Poker pro Mike Caro on keeping the short term in perspective

Caro’s comments are about poker, but they clearly have broader applicability.

The reason that you suck at poker is because you’re an emotional human being. You perceive short-term events in the course of your life history as more important than they actually are. We all do that; it’s human nature.

The lesson has two parts, the first being the drive up a mountain road.

Time is what destroys you and makes your poker game suck. If the descents happened quickly and you could always see the next hill in the distance, you would continue to be motivated. But it’s the time that passes not knowing when or if the next hill will come that confuses us. The waiting makes us impatient and causes us to lose confidence and make desperate moves.

The other part is detachment using the device of a movie.

Here’s what I want you to do. And it’s something I have often done myself for decades. It will seem bizarre, but do it, anyway. Conduct your life and your poker career as if it’s interesting, not as if it’s happy or tragic — just interesting.