, to motivate you to keep working at a time when it “seems” like you have everything under control…but actually don’t. When you stop maintaining progress in your mental game, you give an open invite to your previous problems to come back and affect your performance.

Here’s an example of how it can happen:

A trader, poker player or golfer successfully makes progress from their mental game work, including creating/using A to C-game Analyses, Profiles/Maps, and Mental Hand Histories, and as a result of that work, they’ve built up some momentum. Their fierce engagement, or regular attention, produced distinct improvements.

Sustaining that progress feels easy. So they skip a cool-down one day, short cut a warm-up another day, and fail to analyze a big mistake on a day where they still won or scored well. Their diligence steadily gets worse, but there are no immediate consequences. The momentum of their previous work hides the erosion beneath their feet. 

It doesn’t seem to them that they’re working less, but the truth is they don’t have the same energy/motivation around it, there’s less consistency with their approach, and progress has firmly stalled out. 

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, there are more emotional ups and downs and they’re shocked by bigger mistakes that haven’t been seen for months. They either take a few days off to figure out what happened, or they barrel their way forward, scorching a fiery path of chaos. 

 

Avoid the Drop-Off By Aiming Higher

I get it. When you’ve already put in a lot of work and see results, you don’t want to have to keep working. You think you’re done. That very common, yet subtle, problem is an illusion of learning and it has tripped up more clients than I can count…even when I warn them of this likely fate.

Instead, after a phase when you’ve worked hard to produce gains, you must consolidate those gains – almost like a forced plateau – with the intent to create a higher base from which the next expansion/progression in your game can take your A-game higher.

Move on from that too soon, before the base has had a chance to solidify, and your progress will erode. Solidifying that base is akin to mastery, and mastery takes far longer than most people realize.

Mastery of the necessary corrections allows you to be full in command so you don’t have to fight against FOMO, revenge trading, and overconfidence, in the same way that you were before. You want to be able to move on to the next set of concerns and opportunities to keep improving.

To do this you must successfully move from the Conscious Competence stage to Unconscious Competence. Ironically, that doesn’t take a lot of effort. You already put in the hard work. You just need to keep the momentum going longer enough to gain months of evidence that show you’ve reached mastery. Don’t just blindly assume you’ve reached that point.

 

Find Your Version of Maintenance

To be clear, if problems that you’ve worked on in the past reoccur, that means you haven’t resolved them and you need to keep working the system. 

If you have made progress using my system, you have likely relied on the worksheets and tools I’ve developed. One litmus test on whether you have a solid maintenance plan is how often you update these worksheets. 

If you completed an A to C-game Analysis, Map/Profile, or Goals Worksheet once and never revised or updated it, you might not be as on top of your mental game as you need to be. (Sidenote, I think of the Mental Hand History a little differently because the work there is in response to a very specific problem as opposed to the overall mental game. You don’t have to keep updating those, just remember it exists and use it as needed.)

Determine what maintenance looks like for you. It’s fine for it to be less aggressive than when you are actively resolving issues. But you want to be engaged enough to both prevent previous problems, and respond quickly to subtle new ones as well.

Remember, if you are doing this all correctly, your inchworm is moving forward. And if your inchworm is moving forward, your previous assessments – the map of your emotions, the A to C-game analysis, the goals you’ve set – are out of date. And if that data is out of date, you lack clarity, which puts your progress at risk of stalling.  

If you had an organized plan where you were making a deliberate decision to ease up on efforts to see where your skills were in the continuum of reaching mastery, I would be delighted. I would applaud the robustness of your strategy. But far too often it’s really a byproduct of complacency and the illusion of learning.

Mind you, if your focus, energy, and engagement have not waned at all but you just haven’t updated the worksheets – who cares? Not me. I don’t really care how you get it done. Just get it done. If my system has worked for you in the past, then keep using it. It’s designed to evolve with your game. So refresh your worksheets, set your sights higher, and keep working.

 

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The Malfunctioning Mind

I talk about a wide variety of topics in my blog each month, including “Why You Can’t Always Be At Your Best”, “Training Deep Focus”, “Being Your Own Coach”, and the surprising link between procrastination and perfectionism. 

Sometimes, however, it’s important to review one of the most important concepts of the mental game – the one that explains why and how emotions can cause so much chaos. I call it the malfunctioning mind, but it’s more widely known in research circles as the Yerkes-Dodson law.  

If you are not aware of this concept, or if you forgot about it, your approach to improving your mental game will not only be less effective, it might actually keep you stuck in a bad cycle. And if there was one thing within the mental game that you could tattoo to your brain so you never forget it, this would be it. For those who have been following my work for some time, that should say something. 

Even if you are familiar with the material, it’s worth reading again to get the ink on the metaphorical tattoo more pronounced.

In short, the brain is organized in a hierarchy. The first level is where all of the most important functions of the brain are stored, such as heart rate, breathing, balance, and sleep and wake cycles. Skills you have mastered, like riding a bike, are also there. The second level of the brain is the emotional system, and the third is the mental level, containing all of the higher brain functions such as thinking, planning, self-awareness, organization, and emotional control. 

But the hierarchy has a catch. And it’s a big one.

 

The Demise of Higher Brain Functions

The way the brain works is truly amazing when you stop to think about it. And those higher brain functions are what put us at the top of the food chain. 

But the catch is that when the emotional system becomes overactive, it shuts down higher brain functions, limiting your ability to process information, make correct decisions, translate your thoughts into action, access things you’ve learned recently, and even control your emotions. 

You heard that last one right, intense emotions make it harder to control your emotions! How crazy is that!?

When emotions are overactive, the loss of higher brain functions is something that no one can control and both positive and negative emotions can cause this breakdown in mental functioning. Examples include:

You’re aware that what you’re doing is wrong, but you can’t stop yourself; it’s like you’re compelled to take excessive risks.Your mind moves so fast that you miss key pieces of data,so your decision-making process is incomplete.You overweight the importance of some factors when making decisions and fail to consider relevant ones.You know the right answer, but can’t access it—as if your head is in a fog.You fall back into bad habits that you’re surprised to find you’re still doing.When emotions are at their highest level—shock, euphoria, blind rage—your mind goes completely blank and you stop thinking altogether.

The nuance in this concept comes into play when you consider that emotion is essential for performance. Problems only start when there’s too much or too little of it. 

 

The Tipping Point

The scientific principle that describes the relationship between emotion and performance, the Yerkes-Dodson law, states that your performance improves as your emotions rise, but only to a certain point. 

According to this law, your threshold is the tipping point on the right side of the curve, where emotions start to become overpowering. At this point, performance declines, because the emotional system begins to shut down higher brain functions as I mentioned before.

The further you pass your emotional threshold, the worse your thinking, processing, self-awareness, and ability to control your emotions becomes. 

Of course, everyone’s threshold is different. It’s a very personal metric. Keep an eye out for when your biases start to pop up more, your decision-making ability starts to change, and your access to certain information starts to shrink.

On the left side of the curve, the opposite happens. When you don’t have enough energy or emotion to think, as occurs when you’re tired, bored, burned out, or lacking discipline, you need to build up enough emotion to kick the thinking part of your brain into gear.

The sweet spot is to keep your emotional level at the top of the curve, so your performance can be at its highest level more often.

 

Some Practical Advice 

On the surface this concept may seem simple, but it has massive implications for how you address emotional problems. While you can’t control the fact that the emotional system has the power to shut down your ability to think, you’re not powerless—you just have to work within this limitation.

Start trying to control your emotions before they have gone too far past your emotional threshold. Timing matters a lot. You must catch the rise of emotion early, when you still have the mental strength to control them. If you don’t, and it becomes too intense, you’ll be in an uphill battle for control.

If your energy is lacking, use your goals to power more energy and/or change things in your routine, even on a situational basis. It doesn’t have to be every day. On a bad day choose lighter exercise vs. an intense workout, meditate, watch inspirational videos. If you don’t have enough energy powering the mind, your performance will be worse off as a result. 

On the flip side, when you are dealing with intense emotions that can cause you to underperform, you need a good map of the escalation of that emotion so you can take action quickly while still retaining enough emotional control.

If your emotions go from calm, stable, performing well to OMG, raging, freaking out, euphoric – 50 mph to 90 mph in a flash, that indicates you are dealing with accumulated emotion. It could be that it has built up recently over the last few days or it could be a long-standing problem. If bigger issues have built up over a longer period of time, you need to chip away at the old emotion in order for your mind not to malfunction in the present.

Emotion is a powerful energy source but in order to be at your best, or prevent your worst, you need to learn to harness it or take command of it.

 

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The Dream is Dead

I failed. 

In my quest to regain golfing glory, I failed. 

I started out this blog by sharing the dream that I had as a kid that I couldn’t shake: 

“As much as I’ve tried to shake my competitive golfing dreams, they won’t die. Ever since I was a kid I’ve dreamt of winning the U.S. Open. And while I know that’s likely not in the cards, I still want to play in one. Though still improbable, that’s a far more reasonable dream.” 

I knew this was somewhat delusional because of how competitive golf is at the highest level. The idea of playing in a U.S. Open seemed crazy, but it felt like it was still within reach. Even if there was a 1% chance, I had to give it a shot. 

I can honestly say that I put in my best effort. 

So much so, at times this season I felt like I had a second job…my wife can attest to that… Between workouts, practice, metal game work, writing, playing, analyzing, instruction, new clubs, practice rounds, and tournament rounds, I went to a level that gave me the best chance of succeeding. 

Knowing this makes failing easier to take. I’m certain that had I not gone to this level, I wouldn’t have been able to properly kill my dream.  

From a results standpoint since my last blog, I played well in Philly Open qualifier, shooting +2 in tough conditions, finishing tied for 8th (Out of 144) and easily qualifying. Then I had 20-day break from playing due to work and a family vacation, came back and jumped right into my club championship. The first round was rough, I shot 80, and then was +4 over the final 36 holes (shooting 72, 76) and was pretty happy with how I played. There were some flashes of stellar play that I thought could carry over to the Philly Open a few days later.  

Unfortunately, although my game wasn’t off by much in the first round of the Philly Open, on an unfamiliar golf course that was playing tough—windy, firm, fast conditions magnified a couple mistakes early in my round and I was quickly +6, and in a spot where I was forced to take chances that didn’t work out. I shot 82 and finished near the bottom of the field. 

 

The Gap is Too Large 

You can’t fail until you give up, but I’ve decided that I’m no longer willing to put in the time, or make the sacrifices in my life, to pursue it. The gap between where my game is now, and the standard that I would have to reach to play in a U.S. Open is too wide and not worth what I would give up. I gave it enough to realize I didn’t want to give more. 

I could feel the internal tension, especially in my last two events. I wasn’t too upset with how I played in them, but I recognized that my heart wasn’t into competing like it was at the start. I couldn’t muster the same level intensity that I had early in the year.

Early in the year, the opportunity to practice like I did when I was in high school and college was amazing. I could spend several hours diving deep into the game, chipping and putting, hitting balls. Being creative. Trying out different shots and having fun with it. But to keep dipping into that well again and again started to feel excessive, and the balls that I was dropping outside of golf started to be more noticeable—time with my family and friends, work projects, other hobbies and activities that I love. I stopped running and playing tennis because of the potential for a strain or injury. I didn’t want to risk a setback impacting all the work that I put into.  

Golf was consuming too much of my down time, I only listened to golf podcasts, read golf books, and watched more golf on TV. My mind was continually focused on how to get better, and what I needed to get ready for the next event. I really enjoy learning and improving, but that energy was primarily directed towards golf. 

Perhaps the 20-day break helped to amplify what I was giving up and how singularly focused I had become. 

I believe it would have been worth it, had I truly been happy with the choices that I was making, but it started to feel like a job, where I had to play/practice to get the reps in. That’s a tell-tale sign. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I was unhappy. I still love the game and love practicing, just not under the banner of a childhood dream that no longer aligns with who I am and what I care about now. 

I am a different person from when I first set this goal when I was a kid. Back then I had this big dream that felt real and tangible but was ripped away by my inability to fix my mental game problems. 

Even though those mental game issues are firmly in rear view mirror, and I had the financial stability and support from my wife to give it a real shot, the reality is that I’m different now and this dream no longer aligns with who I am and what’s most important to me now.  

Theoretically even if it was possible for me to get to play in a U.S. Open, would it be worth what I would have to give up over the next several years? I don’t think so. It, of course, would be one of the coolest and most exciting things I could do, but the risk/reward doesn’t line up.  

I suspect that being misaligned was straining my performance and I could feel that in the last couple of events. I even had conscious thoughts in the middle of the round questioning what I was doing out there—and yes, that was happening even when I was playing well. 

 

Killing the Dream 

I feel some relief making this decision. I’ll still play tournament golf just under the banner of fun and enjoyment, without the demands or pressure to practice/prepare. I can play when I can and enjoy the game, and the competition, for the purity of it.  

Don’t get me wrong, there’s also sadness, the kind that you feel when grieving the death of a relative or friend. This dream has been a part of me for the better part of three decades. It would be silly to think that I could move on without a second thought. Writing this blog has been cathartic, and I’m sure there will be other days where I’ll cry again. 

The dream is dead and I’m ok with that. It’s time to move on. 

I progressed a lot this season. My swing, knowledge of my game and myself, decision-making process, focus, physicality/strength, all improved. The season had its highs and lows. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity for all of it.  

Knowing all this I’ve decided to shut it down for the season. I withdrew from a tournament for the first time in my life. I’m reworking my training with Abi to be geared towards general strength, power and mobility, I’ve reached out to my former tennis instructor to start playing in a weekly drill, I’ll slowly regain my stamina for running, and I look forward to playing fun rounds of golf with friends. 

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that I am just 5 years away from being eligible for the U.S. Senior Open…maybe it’s time to dream a new dream…that event would be pretty cool to play in, and perhaps I can pursue it while still living a dynamic life that lines up with my ideals. Perhaps we’ll find out… 

 

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Getting Paid to Rest

Imagine getting paid to take a week off? This is a luxury many salaried employees benefit from, but as traders and poker players, working for yourself, you don’t get paid unless you show up. Or do you?

Think about the times when you’re well-rested and performing great – your mind is clear and you make better decisions. The better the decisions you make, the better you perform, and your confidence is more solid.

On the flip side, you perform worse when you’re fatigued and trending towards burnout, or already burned out to some degree. The question is, how much does this reduced performance impact your bottom line? 

For most of the poker players and traders I work with, their edge is significantly larger when they’re well-rested vs. times when they’re tired/burned out, and that it feels like they get paid to take time off. 

This may be hard for you to estimate and the gap could be modest, but I’d still suggest keeping an eye on this to provide the extra justification to keep yourself sharp.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that you should only trade or play poker when you are feeling perfect. But there is a definite range within which you can tolerate pushing yourself and when it’s gone too far. 

Generally speaking, I think too many of you tolerate being in the bottom end of that range, where your energy has fallen off significantly, and the cost that has on your profitability, over time, proves that you can make money by taking time off. 

I know this can be hard to justify. Taking time off can be challenging for any high performer, but traders and poker players have it particularly tough because it seems like you are only paid when you are there. (This is certainly true in poker, and while swing traders may have a little more flexibility because they don’t need to be glued to their screens, day traders generally only make money when they’re paying close attention to the markets.)

The markets and tables are always active and they simply don’t care if you need a break. Because of that reality, taking time off can feel like you are being lazy. It can be hard to rationalize why it’s worth it and, as a result, you end up burning both ends of the candle. You also need to take into account that the precision of the decisions you make on a daily basis make the execution of your roles more akin to those of professional athletes than those in traditional 9-to-5 roles. Plus, when you are risking your own money or struggling with a drawdown, the constant stress can burn you out more quickly.

The end result is that you keep going so you don’t miss out on opportunities, but skipping rest actually costs you in another way. When you think about the benefits of being well rested vs. the cost of the poor decisions you make when you aren’t, you can define that line where you make money from taking time off. 

 

The Cost of Not Resting is Larger Than You Think

If you need some data on this, calculate/estimate what a week of sub-par performance looks like for you – for example, being a little mentally foggy, less able to handle emotions and more easily distracted. What does your profitability look like on average during those weeks? Then compare that to the value generated on a week when you are fully rested and assess the gap.

My prediction is that it will be significant. If by resting you can increase the likelihood of that good week, you’ve raised your performance by some measure and you can see that it literally pays to rest.

If the direct financial cost doesn’t help to motivate you to at least look closely at how you’re managing your time off, also consider the cost to your learning. 

When you are working so hard on aspects of your technique or new skills, the consolidation of that learning occurs when you are resting. That can’t happen when you are actively working at applying it, so without that rest period, the knowledge and skills are not consolidated. After rest, however, applying those new skills should be a little easier.

In contrast, when you’re fatigued, you have less access to things you’ve been learning more recently and risk failing to apply them. Operating from your B or C-game slows your learning, including mentally and emotionally. 

Think about it – when you’re tired, or burnt out, your emotions get bigger while your ability to deal with them is more limited. In a weakened state, you lack the strength, clarity, and poise to execute well and make progress.

So as the northern hemisphere gets into summer, it’s a good time to be reminded not just of the value of rest, but to firmly embrace the idea that as professionals who are paid on their performance, it pays to rest.

 

Taking Breaks

For some of you, the benefits of rest can come just from a better daily process. You don’t have to take bigger chunks of time off. Maybe you aren’t getting enough sleep, not doing enough non-poker/trading activities, or are always engaged in highly stimulating activities that prevent your mind from really getting a break at all. Reprioritize rest with “getting enough” measured by the energy you bring to play poker or trade.

For others, you have a great daily routine, but the consequence is that your energy output is so high that you need more rest weekly, monthly or quarterly. My general recommendation is that once a month you should take 3 days off in a row (essentially a “long weekend”) and once a quarter you should aim to take 5-7 days off in a row.

I know a lot of the traders out there will especially hate that last part and I recognize that 4 weeks off a year is laughable in the institutional space. But the performance element of this is sometimes hard to calculate until you are on the other side. Experiment with something that’s practical, given the way trading/poker is constructed for you, while also giving yourself a true opportunity to rest. Try taking a couple of days off just to see how you feel and gauge the impact on your bottom line. 

For those of you who can’t take time off because of current circumstances or the way trading/poker is structured for you, it’s about trying to squeeze out more rest and recovery during the normal cadence of your week. That means things like cutting back on social media and prioritizing sleep, cooldowns, and exercise. Be social and keep hobbies light, such as reading for enjoyment vs. for further skill development.

Rest truly does pay off, but, like every other aspect of your profession, you are the one responsible for making it happen!

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When Results Get Too Personal

Trading, poker and golf obviously play an important role in your life. It’s how you spend a significant amount of your time, and is likely an area that genuinely interests you. 

But a common problem I see happens when traders, poker players and golfers become so overly-identified with measurable performance that their personal self-worth is defined by their PnL, bankroll, winnings, score, or handicap. 

When results or performance are so wrapped up in how you feel about yourself, or how you establish your personal confidence, you actually add more emotional chaos to these pursuits, snowballing small problems into bigger and more profound ones.

The idea of losing, struggling, or playing badly hits you so hard that, on some level, failure feels like life or death – you fear going bust or being permanently branded a failure. On the flip side, total euphoria can take over when you’re doing great, winning big, or making a lot of money – you become convinced that this is your new normal and you’ll crush it forever. 

Being overly identified with your results is not the only reason you have extreme reactions like this. High expectations, an illusion of control, and hoping and wishing can be the cause too. (To learn more about how to identify and correct those problems check out Chapter 7 of The Mental Game of Trading or Chapter 8 of The Mental Game of Poker.) 

If you suspect that you’re personally defined by your results, consider these questions to see if this is a problem for you:

Do you naturally relate whatever people are talking about to that part of your life?Do you have a difficult time describing your core characteristics, strengths, weaknesses, in a way that isn’t related to poker, trading, or golf?Do you have a difficult time being focused on other things, in general, but especially after big winning or losing days, or playing incredibly well or terribly?Is your mood or emotional state outside of these performance environments heavily influenced by your results in them?If you were never able to trade, play poker, or play golf, aside from potential financial implications, would you struggle to even know what to do with yourself?

The more questions you answered “yes” to, raises the likelihood that your personal confidence,  identity, and self-worth is dependent on your success/performance in trading, poker and golf. There’s too much on the line for you to be consistently stable and that ultimately interferes with your performance.

Now let’s take a look at how this may have naturally developed and help make this problem easier to understand.

 

We Learn Who We Are Through What We Do

I’m about to get more philosophical and big picture than I usually get in these blogs, but this is a perspective that has helped my clients over the years, so here we go.

While we are not born into this world knowing who we are, I do believe there is a sort of roadmap or coding, beyond just personality, that exists in each of us that we can only discover by colliding with the world. It’s through this “collision” that we gain feedback. You learn you like this, love that, hate the other thing. As we’re exposed to more and different aspects of the world, the more we uncover about ourselves and how we define ourselves evolves.

This can take a million different forms. Baseball is your favorite sport until someone introduces you to soccer. You are thrown into the middle of a crisis and discover how calm you can be in the middle of it, and how well you can lead others through it. You are asked to give a speech for the first time and realize you love public speaking. You lived a sheltered life and reluctantly travel internationally for the first time only to discover how much of a thrill you get from seeing different cultures. 

The world offers up opportunities and as you experience those opportunities, you learn more about yourself and shape and re-shape who you are and what you understand about yourself. Through our experiences as kids and, ultimately, as we mature into adulthood, this process continues and we get more clarity on our values, morals, what we want for ourselves, and what we want for the world.

Basically, you have to do a bunch of things in order to learn more about who you are. You have to be a human doing to understand yourself as a human being. It’s how we learn. Think about it – without “doing” something, how do you get feedback and learn? You’ll have nothing to evaluate and never understand who you are.

I know there are some philosophies out there that promote accepting who you are, without concern for what you do. I’m not criticizing those takes. I just think this is one of those ideas that works best together, like nature and nurture, art and science, goals and process, doing and being – they can all work together. 

How does this connect with being overly-identified with trading, poker or golf? Some of you, simply, haven’t consolidated the knowledge, or feedback, that you’ve acquired over the years. That causes a hole, or a gap, in your perception of yourself. This hole drives an intense focus on acquiring more money or bigger external results to make up for the confidence, validation, self-esteem, and self-worth that you’ve earned but haven’t internalized.

In other words, you’ve learned a lot about yourself over the years but haven’t taken time to put the pieces together and you seek external results to make up for it. The reality is that success or failure doesn’t materially change the core structure of your identity that much. There are elements that are always preserved and, ideally, enhanced, through both success and failure – resilience, new areas of strength, and a higher level of skills when excelling. 

Now some thoughts on how to put the pieces together.

 

Next Steps

In many ways, the next steps are similar to work I recommend for recovering perfectionists. You need to look at past experiences to define who you are regardless of success or failure. You need to identify your values and what you believe in and care about. You need to deepen your understanding of your strengths and weaknesses and uncover the traits that define you.

Who are you if you fail? Who are you if you’re wildly successful? Are those different answers? Should they be? What would your friends and the people who care about you say about you? 

Spend some time writing and reflecting to create a solid understanding of who you are. The goal is to get to the point where you can give a 30 second pitch, answering those questions without hesitation. 

This approach will reduce emotional volatility because, currently, when you fail, it can feel like you have lost part of yourself or that you are lost. Honestly, the same thing can happen when you are on a high from doing really well – it’s just harder to notice because the euphoria doesn’t make you feel lost.

When you have a true sense of stability on a personal level, it becomes harder for you to be shaken on any level. The experiences become additive. Obviously, you still don’t want to fail or have downswings. The goal is not to get to the point where you are meekly accepting struggles, failures, or losses. The point is to view them from an opportunistic standpoint and take advantage of them. But that’s hard to do when they pose such a large threat to your confidence.

How well you know and understand yourself, what you value and what you care about is not connected with achievement, money, acclaim, or success. Mind you, I’m not saying caring about success or money is bad – I’d love for all of you to make more money and to be more successful! But I am saying that you can have both. 

When your confidence is stronger and more stable, your emotions are less volatile and your performance is more consistent. Not to mention, you’ll be happier and more fulfilled. And that’s something money or results can’t buy.

 

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When Failure Produces Insight

 

My most recent golf tournament didn’t go well, but as I stewed in the anger that followed, I discovered some new insights about myself that will not only improve my performance in golf, but in my personal life, and my professional life.

During the opening round, I came to the last hole suspecting I needed a birdie to make the cut and play Day 2. Until that point the round had been full of a litany of poor choices, uncommitted swings, delayed adjustments, back luck, and a slow playing partner that had our group on the clock, but I fought hard and kept myself in it.

I was had more competitive fire than at my previous event, the U.S. Open qualifier, and my putting and short game were significantly improved as well. I put in a lot of time to figure out adjustments in my technique and set-up to get the ball rolling better and more consistently and there was a marked improvement in this tournament.  I made 6 putts from 8-15’, including several for par, the exact opposite from the Open qualifier where I made none from that length and generally felt lost over those putts.

I gained entry to this tournament – the Philly Mid-am – through my qualifying victory at the start of the year, and coming in I felt I had a shot of winning. But you can’t win if you don’t make it to Day 2. Despite a challenging round, when I got to my last hole of the day I was focused on the task in front of me.

The 9th hole (my 18th hole of the day) at Commonwealth National is a 465-yard par 4, the fairway pinches around 280, and anything left of the fairway at that point will end up in a hazard. In the practice round, I noticed that the rough on the right side of the fairway was quite playable and it was 320 to a bunker on that line. I aimed right at the bunker and hit one of the best drives of the day. I was left with 154 yards from the center of the fairway to a back pin. I took dead aim and hit a fantastic shot to 5’.

The putt broke slightly right, but more than I played for, and it lipped out on the low side.

Being in the morning wave, I had to wait for the afternoon rounds to finish, but walking off I wasn’t optimistic. 5 hours later, it turned out I was right. I shot 77 (+6) and missed the cut on the number. Missing the last putt may have sealed my fate, but I knew the blame didn’t lie there.

I was angry. I came in feeling good about my game and the work that I put in, but I couldn’t put it all together.

 

Examining What Went Wrong Produced Deep Insight

To make sense of what when wrong I examined every shot the next day. My putting, competitive focus, and ball-striking were all there. Where I felt short this time was my decision-making and commitment. I counted 5 shots where I made objectively bad decisions – completely wrong for the situation – and 7 shots where I was uncommitted over the ball.

Out of the gate, on my first hole of the day, the 10th, I was disoriented because I thought the tees were father back from where I played it in the practice round and with the wind in my face, I thought I needed to hit driver vs. 3 wood, which I planned to hit. It was 290 to the fairway bunker, I aimed 10 yards left of it, flared it out right, and flew over the front part of the bunker and went into a hazard I didn’t even know was there.

Even if I had hit it where I was aiming, there’s a chance I would have gone in another hazard – the fairways were firmer than I expected. It was a poorly thought-out decision. I didn’t even consider that 3 wood would still leave me a short iron to the green and was all I needed to hit. After a nice recovery shot from an awkward spot, and a great chip to 3 feet, I saved bogey.

Mentally, I felt fine, but then I made another poor decision on my layup shot on the next hole, the par 5, 11th. My number to lay-up was 180, and I hit a smooth 6 iron, but I failed to consider how the ball would roll out and it bounded down the firm fairway, 215 yards through the fairway, into the first cut of rough and settled into an awkward lie to a tucked pin. I hit a decent shot and made par.

The par 3, 12th hole had water short and long right, but I didn’t commit to my target, which was objectively the right decision. I bailed out, fearing a shot to the left, even though there was no trouble left of the green. I still hit the green and two putted from 45’, but, upon reflection, I was miffed about why I was so worried about hitting it left.

I talked previously about how my new clubs and swing improvements had significantly reduced misses to the left. You’d think this would free me up more, but instead it weirdly put more pressure on me to not hit it left. This made me wonder if there was some emotional scar tissue from previous missed shots to the left that were still in my mind and prevented me from fully trusting it. I took a few deep breaths, allowing my mind to relax and see if any would come to mind.

No shots came to mind, but I had a sense that this problem was more psychological, like bailing out was safety. It takes real conviction to put yourself on the line, to really find out where you stand, and while consciously I was willing to do that, I realized that subconsciously I wasn’t, and in the heat of the moment I’d bail.

Bailing out felt like I was protecting myself from really putting myself on the line. As if hitting it left meant that I fucked up.

This sparked a big emotional release. I was sobbing in a way that felt deeply personal.

I was immediately reminded of my reaction to unfair book reviews of The Mental Game of Poker shortly after releasing it 13 years ago. I had no problem with harsh feedback from people that didn’t like the book but could clearly articulate what they didn’t like. I appreciate that kind of feedback and my successive books were better for it.

What tilted me were reviews that wildly misrepresented what I was saying or criticized me for things I never said. My wife never understood why it was so upsetting, and, frankly, neither did I. When most people loved the book and got a lot of value out of it, why would I care about a handful of outliers that made no sense?

Through the tears I had a flash of being criticized by my grandfather for needing to wear glasses when I was 16. I remember hearing him say to my mom, “I’m 80 years old and don’t need glasses, why does he?” I had an amazing relationship with my grandfather, so perhaps such a laughable comment stuck with me is because there was a pattern in my childhood of being criticized in ways that had more to do with the other person, than providing helpful feedback to me.

On an intellectual level this must be true since I didn’t realize I was dyslexic until my early 30’s. I vividly remember feeling stupid in my 5th grade class trying to learn morse code. I excelled in math, (struggled in English and spelling, was able to get by in history and science), but I couldn’t understand why morse code was so hard – it seemed like math, and yet everyone else figured it out except me.

The false feedback, and I assume false criticism, that I got must have felt incredibly unfair. My brain works differently, my eyes aren’t strong enough. These are things that I have no control over and yet I was being criticized, how does that make sense?

I didn’t have that level of self-awareness at the time. I just took it. Internalized it and found ways to avoid it and keep myself safe.

Bailing out is safety from unfair criticism.

I can see this pattern elsewhere in my life. Most notably, writing books. One of the reasons they take so long for me to complete is because when the work gets particularly challenging, I bail. My mind shuts off, and I look for a distraction or to take a break.

It is objectively that hard, or am I afraid of unfair criticism?

I now see it as the latter, because I like challenges. I enjoy pushing myself. Hard work is a core part of my character. If I bail and stop working, then I prolong the period before I open myself up to unfair criticism. I get to stay safe.

All this from a golf shot…

 

Taking the Feedback

This is why I love high level competition. Because of the intensity, I found a weakness that has been hiding in plain sight. On a personal, professional and golfing level, I will be better for it and I’m thankful the failure in this tournament helped me find it.

Now that I’m aware of this pattern, I’ll look out for other ways it affects me…funny enough it happened a few times while writing this blog. When I struggled to express my thoughts, or find the right word, I could feel my mind wanting to bail. Being aware was enough to bring me back.

At this point, I’m unsure if I’ll need an Injecting Logic Statement (ILS) to correct the pattern. Since there was such a profound emotional release, awareness may be enough to forge new strength and resolve the problem. I tried coming up with an ILS but haven’t found one yet that resonated.

If the ball is going to go left, I want to know. I want the feedback because it helps me learn and ultimately be in more control. And the same is true with my writing…missing the mark is part of learning how to hit it.

—

While I believe this insight will help me to be more committed to the shots I select, I’m under no illusion that it will improve my decision making. That’s the big focus as I prepare for my next tournament, the Philly Open Qualifier, in three weeks. Fortunately, this tournament is being played at my home course, Jericho National. That certainly doesn’t guarantee I’ll get through, but knowing the course as well as I do is an advantage and makes it easier to work on my decision-making process.

 

As I take one last attempt to realize my golf dreams, I decided to start blogging to practice what I preach, bring some accountability, and provide a window into my mental game work, goals, and process. If you’d like my latest post delivered right to your inbox,  click here  to added to the list.

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