Our successes and failures, our great joys and biggest disappointments, are a result of our decisions, and random factors that we do not control.
I think that everyone, intellectually, acknowledges that this is true. No one believes that we can control all of the events of our lives, and few believe that we have no control. However, how many people seriously work to understand the intersection of chance and control?
Maria Konnikova had a PhD in psychology and wanted to
understand, in a personal and existential way, how chance and control intersect. In order to gain this understanding, she entered the world of high-stakes Texas Hold’em. Texas Hold’em is, after all, a combination of skill and luck. She knew from the beginning that skill would be needed, so the first thing she did was find a poker coach. Her poker coach, Erik Seidel, Poker Hall of Fame inductee and winner of tens of millions of dollars, helped her understand the rules, the odds of winning any given hand, and the mechanics to be successful. A year into the project she realized she needed more and hired a “mental game coach.” To really win, she needed more than understanding odds and chance, she needed to better understand her emotional life. If she was going to win, she needed to understand how her feelings impacted her decisions and how to control her own feelings.
When she began playing live tournaments, she believed that she would be able to read other players and pick up their “tells” to know when they were bluffing and when they had a good hand. After all, she had a PhD in psychology and had specialized in deception, spending years with con artists. She knew how people go about deceiving others. It turns out that she couldn’t read people like she thought she could. She had to learn another skill: to pay attention and be present. A skill we all need to get better at.
By the time the project ended Maria had earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is important to note she earned hundreds of thousands of dollars. She didn’t simply win the money as a result of luck. She worked hard to understand the math, her emotions, and to pay attention. She invested a great deal of time and money. She came away from the experience with a deep conviction that, although chance is always a part of the game, chance favors the prepared.
Maria learned how to make wise decisions in the face of uncertainty. This is a skill, and, like any skill, it can be improved with learning and practice.
WHAT DOES WINNING LOOK LIKE?
Winning at Texas Hold’em is easier than winning at life. For one thing, the goal of poker is easy; the goal is always to win. In life, it is often hard to know what it is you really want or what winning looks like. And what winning looks like is often different at age 60 than it was at age 20. In poker, winning always looks the same. Texas Hold’em also gives immediate feedback: Every hand you know whether you won or lost. In life it can take years before you know if your decision was profitable or not. Finally, when you are playing poker, you can always look at the chips in front of you and know how you are doing. In life there is no objective way to measure how you are doing, and it is easy to think you are doing well only to discover that you are not doing as well as you thought you were. In Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, as Ivan is dying, he looks back on his life and thinks, “All the time I thought I was going up but I was really going down.” Ivan is not alone; many people think their life is going really well only to face death and discover they wasted the one life they had to live.
I have a strong conviction that a “winning” life is a life which is focused on knowing God, serving Him, and serving the people who are in your life. This is counterintuitive for sure. Our culture is constantly telling us that the “winning” life is centered around enjoyment, accumulating wealth, and some level of fame or acknowledgement from others that you are important and should be listened to and remembered. These ideas are not mutually exclusive. I like to enjoy life every chance I get, having some wealth does make life better in several ways, and it feels good to be acknowledged by others. It isn’t either or, rather it is ordering your time and other resources so that you pursue God and his plan. As you do this you allow enjoyment and wealth to come as a by-product rather than the goal. This conviction has come from a lifetime of reading, thinking, working hard to imagine my own death, and being with a number of people who are dying. People who have spent their life in serving God and others feel a deeper satisfaction at the life they have lived than people who live only for pleasure, wealth, and fame.
I liked reading about Maria Konnikova’s adventure, it was entertaining and instructive. She does a good job of telling her story, and of pointing out that the skills needed to win at poker are the same skills needed to live a good life.
EVEN WITH THE ELEMENT OF CHANCE, LIFE STILL REQUIRES EFFORT
What I liked best about the book was the effort she put into learning the game, taking responsibility for her bad decisions, listening to advice, and believing that if she worked hard at what she could control, knowing what she didn’t control would always be a factor, it would not control her destiny.
Too many people don’t put a lot of effort into learning how to make good decisions, evaluate the decisions they are making, or take responsibility for the bad decisions they make.
I want to put the effort into living that Maria put into Texas Hold’em. That means I need to seek advice from others. I need to always be willing to learn, evaluate my decisions, and understand how my emotions are impacting my decisions. All this takes intentional effort.
I pray that today you are committed to putting the effort into living the best life possible. Life will always be hard and uncertain, but with effort we can be winners, just like Maria. If I can be of any help to you, or you think you could be of help to me, please contact me.
Brad Ellgen
Brad.ellgen@cadence.org
*A special shout out to Dexter, a faithful reader who recommended her book: The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win.
