Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up. (Mohandas Gandhi)

A few typical everyday situations from the past month:

Sitting in my car and yelling (windows closed) at that stoopid biatch who don't know how to drive. A moment later I have calmed down but then a van with handymen is too close to me and to the far right in the driving lane (stupid law shouldn't apply to vans) at the road crossing. The result is annoying: My vision is blocked and I can't see if there are cyclists coming (lots of those I Copenhagen). So I have to wait until the light switch to red to cross while at the same time the idiots in the van are honking the horn because the road is all clear – as if their damn van is transparent.. I am still steaming with anger when I arrive at my destination ten minutes later.

Operation system not found... WTF WTF I am cursing for 2-3 minutes and come very close to hitting the screen on my ridiculously expensive 18 inch VAIO laptop so hard. Luckily I manage to control myself.

Your version of Adobe reader is not compatible with reading on the  net (or something like that), you need a version 8 or 9 – what? WHAT! I have the Adobe Reader 9! Goddammit. 

Suddenly Holdemmanager asks for the activation code when I open the table scanner. Now what??? GRRRRRRR argh oh no. Then it comes with some unknown error when I try to enter the code. Yikes and I already feel 10 years older. Luckily downloading the latest Beta solves the problem.

The above is rather typical of my hot temper that boils like lava under my normally calm appearance.

Then there is:

Sitting in my chair playing poker. Poof! One bad beat. Okay, whatever. Poof! Another bad beat ten minutes later. Okay shit happens but that was annoying – time to start breathing in a mindful way (into the stomach). Then Poof! Poof! Two bad beats within a minute. Argh! that was very very annoying (busy breathing very mindfully). Hmm I feel I start to play bad – the beats has affected my game. Time to take a break. I sit out and go and have a cup of coffee. I am  not cursing or banging the mouse onto the table or anything else. Just trying to accept what happens the whole time.

This is me when I have the internal tiltmonster completely locked up. The reason I can do this – and unfortunately I can't do it all the time (far from) – is: I have trained it a lot! I have watched tons of videos with Jared Tendler, Tommy Angelo and others. I have read a lot of books about (poker)mindsets, coaching etc. And I use some time before I start playing on getting into the right mindset and  accepting that bad, unacceptable and unjust things will happen once in a while.

But I am not always like that when playing... Sometimes I am completely stressed out and yelling loudly, banging the mouse onto the table and even sometimes hitting the wall or throwing something on the floor.

This is when I let the Tiltmonster inside me come out. This can happen for various reasons. The most notable are:

1) Carelessness: I begin to take my 'zen-state' for granted and start to relax too much. I begin to just start playing (no mental preparation) and stop monitoring my mood during the game. Eventually I will start to drift toward becoming more and more annoyed, but as long as I am still winning I will not change it until I begin to have bad sessions – when I have become a nuisance to the others at the office.

2) Results-oriented: When I manage to do the zen-thing I usually win all the time. And it often makes me results-oriented and that is just bad. So I start to think about how rich I am getting and instead of focusing on making good decisions I focus on the results. In this state I can even get out of my 'zen-state' by losing an all-in with aces or something like that.

3) The 'unfairness' gets to me: I believe I have a very well-developed feeling of right and wrong – I probably read too many superhero stories in my teens – and when things are very unjust my temper just goes of. A very stupid thing in poker where your mood ends up been dependent on variance ouch.

4) Too many problems outside poker: Sometimes you just have too many problems in other areas of your life: Girlfriend, car, economy, business, computers, injuries, illness, flat/house etc. When that happens it is very hard to focus on poker and especially having the right mindset while playing. The the cure is simply to play less (that works for me). August was very stressful and I countered it by not playing very much and using very strict table selection.

I know all these tendencies and it goes in cycles like this: I start out very focused on having the right mindset. Basically making it my top priority not to tilt while playing. This usually have a very good effect on my poker (and results). Then one of the 1-4 situations steps in and I start to have tilted sessions. At some point I realize I have to do something and I watch some mental training videos etc. and again make not tilting the top priority.

So the Tiltmonster is under control but it will probably always be there: sitting on the inside waiting to get out and do some damage to my bankroll. Just like in the other listed situations (car, computers...) where I haven't done a lot of training on keeping the right mindset. Maybe I should?