Every player at the poker table is fighting for something. Some for money, some for the sake of the fight, others to respect themselves. Each player's motivation, driving them forward and making them throw in the blinds, is different. But what if the player is completely tilted? What does he want?
Money? Not quite. There's no worse situation to collect money from others than being completely tilted. Often, such a player even moves up to higher limits and plays against those who are better than him. Let's say there's a 70% chance he'll lose a lot and a 30% chance he'll break even. We could simply conclude that such a player is completely irrational in trying to make money this way. But that's too simple. What if we assume he knows what he's doing and is even acting with his own incentives? If that's the case, what does he really want?
To modify his self-awareness – that's what he truly wants. He wants to escape from the story he's currently living in. For a player in a downswing, his entire downswing feels like one continuous painful event that connects him to a previous high point. But a session full of intense, stormy tilt changes everything. That 30% chance of breaking even allows him to escape the pain and end the downswing. Even if the 70% chance comes true and he loses a lot of money, the player loses so much that he no longer feels stuck, no longer tied to his former highs. He reboots his self-awareness.
Have you ever lost so much that you felt like you were in a new place? It changed everything. Suddenly, you had to reassess yourself, start from scratch.
This is the “resetting” of the story you tell yourself. It pushes so hard from the other side that you feel completely disoriented, almost refreshed. It's a decisive creation of a new chapter of your personality. You are no longer associated with the downturn you felt recently – everything starts anew. It's like throwing out old furniture, moving to a new apartment, or making a New Year's resolution list. It's a reference point where everything starts again. It may sound strange when explained this way, but it's what we experience – the feeling of being free from the old story. It's relaxation.
A heavily tilted player ensures that he will experience a mental transformation this way. That's what he's fighting for. He wants to be free from his story, and in a certain sense, it's a very smart incentive. The only problem is that from a second-order perspective, it's not the best way to do it because it sabotages long-term goals (namely, making money). Instead of sacrificing everything for the reset, it would be much better if we tried to reformulate our beliefs ourselves.
Self-awareness stories are the narratives through which we feel ourselves, and reformulated beliefs are the rewrites of those same stories. We've encountered many times that such transformations are very beneficial, but how do we truly internalize our new story?
Simply. Just by telling and retelling it to yourself over and over again. Why did the ancient Greeks 
believe in stories about Zeus and Apollo without ever seeing any evidence of them? They believed because of the power of storytelling. Stories gain strength when they are told over and over again. If told sincerely, the story becomes more powerful, more convincing, and eventually, you have no choice but to believe it.
So, think about the stories you tell yourself. They may not be obvious, but if you bring them to light, you can reveal them to yourself. Explore these stories and decide how you could refine them to serve you better. And as you get better at it, you can completely rewrite your journey of experience.
