Losing

"Only the losers win, they've got nothing to prove.
They'll be the ones with nothing to lose."
- Switchfoot

The purpose of this blog is quite selfish, I will warn you. But I need to figure out exactly why I hate losing so much.

Tonight was a double whammy. The Oilers lost the Stanley Cup in Game 7, then I lost at poker. And it was a stupid loss. I had played in such a calculated manner all game, folding hands that I had an urge to keep and not doing stupid things. Then, with practically nothing in my hand, I went all in.

The worst part about losing in poker is that it means you're done playing.

But I think on a deeper level, the way that I lost frustrated me. I am a very logical person in my head. But more than often, I act on my heart, or a gut feeling. Like tonight... the odds were NOT with me, at all. Even if I had a decent hand, there were much better hands out there... 3 other people were still in. And in my head, I knew he had the straight. But my gut won out, and then I lost.

It scares me that I let my "heart" beat my "head" sometimes... or maybe a lot of the time. In my head, I know all the answers, but my heart just doesn't follow sometimes.

That is where discipline comes in, I suppose. My new definition of discipline is allowing the head to beat the heart.

So, I don't know how I got to discipline from losing, but I think I lost because I wasn't disciplined.