I sometimes joke about all the positive life values poker teaches anyone who wants to play a reasonable game. One of the top needs is learning and studying the game you want to play. A crucial skill is knowing your opponents. The most critical aspect of the game is to be truthful with yourself and know why you are playing. Do you aspire to be a pro, have fun, or beat yourself up?
The better poker players are chameleons. They will try to represent any type of personality necessary to help separate you from your money. They know why they are sitting there, poker is their livelihood and knowing that is part of what they need to maintain their lifestyle.
I had read an interesting book over a decade ago, by an author named Chin-Ning Chu. In her book, Ms. Chu makes an interesting case about an aspect of business that most of us never think about. Ms. Chu suggests that your business must rate at the top in your life. Once you understand this, and other concepts she suggests, you know what you need to do to excel in business.
Professional poker players understand this concept perfectly. If you sit down to play poker, it is their responsibility to do their best to take your money. Anything less than their best effort is a waste of their time, a flaw on their character, a threat to their livelihood, and an insult to you. Everything they do is focused on their ability to win money. That is the career they have chosen for themselves, and they do their utmost to be better at it than anyone else.
Thanks to Ms. Chu, I understood this idea when I started playing poker, I was not aware it applied to gambling. There was a poker game where a regular player was terminally ill. I came to learn that a few regular poker players at the poker room had wagers on when the man would die! I was appalled at the time to think that I was sitting down, next to people who would bet money on when a person would die from their illness.
A few weeks ago, Ms. Chu’s thinking made perfect sense to me, as this betting on death memory popped into my thoughts. In a flash I understood there was nothing appalling about those players! These were businessmen who correctly placed profit above everything else in their life. These people are a shining example of the American Dream for business! Admittedly, in many other cultures, particularly Ms. Chu’s, their action would not rate a second thought.
I have mentioned in a previous post that many business owners will not do whatever needs to be done to maximize profit. These players acting correctly as businessmen, attempted to maximize their profit. There is a lot to learn from this example, as distasteful as you may find it.
Like it or not, we are running our own business. When we are out in public, be it a social event, workplace, or somewhere else, we are selling ourselves, whether we are conscious of it or not. We belong in the business of self management in our daily lives.
People we come into contact with rate us, evaluate us, and put us on some scale of their own making. The question I have for both of us, is what do we do about it? We can’t ignore what is. We rate other people on our list, moving them up or down as we think they fit in our lives, and now we know they do too. Knowing this our options come down to one simple question. What are we willing to do to excel at our own lives and maximize ourselves?
