Breaking Out of Your Comfort Zone — Part III

The first two parts of this series emphasized how hard it is to break out of your comfort zone. Now, I’ll discuss the steps that you should take to do it.

Step One: Select Someone to Help You
Without help, you probably won’t implement the other steps well (or at all). A coach or poker buddy will help you to understand yourself and the process, while reinforcing your willpower. You may think that you don’t need that reinforcement, but most self-improvement programs fail because people don’t stick to them.

Step Two: Pick One Small, Specific Change
If you try to do too much, you will probably fail and become discouraged. Mike Caro coined the term “mission” for focusing on a single change that you want to make, and I agree completely with his concept. By setting a mission, you become more likely to:

• Take this action more often
• Understand and overcome the psychological factors that damage your play
• Create confidence that you can make this and other changes

Choose your mission carefully. Select a change that has most of these characteristics:

• It’s an action, not a thought or feeling.
• It’s relatively easy to take.
• You can count how often you do it. That’s why it has to be an action. You can’t accurately count your thoughts and feelings.
• You really want to make it.
• It is not too far outside your comfort zone. If it’s too far outside, you won’t do it.
• You don’t do it often enough partly because it makes you uncomfortable.
• You will get many opportunities to do it.

For example, if you’re too conservative, bluff-raising fits most or all of these criteria.

Step Three: Commit Yourself to Making This Change
Commitment will make you feel pride when you do it, and shame when you don’t. Ask your coach to reinforce those feelings by praising or criticizing your successes and failures.

Step Four: Identify the Psychological Forces That Prevented You From Taking This Action

Ask questions like:

• Why haven’t I been doing it?
• Have I tried unsuccessfully to do it?
• Why didn’t it work?
• Am I afraid of feeling stupid if I make a mistake?
• What would make it easier for me to make this change?

If the forces against this change are too powerful, select an easier one. For example, if bluff-raising average players is too difficult, bluff-raise only weak-tight ones.

Step Five: Accept That You Will Pay a Short-Term Price
You certainly will feel uncomfortable, and you may lose some money, perhaps even a lot of it. You must accept that price before starting. If it really bothers you, you will probably give up.

Step Six: Select Situations That Reduce Your Resistance to Change
Your resistance goes down as the risks get smaller and the probability of success gets larger. Seriously consider experimenting by playing online for lower stakes than usual. You may not like playing online, and you may particularly dislike playing there for lower stakes. However, doing so has some significant advantages:

• The financial risks are lower.
• The psychological risks are lower. A small loss hurts less than a large one.
• Anonymity further reduces your psychological risks. You’ll play with strangers and use a screen name.
• Smaller games have weaker players, which increases your success rate (for most changes).
• Because the games are so fast and you can play multiple tables, you will get far more chances to experiment.
• You can keep much better records, especially with hand-tracking software.

Regardless of where you play, reduce the stakes. And, experiment only when the risks are low and the probability of success is high. Let’s say that you want to raise on the flop to get a free turn card. Lower your risks by doing it only against passive players or when nobody is behind you.

Step Seven: Set a Goal for the Number of Times That You’ll Take This Action
This goal should be easily achievable. For a four-hour session, it could be one of these:

• Bluff-raise twice
• Always fold suited connectors 10-9 or smaller in early position
• Never open-limp

Step Eight: Record How Often You Took This Action and How You Felt About It
If you don’t keep records, you almost certainly will “cheat,” perhaps without knowing it. You may forget the times that you didn’t do it, or intensely remember the times that you did it and got bad results. You then may become discouraged and quit. You need solid data to analyze your experiments.

Step Nine: Analyze Your Actions, Thoughts, and Feelings
After a session is over, ask yourself why you reached or didn’t reach your goal. Be as objective and searching as possible, and ask your coach or poker buddy for feedback.

Step 10: Follow Up This Exercise
If you didn’t achieve your goal, set a more achievable one.

In your next four-hour session, you could try to bluff-raise only once (versus your earlier goal of twice), or fold all suited connectors 9-8 or smaller in early position (versus all suited connectors 10-9 or smaller earlier).

If you achieved your goal, set a slightly more ambitious one for a similar exercise.

Exploit and increase your confidence by becoming a little more ambitious. For example, you can:

• Increase the number of times that you will take the same action, such as bluff-raising three times.
• Find another way to tighten up in early position, such as folding all pairs smaller than eights.
• Take the same action in slightly less favorable situations, such as bluff-raising better players.

Slowly shift from the style with which you are comfortable to one that produces bigger profits.

Step 11: Forgive Yourself
The epilogue of Barry Tanenbaum’s Advanced Limit Hold’em Strategy is subtitled, “Forgive Yourself.” When I saw it, I wondered, “Has my old friend gotten religion? Has a hard-eyed poker pro joined some New Age, touchy-feely group?”
I later realized how right he is. So, I will quote his words:

“Whenever you play poker, you will make errors. As you expand your game … you will make more … You will think, ‘If only I did not play that hand (or make that raise or run that bluff or call that bet), I would not have lost that money.’ … The most important thing to remember is the need to forgive yourself … The better you get at not dwelling on past mistakes other than to learn from them and move on, the better your play will be.”

He’s right, and the choice is yours. You can continue in your safe, comfortable rut, or you can take the financial and psychological risks of experimenting with new ways of playing. It won’t be easy, but you can break out of your comfort zone by experimenting, making mistakes, forgiving yourself, and repeating that cycle.

To learn more about yourself and other players, you can buy Dr. Schoonmaker’s books, Your Worst Poker Enemy and Your Best Poker Friend, at CardPlayer.com.