Simone Biles is one of the most decorated gymnasts in history, and yet armchair spectators called her “weak” in 2021 when she withdrew from Tokyo after one event. The world watched as she barely landed on her feet after experiencing a disconnect in her perceptions from her actions. Similarly, imagine finding yourself facing an all-in bet on the river at a poker game and blanking out on how you got there; Was this a 3bet pot? What was the turn action? The stakes are high and there’s no turning back. When your head isn’t in the game, the right play would be to sit out and train to play another day.
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Suni Lee, a phenomenal multi-Olympic medalist also experienced setbacks in the form of a series of personal and professional hardships. After getting diagnosed with an incurable kidney illness, she feared that she would never return back to the sport. Her journey back to the mat and the uneven bars is nothing short of inspiration. She overcame her fears to compete and ultimately made the team and medaled multiple times at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
The emotional resilience and patience that it takes to experience loss after loss and then believe in yourself enough to return to the arena is a feeling that any of us can feel. The fear that you’re letting down your teammates, your coworkers, or your family simply through the common human experience of trying and failing can spawn ugly, limiting beliefs about the self. You have to learn how to face your fears and, yes, even experience them. In a TED Talk, Jia Jiang spoke about how he spent 100 days intentionally being rejected. In one hilarious example, he asked for a free burger refill from a fast-food restaurant. Why did he do it? Repetitive losses inoculate you against the fear of failure by giving you the discipline to keep trying.
Thankfully, you don’t have to pester restaurant employees with spurious requests to experience a healthy relationship with failure while learning. Using a game like poker to develop emotional resilience through loss is ideal because, any time the feelings get too real, you can step away. For that reason, poker can act like your own personal therapist, pushing you to the brink of your comfort zone, and then letting you take as much time and space as you need to process your feelings. Professional multi table tournament players only cash (win a place that receives a prize) about 15% of the live tournaments that they play on average. That means that, the rest of the time, they are driving or flying home with absolutely nothing to show for the hours of work they put in. It’s hard to get right back into the arena after losing for days, weeks, or even months on end.
Poker offers an opportunity to practice something again and again that has a high degree of failure, but also the potential for iterative improvement. Practicing the game is a lot like weightlifting at the gym. If you do enough repetitions of a movement, you become an expert. Likewise, my poker coach tells me to “put in your reps” and play plenty of poker hands.
It’s easy to be hard on ourselves after a setback. Do you think Simone Biles or Suni Lee would have reached the heights of their careers if they had given up? Of course not. Even when they’re not perfect, they deserve kindness from others—and from themselves. The same goes for you. You deserve to build the resilience and strength of a warrior. So, join that poker tournament, even if you’re not feeling like a winner today. Apply for that dream job, even if you only meet half the qualifications. Accept that invitation to the meeting, even if speaking up scares you. The world is your stage, and you are your own greatest athlete.
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Written by Dr. Alexandra “Doc” Chauran (Port Moody, Canada) has been a Lead Teacher at Poker Power since 2020 and has written over two dozen published books. In her spare time she loves hosting nickel poker nights for local neighbourhood mom friends.
