We have already discussed things like isolated exercises and general game rehearsal, which can make our game more conscious. However, engaging in poker is generally more deceptive than something else. If you rehearse a piano sonata, you can usually hear a missed note, but as a poker player, you don't always know if you made a mistake. Poker constantly sends us feedback, but it is very noisy and chaotic. This is partly why it is difficult to learn this game.
Feedback causes mental conditioning. Positive feedback will encourage certain behaviors, while negative feedback will deter such behaviors. Imagine your mind as a rabbit in a cage, being fed either food pellets or shocked with electricity. Usually, you get food for good actions and are shocked for bad behavior. But in poker, both “food” and “electric shocks” sometimes come unexpectedly. It can often seem like there is no rhythm or reason: food, shock, food, shock, shock, food. Experiencing such chaos, you feel confused and come up with all sorts of strange and foreign ideas about why “food” or “shock” arrives. And it's no wonder, because that's exactly what a novice does. When I played NL 10, after losing several big pots with aces against 25o and 34o, I started to believe that playing low cards was smart because the opponent with big pairs would never guess that I hit two pairs or trips with such a hand…
This is what it means to be result-oriented. If you are result-oriented, you will respond to the superficial level of feedback that poker sends. For example, if you bluff and fail, you lose confidence and decide it was a bad action. Being result-oriented means you are affected by what poker is doing to you at that moment. However, poker is a very capricious game, and we, as experienced and thoughtful players, need to be conscious. So, instead of letting poker 
do what it wants, you have to take everything into your own hands, put on a lab coat, and become a scientist, feeding or “shocking” your mind with electricity.
We want to be process-oriented. Instead of focusing on results and wanting to win every hand, let's focus on the process of making good decisions in the long run. This allows us to take actions that may lose the pot but will not negatively affect us and will enable us to take such action again next time. This gives us control to manage our own conditioning. Being process-oriented allows us to bypass the randomness and chaos in poker and directly shape our minds for the ideal game.
So, how do you become process-oriented? How do you stop feeling bad when you lose a hand? There are two answers. The first, over time, everything will get easier. Lose enough hands, and you will become desensitized to losing, as well as the negative mindset that comes with it. The second answer is a bit more complicated and brings us back to the realm of cognitive shifts, but more on that in the next article.
Haseeb Qureshi
