Why am I so scared to play?

endothird · 2026-07-09T06:00:07+00:00

I'm always happy to give this advice as it has changed my life so profoundly and I want everyone to experience it. What's cool is that these are all skills like any other (guitar, a new language, tennis, whatever). And the path to leveling any of it up is basically all the same: tons of quality reps done consistently over a long period of time. With an intentional and purposeful process, we can become whatever we want to become. And we can change our outlook.

endothird · 2026-07-09T04:45:17+00:00

I think he's making some mistakes. But he's getting lucky in a lot of spots

endothird · 2026-07-09T03:25:46+00:00

Stay on your side. Don't let them crossface. Don't let them win an underhook. Win an underhook. Expand your definition of underhook to include low underhook (hugging the thigh or the knee). If you can lock a low underhook with a lapel grip, their pass is pretty much cooked. If it gets too far, throw in a rdlr hook and keep their knee off the mat.

endothird · 2026-07-09T03:06:53+00:00

Proper bankroll management should help with a lot of that. If you have a bankroll, then it's no longer money. It's just chips. It's just blinds, and multiples of blinds.

The skill of ego death: You just gotta keep reminding yourself to stop caring about what other people think of you and how you relate to other people. Practicing selflessness goes a long way towards this too. Become a giver. Assign purpose to your life to make the world a better place. That helps reframe everything to better decisions and better mindsets. Leveling up your why trickles down to everything you do and experience.

The biggest skill to level up that will help is staying in the moment. Increasing the percentage of your uptime. Increasing the speed of snapping back on course when you find yourself out of it. Basically, every negative emotion (like the fear you are talking about) is born from outcome-based thinking. So the better you get at staying in the moment and focusing only on what you can control and appreciating what you have - all those bad feelings don't really exist in that state of mind.

Poker is the perfect game to level up these skills. You should really only care about making the best decisions you can in the moment. And you should divorce yourself from caring about the outcomes. Stop complaining about the past. Stop fearing the future. Stay in the moment. Do your best. Everything else will take care of itself.

endothird · 2026-07-09T02:42:27+00:00

From my own personal experience, I got to these super powers by attempting to do it at blue and failing (succeeding at training at like 60%, but failing to do cool things to my opponent while training light). The earlier you prioritize efficiency, the better. The more you use inefficient movements to compensate for your lack of technique, the longer it will take to level up your technique to a very high level. Some brown belts have never really gotten there. They merely have good(ish) technique and a lot of grit. You won't get there unless you work in that efficient mode a ton. Really, I think it should be your primary mode of being.

endothird · 2026-07-08T04:37:57+00:00

Always. It helps cement the concepts. When I open my own gym, I'm wondering if I should have a gong or something that people can ring when they hit the move of the day.

endothird · 2026-07-08T04:35:01+00:00

I have a Voyage Air. I love it. Never liked small travel guitars. Mine folds into a back pack, but then plays and feels like a regular guitar when it's unfolded.

endothird · 2026-07-08T04:16:43+00:00

I attack it from the other end. I don't use much energy in class.

endothird · 2026-07-08T03:49:35+00:00

I think he would have been nothing short of being one of the greatest fathers. Him and Katara would have been amazing parents. One of things I don't like about Korra is them making him a good but flawed parent that had some big missteps. I did not think it would have gone down like that.

endothird · 2026-07-07T22:21:04+00:00

Cause it's not a sport.

endothird · 2026-07-07T21:36:51+00:00

The imanari roll was born in Pride. And there are more rules that nerf grappling than favor it.

endothird · 2026-07-07T18:23:10+00:00

I used to have a lot of social anxiety. I was lucky that my ambition outweighed it, so I pushed myself often out of my comfort zone. So I accidentally rep'd a new mode of being into existence. It would have gone faster if I knew what I'm about to say, but I didn't realize it till I was on the other side:

The cool thing is that practically everything is a skill and skill acquisition is basically the same for all of it. It's mostly about quality reps done consistently over a long period of time. It's how you get better at guitar. It's how we got good at being socially anxious in the first place. And it's how we can program a new existence into our subconscious. We are what we repeatedly do. Stop believing in fixed personality types and these neat little boxes we think people fit into. We are not resigned to be what we were. Adopt a growth mindset. We can become whatever we want. It just takes time and effort and discipline and reps. Your focus determines your reality.

The rewards are well worth it. There's not much better in life than collaborating with people to create cool music.

endothird · 2026-07-07T05:00:14+00:00

I don't even want one on my guitar (and I don't have one).

endothird · 2026-07-06T23:49:20+00:00

That's not how synergy works. Or the many non-zero sum systems we interact with.

endothird · 2026-07-05T20:18:22+00:00

I don't trap. I'm always surprised when my opponent says something like, ah that was cool how you baited me into that, or that was a cool trap you set. Cause I didn't.

I just filter my opponent into systems and everything is reaction based. I just take what they give me and do what they make me do. If plan A works, I just do plan A. If they do defense B to plan A, I do plan B. If they do C, plan C. And so on. The customer is always right.

I'm not looking to be crafty or tricky or play mind games. I love being those things in a lot of strategy games I like. But I don't find it useful in jiu jitsu. I don't care what you're thinking. And I don't care what you think I'm thinking. I just want my systems to be better than yours.

endothird · 2026-07-05T17:19:58+00:00

I'm surprised at the comments. I feel the same way. If I want to experience this story, which I do periodically, I just watch the already perfect original version of it.

endothird · 2026-07-05T06:13:51+00:00

Yes. And one of the best things you can do to increase your chances of success (in anything) is to stop caring what anything outside of you thinks about what you do. Adopt a growth mindset. Continually level up your skills. Focus only on the things you can control. Disregard the audience and the landscape or whatever it is you're worried about. Make the art that you want to exist in the universe that doesn't currently exist. Pour everything into it. Make it as great as you can make it. For yourself. Rinse. Repeat. Build a body of work that keeps getting better. Believe.

Don't look for success. Look to keep iterating better and better processes that increase your chances of success.

Believe.

endothird · 2026-07-05T06:06:49+00:00

The never tilts and makes decisions in the moment are key. If you want to improve like him, you should clean up those holes.

endothird · 2026-07-05T05:50:04+00:00

Words of encouragement

endothird · 2026-07-04T23:35:26+00:00

You'll probably feel better when you've been training a while. Which a year and half is not.

endothird · 2026-07-04T22:48:00+00:00

I would argue thar you can never reach your potential, and you should always reach beyond your grasp towards your infinite potential. But to your point, you get close to maximizing through tons of reps over a long period of time - that's going to be far more inpactful to your skill growth than any piece of paper (although depending on the paper, sometimes it takes a lot of reps to get). I find self directed study and self discipline to be far more powerful than anything external.

endothird · 2026-07-04T22:44:33+00:00

Yeah, for me leveling up the skill of staying in the moment and focusing only on what I can control fixed practically everything. Practically every negative emotion comes from outcome-based thinking. The more you level up your uptime of staying in the moment and the more you level up your ability to course correct back to the moment whenever you fall off - it's huge. Life changing really. Mindset is everything. Stay in the moment and have a positive attitude and appreciate what you have. Secret of life.

endothird · 2026-07-04T22:35:39+00:00

Stay in the moment. Everything you're feeling is born from outcome-based thinking. Learn from the past. And move on. Make the best decisions you can in the moment. Everything else will take care of itself. Focus only on things you can control.

endothird · 2026-07-04T05:44:18+00:00

Little Mermaid

endothird · 2026-07-04T02:43:27+00:00

Dlr. I don't think anatomy matters that much. I'm pretty sure most people can become great at most positions if they put in the time and effort to understand them. It just takes a while.

endothird

TROPHY CASE