LG John

I've often been told that my glass is half empty and that I tend to look on the negative side of nearly everything in life. My mate recently told me that I expect bad things and that bad things happen as a result. Logic tells me that these things cannot be that closely related but then perhaps being positive about stuff wouldn't be so bad afterall so is worth a try.

Problem is when your used to thinking/feeling/expecting the worse how can you change or can you change at all. How do I train myelf to think in a more positive manner. Are their any good books, etc. I'm only interested in things that might actually work. Having some dude rabit on in a book for 10 chapters about living today like its your last is unlikely to be of any help to me as I'd go blow £20k on an M5 tommorrow and spend the next 3 years worrying about how to pay it back when I don't actually drop dead at 12 this evening

Much of this stems from poker as those that know me might imagine. Poker is a skill game but the best player in the world cannot take the luck element out of it in the short term. Often I find myself putting my chips/money in on the turn with a good hand like top-pair/top kicker a set, etc to have someone call me on a flush draw. (for those that don't know poker) In that situation with one cards still to come I'm approximately a 4:1 favourite yet to me this situation is the end of the bloody world as it just seems like I lose it everytime it truely matters (i.e. for a lot of money or an important stage in a tourament). I actually seek to avoid these situations in poker which is bad because when you are getting a 2:1 on your money you want some muppet calling on a 4:1 draw. Just one of many examples of my 'negative' thinking.

Help/advice appreciated

MattN

Poker is a game of luck.

If i am dealt a better hand than you I will win, you can't for example beat a pair of 5's with a pair of 4's. All down to the luck of draw.

Richard_P

Concentrate on looking on the upside of things and it'll become habit I would say.

I'm by no means an expert, works for me though.

Apparition

If you think you can, you can.
If you think you can't, you can't.

Mustapha Camel

Toooooooo deep for a Monday!
Go out and get lashed, things will be better then

Vegescoob

All down to personality type I'm afraid. If you are a "glass half empty" type it's very hard to become a "glass half full" type.
Poker, well that's a game of bluff surely. Like Life.

juan

read Unlimited Power by Anthony Robbins.

Jap2Scrap

Don't bother, you'll only be disappointed

MJW

Prozac ?

chaos.

http://d31.yousendit.com/F/3RI9CV1KX...rainNotShy.mp3

Hypnosis file, might make you think more positively..

TopBanana

Stop pissing your money away by gambling - might be a good start

LG John

Not going to get into poker chat but I'd have little difficulty in getting a good player to fold 55 when I have 44 - that is the skill!

Any other opinions on robbin's book?

"ll down to personality type I'm afraid. If you are a "glass half empty" type it's very hard to become a "glass half full" type."

Anyone else agree with the above statement. I tend to agree but then that's me being negative

LG John

I make money playing poker! I could probably make a lot more if I adopted a more positive outlook on the game. This is in part the point of my question. The other part is that being positive surely is good in all walks of life.

dpb

I had a paperback titled ' The power of positive thinking' by .................................................. ...........and i cant remember who ........................I chucked it out..

mj

do some free odd jobs for you gran, you'll feel much better about yourself for it, who knows, you might even get on the will

Brendan Hughes

From your posts on here I wouldn't see you as negative. You've often been criticised as too positive . If you're negative then NSR has a disproportionate fair share of suicidal maniacs.

I was a miserable git from age 16-23, then I went out and lived in Moscow and St Petersburg in 1993 with no money. When I saw the state of everyone else, I wondered what the hell do I have to be miserable at? Imagine a pensioner taking a metro across London as melons are tenpence cheaper...

Pack in your planning that you've been upset with, go join VSO, come back in a year

LG John

I can see your point! I moan about some of the horrific luck I endure in poker but as my mate keeps reminding me I've taken £4.5k down in the last 6 months whilst running, if anything, bad! But I can't stop thinking about the many key hands where I've been massive favourite and lost when winning would have secured me the top spot in a tourney, etc for £500, £1000, etc more. I can think of two hands where I was a 70% favourite to win that between them have cost me £1500! I find it hard to stop focusing on that

f1sh4u

You obviously are not a poker player and do not know alot about the game, its is not all luck what-so-ever.

A famous poker player once said (cant remember his name) "Every hand is a winning hand, every hand is a losing hand" it depends how you play it.

talizman

iTrader: (1)

Perhaps you should chuck the poker as it sounds like it eats away at you and pretty much defines your outlook on the rest of yor life....

I agree with the above statement, but then again, that's me being realistic!

I don't know if its entirely possible to change your entire thought process. You are obviously a pessemist at heart, so becoming an optimist overnight may be asking too much.

I think the poker has to go personally.

letdown

The fact that you need to ask.....leads me to think you are doomed to a life of constant misery !!!


Trisha for you !!

jasey

Sounds like the Poker has to stop.

By no means expert - but someone with rose tinted spectacles must be a poker players dream - money for old rope springs to mind !

ProperCharlie

There's always "what ifs": What if I had made an investment that tripled in value in 18 months, what if someone had left me £1M, what if the third horse in my accumulator had come first instead of 3rd etc etc.

As I am naturally quite pessimistic I can see where you are coming from. I find it helps to think of worst case scenarios: E.g. If I am worried about my business, I think "Ok, so let's say the business goes bust in 6 months. I will either get another well paid job or I won't. If I don't we may have to sell the house. If we do that we will move somewhere else, either rented or bought. We may have less money, but then won't have so much responsibility. I will still be with my family and we will still have a roof over our heads, so really there isn't that much to worry about. In any case, if I am already doing as much as I can to make the business effective, then worying about it isn't going to help any."

At the moment I am reading a book called "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", which you might find interesting. It teaches that in order to be effective in relationships, business etc, you need to establish core "values" (integrity, honesty etc), that you do not deviate from. The idea is that in this way you can stop yourself from constantly being affected by external events. Well I'm only about 1/4 of the way through it so I can only say I think that's what the idae is.

Leslie

Its really down to you SB. Like all these mental hassle we all go through in life. Same as when you get depressed or even have panic attacks etc.

You have to change your own thinking and as time goes by you get mentally stronger in a happier attitude towards life. When the poker hand is finished-just forget it, its gone and you can't affect it in any way. Look forward to the next one instead.

Les

Tiggs

..........stunning.



if this is just about your crappy run at poker pull yourslef together!

you WANT people trying to out draw you with 4 to flush.....get a grip!

if you start trying to dodge those situations by folding when 2 suits hit the flop and you fear the guy with suited hole cards you will LOOOOOOSE money!

Tiggs

I disagree (on a poker sense)...i will spend hours discussing loosing plays with others in the same way a football team de-breifs after a match.

Poker is SKILL and that means study and learning and learning from mistakes is part of that....you would only put it behind you if it was TRULEY bas luck...but thats not often the case.

T

TheBigMan

Half empty - Glass is filled up to over half, its contents are then emptied so 50% of it's capacity remains.

Half full - You fill a glass to 50% of it's capacity.

Simple.

SiPie

I hope you will take notice this time

I will try desperately to avoid this turning into a character assasination as it is not intended to be so.

Knowing you relatively well Kenny, I'd reckon that you were borderline obsessive on the 'personality' front. You think far too deeply about almost everything.

I have watched you 'obsess' over scoob ownership and the modding side of things, then obsess over the 'what if it goes bang' aspect of scoob ownership.

Then there was the Atkins diet (less pints would of sorted your gut out rather than a 'fad' diet').

You threw yourself heavily into Kuk sool (sp), and almost like a kid who goes through phases, you found that you were soon loosing interest.

You need balance in your life as now I get the impression that most of your thinking is being focused on poker

Because you are borderline obsessive (my naive reckoning only), this also lends the brain to see things as either black or white and moods tend to follow accordingly. More of a balanced lifestyle would hopefully bring some shades of grey to the whole picture.

If you 'are' still working for the council then get the **** out of there and go and do practically anything else instead, as I watched your job (along with the misuse of your pc at work saga) grind you right down over the last few years.

Get some personal help from a councillor regarding the nervous/confidence side of things. This will not come from reading a book as to this day I think you are still in a bit of denial (by that I mean avoiding situations where you know you are likely to panic etc).

You are one of the brightest, most switched on, decent blokes I have ever met and I hate too see you stumble through life asking peeps on here how to improve your outlook on life.

Change your job and limit yourself to one night's poker a week..... and phone your old mates

Tiggs

or quit poker...u cant play once a week.

LG John

Says the man who's login name is letdown

Some very good comments cheers Si, some excellent comments and I'll get back to them in a minute.

Knew I'd probably regret mentioning poker but I did so because it is a fairly large component of my life and can easily affect my mood/outlook. First and foremost I do enjoy the game, I can talk about it and assess hands past and present for hours on end. I also make money playing it. Poker is a skill game and I am a skilled player - the problem is that I probably set the bar too high. My mates keep saying, 'kenny you've made as much per hour playing poker during a self-confessed bad-run part time as you make per hour at your job, why are you down' My response is, 'because I was taking beat after beat and matematically speaking SHOULD have made much more' - I'm finding a negative in what is a positive thing. I could have spent those free hours playing playstation but instead I did something I enjoyed and still made money yet I find a way to be negative about it

I suspect this negativeness may move into other parts of my life.

Sipie you are right, my job is/has been getting me down and many will ask why I'm still there. Two reasons: 1) security 2) flexible. My job ensures a wage every month but the working hours, holidays, etc are all quite flexible which is useful for managing my secondary job (poker). I have however been looking and attending interviews for other jobs. Interestingly I strongly suspect my negativeness may be letting me down in those interviews. I just don't sell myself well but that's probably cause I don't believe in myself - I'd love to be able to blag myself through the door and 'wing' it when I get in there.

Right sipie:

"I have watched you 'obsess' over scoob ownership and the modding side of things, then obsess over the 'what if it goes bang' aspect of scoob ownership."

Ah, those were the days. Every little hic-up on boost and I was sure a piston was about to come out through the wing. I always expected the worst of that car but the truth of the matter is that in 30k miles and running 50bhp more than standard she never set a foot wrong yet everyday I worried, 'what if'. I'm doing it right now. Right now as I type I'm thinking, 'pug's gearbox is noisy, what will I do if it blows!'

You say I'm obsessive si and you are in many ways correct. I like to call it looking at all the angles but you can call it whatever you like This incidently is why I'm good at poker - I think laterally, think about everything and see all the angles. Tiggs will understand the value of such a trait.

Perhaps there is some value in being less 'into' things but I just don't know how to do that As soon as I take an interest in something I naturally seek to learn as much as I can about it. You are into mountainbikes si and it may surprise you to know that when I was 10-16 I was really into them too. But rather than being the sort of mug that pitches up at edinburgh bikes with £500 and says, 'what you got' I went in knowing what a Shimano XT gearset weighed to the nearest half-gram (serously!). Is that a good or bad thing? I suppose its good to be that well researched on what you are buying but when I'm firing around the Pentlands does it really matter than my £500 bike is 2lbs lighter and 10% stronger than the next guys??? Probably not. The flipside though is that these people that have the opposite type of personallity are the people that get a £10k bonus at work, blow it the next day on a STi-V then drive around for a few weeks on 95RON and come on scoobynet wondering why the engine let go!

So clearly knowing some of the angles in life is important - so, er how do you decide when enough is enough?

Butkus

Someone's mentioned him before, but TONY ROBBINS!! Get his CD set and just listen to the guy - you can't help but get positive.