How Your Mind Shapes Every Hand You Play

08 Oct 2025

Intermediate

This material is for medium-skilled players

There comes a point in life when you realize the only thing holding you back is yourself. It’s not the cards you’re dealt or the players sitting across from you — it’s the stories running in your own mind. This isn’t just theory. It’s personal. It’s deep. And if you’re willing to hear it, it might change how you approach poker — and life — in a very real way.

Maybe you’re not ready yet. Maybe you’re still living inside a story where the blame goes to others, to bad luck, to circumstances. That’s fine. But eventually, there comes a moment — and it hits hard — when you wake up and realize: everything you’ve been blaming isn’t the real reason. The real thing holding you back isn’t the dealer, the field, or variance. It’s you. Or more precisely, it’s what’s happening inside your mind.

It took me a long time to see this in my own life. For years, I was stuck in victim mode. I was running old narratives below the surface without even knowing it. The most powerful and limiting one? I didn’t feel enough. I didn’t feel my worth as a person was enough. I constantly felt like I had to prove something.

I had to prove my worth through achievements. Through results. Through something external that validated I deserved to be seen, to be appreciated. In my family, everyone was a runner. Competition was how you earned recognition. Being good at running meant being worthy. You were seen, you achieved, you mattered. 

I always wanted to run faster, get that next result, that next race, that next outcome, so I could finally feel good enough. Like I’d earned my place. Alongside that feeling of not being enough, there was another powerful story running in my head — scarcity. I grew up in a family that didn’t have much. We were always careful with money, with what we had. And somewhere deep down, I absorbed the belief that people like us just weren’t meant to have a lot.

It wasn’t even something I questioned — it felt like a rule written into my life. I believed I was supposed to settle for less, that this was just who I was, and nothing could really change that. Those ideas shaped much of my childhood and early adult life.

Reinventing Myself

From eighteen to twenty-two, I kind of stepped out of those old games. I went to university, moved to a new city, met new people — and for the first time, I could reinvent myself. So I went for being sociable. Fun. The kind of person people liked being around. I didn’t push too hard toward goals — instead, I focused on fitting in, on being accepted. My identity shifted from striving to belonging.

I was still running, still training, but I wasn’t challenging myself anymore. And deep down, I knew it. I was hiding behind an excuse — telling myself I wasn’t trying too hard, so if I failed, it wouldn’t really count.

There’s one story from that time that still sticks with me — kind of embarrassing, actually. I had qualified for the national university championships. I’d trained for months, maybe years, for moments like that. But that week, I went out partying. Three nights in a row. Clubs until three or four in the morning — including the night before the race.

I told myself it was fine. My heats were Saturday afternoon. If I made it through, I’d have a full day to recover before the final on Sunday. That was the story I used to justify it. And, of course, I ran terribly. I got knocked out in the heats — a race I should’ve easily made it through.

After that race, I went home with nothing to show for months of preparation. And it really hit me — how much I was sabotaging myself. I kept running this same loop in my mind: I could be good enough… but I’m not really trying that hard. That way, when things didn’t work out, I could justify it. I could tell myself the problem wasn’t that I wasn’t capable — it was just that I didn’t give it my best shot. It was a safe excuse. And I carried that same mindset right into poker.

Grinding Toward Supernova

A few years later, I was living in Bali with two of my closest friends. By that point, I’d moved up from $15 heads-up sit & gos to $300s — and I’d set a clear goal: reach Supernova Elite by the end of the year. That was the plan. Massive volume, nonstop grinding, full commitment. And for the first time, it felt like I was really making money. In my head, I was printing it.

So I played. And played. And played. The year wrapped up — December 31st. I hit all my Supernova checkpoints, got my big rakeback payout, around 20K. I felt amazing. I told myself, Next week I’ll go through the numbers and see where I stand.

A week later, I finally sat down to do it. Checked my PokerStars cashier — $38,000. That was fine, but I was sure there had to be more. I’d been playing at high stakes all year; there had to be more somewhere. I opened every wallet, every account… and that was it. There wasn’t much else anywhere.

I had a few thousand left in my bank for day-to-day expenses, a few more scattered across e-wallets — but that was basically it. After an entire year of grinding, I didn’t really have much to show for it. And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, they did.

Earlier that year, my housemates and I had made an agreement — an EV chop. The idea was simple: we’d track our expected value, and if one of us ran below EV, we’d all share the loss equally. It felt fair. It kept variance from wrecking any single one of us.

When we finally sat down to do the numbers, two of us were about break-even. But one friend? He was 85K under EV. That meant we owed him around 30K each. So, suddenly, my $38,000 bankroll was gone in an instant. After sending my share, I was left with $8,000.

The Breaking Point

I remember feeling completely drained. I’d spent an entire year grinding ten-hour days — probably 3,000 hours total — and ended up with nothing. Not just financially, but emotionally too. The same old stories came flooding back: You don’t deserve more. You’re not good enough. You’ve always been bad with money.

But then something shifted. I asked myself a hard question — What if I’m the problem? What if all the frustration, all the financial struggles, weren’t just bad luck or variance… but the result of the stories I kept telling myself about money and self-worth?

That was the first real wake-up call. I was about 25 or 26, and for the first time, I started to realize that maybe the issue wasn’t outside of me — it was in my own mind.

That realization sent me down a completely new path — one that had nothing to do with strategy charts or EV calculations, but everything to do with mindset. That was the first time I truly turned inward — a real deep dive into myself.

The first book I picked up was “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins. That book made me stop and really look at the stories I was telling myself — and how those stories were shaping every part of my life.

I started to see that so many of my experiences had created deep-rooted beliefs: stories about money being limited, about not being good enough, about scarcity. These weren’t just random thoughts — they were the foundation of how I saw the world.

As I dug deeper, I realized something huge about how the personal mind works. Most of it is formed in our early childhood, before the age of six. It’s built on our early experiences and becomes a kind of operating system — trying to protect us, keep us safe, make us feel loved and accepted.

To do that, the mind creates strong narratives to help us make sense of the world — stories we can cling to when things feel uncertain. And for a six-year-old, that’s survival. You don’t have reasoning or perspective; you just build stories that help you get by. But the problem is, as you grow up, you don’t realize those same stories are still running the show.

You end up living life trying to prove or disprove those same childhood stories. You chase success, money, validation — not because you really want them, but because deep down, you’re still trying to prove something to that scared little kid inside you.

Facing the Stories That Hold You Back

Once these stories are set in your mind, you start looking for proof that they’re true. For me, I was constantly finding evidence that I wasn’t enough, that I’d never have money, that I wasn’t good with it. And of course, when you look for something hard enough, you’ll find it everywhere.

That realization hit me like a brick. Because once you see that pattern, you only have two choices:
either you face it and clean it up, or you stay trapped in it forever. If you don’t do the work, you end up living stuck in the same old narrative — the one that says you’re not enough, that you’ll never have enough. For me, that was a pure scarcity mindset.

Doing this kind of inner work is like lifting up a rug that’s been sitting there for years — suddenly you see all the dust and dirt that’s built up underneath. Most people take one look at that mess, think “nah”, and just put the rug back down. They keep living on top of it.

That means facing the uncomfortable stuff: your limiting beliefs, the parts of you you’d rather not look at.

This isn’t easy work. It took me years to work through a lot of what I was carrying. Even recently, I did a silent retreat just to go deeper, to see which old stories and beliefs still had a grip on me. And yeah — it’s hard. Most people turn away because it’s painful and they don’t have the right environment to face it.

But I found that the best way to do this is with others. When you’re surrounded by people who are on the same path — especially poker players who understand the mental grind — something shifts. You realize you’re not alone in this. You start to see that everyone, no matter how successful they look on the outside, is fighting their own stories — about identity, self-worth, and what they believe they deserve.

That moment when you realize — ah, I’m not the only one going through this — it changes everything. It takes away the shame and isolation that often come with mindset struggles.

At the end of the day, every player’s biggest challenge isn’t variance, bad beats, or the field getting tougher — it’s the mind itself. The stories we tell ourselves define how we approach the game, handle downswings, and build consistency. When you start seeing those stories for what they are — outdated beliefs, protective patterns from the past — you open space for real change. That’s when growth begins.

Working on your mindset isn’t just “mental game theory”. It’s a deep, ongoing process that shapes your decisions, your performance, and ultimately your results. Whether you do it through meditation, journaling, coaching, or structured programs — the key is awareness.

If you’re serious about building that kind of awareness and upgrading your inner game, check out Getcoach Poker — a coaching platform designed specifically for poker players who want to grow both strategically and mentally. It’s a space where you can learn from experienced professionals, explore mindset tools, and connect with others on the same journey.

Poker will always test you. But once you understand that your biggest opponent sits between your ears — you stop fighting the game and start mastering yourself.