The struggle
I ended my last blog post with: My fire is back. It was, the past week has been pretty productive. Even though the grind itself has still been horrendous, some of our biggest losing days, the next day we felt good and showed up again. This was mostly possible because of the time blocking, scheduling my day. Writing down what was important to get done, it got me out of my bed and start doing things.
But I also posted on Twitter that I decided to take atleast a week of streaming. The last stream was a massive set-back, mentally. It was the drained stevie again, who's frustration gets reinforced constantly by the stream. I became aware of that. It is always a vicious circle. I take a badbeat for example, I take it on my chin and move on and forget about it as there is the next hand to focus on. But 4 minutes later it shows up on stream and people are sad that we lose a big pot and then I get reminded of it and think: "frick, would have been so nice to win that one". Then we take another one, still having the emotions that got reinforced by the delay and this time I am also thinking by myself: "frick, we lose another one, would have been nice to win it, but okay happens lets move on". 4 minutes, guess what, people are sad for me that we lose another one. And I start thinking again: "yea frick, it indeed sucks! Damn, never lucky, right?!".
Don't get me wrong, not blaming of people posting rage emoji's and what not, it's after all probably better than no response as first of all it makes the chat experience what it is but also it makes me feel like I am not alone in it and that we are not only celebrating our wins together but also fight through our losses together. I am just explaining how those feelings are getting reinforced, piled up and amplified. And then I haven't even talked about the people that only come into chat to talk down on me or enjoy seeing me lose/struggle.
It is all so easy to handle when you are on an upswing, why? Because you're full of confidence, who cares that you lose that flip or what the infamous Billy85 thinks? It is easy to zone out the outside negativity, when your inside is calm. But currently, my inside is unstable. One moment full of confidence and high self-esteem, the other moment the complete opposite. So there are a lot of moments of doubts, which are getting confirmed by the lack of results, which boosts the lack of confidence and self-esteem and makes you second guess yourself when you ARE confident. Because, why are you confident? You haven't won shit, you aren't A, you aren't B, you aren't C... See what am I getting at?
There is also the side that is probably more true than I think: wanting to prove myself. Not only to myself, but probably also to the people. Now we are on partypoker team online and almost everyone is binking left and right, you don't want to stay behind. You want to have scores as well to back up that you belong there. Which is such a faulty mindset. In all honesty I used to be pretty envious when people had scores and I didn't, currently I am just really stoked for them. And like I said at the start of this paragraph, the pressure of wanting to belong and proving myself is probably more present than I like to admit or think.
So now that that is out there, the most important question remains: What are you going to do about it?I have decided to take some time off the stream as it was adviced by someone that I really respect and have learned a lot from. Work on my game and don't have that added pressure of the stream and reinforcement/magnification of feelings. I can't even remember playing a session off stream, so we'll see how it goes, it's worth the try. I am just a bit anxious that when I do return, the circle just starts all over again. We start hopeful and end in the gutter...