257. Jason Su | The Joy of Poker: Win More With Less Stress And No Regret

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Jason Su, author of *The Joy of Poker: Win More with Less Stress and No Regrets*. Jason is a longtime cash game pro, performance coach, and the founder of Poker with Presence. Over the last two decades, he's coached high-level poker players, athletes, and entrepreneurs, helping them master the mental game. Stay grounded under pressure, and rediscover the joy in peak performance. Whether you're a poker enthusiast or business professional, this conversation is packed with powerful insights that transcend the felt. You'll learn how to cultivate emotional intelligence in high-stakes environments, the role of presence and acceptance in long-term success, and why true performance isn't about grinding harder— it's about being fully present. Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Jason Tzoo.

Jason Tzoo, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. I'm excited to talk with you today about your brand new book, and here's where I'd like to start. You're 18 years old and you decide to play poker for the first time. What is that experience like for you?

The first time I played for real money was in a friend's garage in high school. And I remember within 30 minutes just being like, oh my God, this is the greatest thing of all time. Because I, I had just finished my competitive tennis career. And as a very strong-willed competitor who likes to win at stuff, I needed something to channel that into. And all of a sudden, here's this game where not only can you do that, But it doesn't require you to be physically gifted, which, which I'm not. And also you can get money. So I was like, wow, this is just, this is just the greatest thing. And this was made for me. And that was my first experience of playing poker.

Yeah, that's right. I remember you saying in the book that sometimes you'd look across the table and you'd see an adult and they'd seem poised, but here you are, heart pounding out of your chest. And so you wondered, how do they perform and remain calm? And And, um, so like, bring us back to that moment. I mean, what was kind of the craziest early poker experience that you have? Was it a certain amount of money that you won or anything?

I'd say within the first 6 months of me starting to play poker, I was playing for pretty serious amounts of money that almost nobody who plays poker will ever play. And probably, yeah, the first time I won $1,000 was— it just blew my mind. That was like, oh my God, you can, you can do this. And I was 18 years old, playing with lawyers and doctors and some not so reputable people. And there's just money flying around everyone. I left the game and went back to my college dorm with an extra $1,000 in my pocket. And I thought, wow, this, this could really be something.

Oh, yeah, reminds me a little bit of the blackjack movie. What is that called? 21, where he's leaving his college dorm, making a bunch of money and then coming home and his friends are like, what are you up to? So were you kind of living that same lifestyle? I mean, outside of flying to Vegas and everything?

Yeah, absolutely. And then when I turned 21, I did fly to Vegas all the time to go and live that lifestyle. So yeah, it was, it was a different college experience from most. Whereas everybody I knew was partying at nights and on weekends, I was, I was playing poker. And that was, that was the, that was what I wanted to be doing. And it set me up really well for the life that I ended up living.

Well, Jason, when I first met you, I threw out a reservation when I read your book title. I said, hey, I think— I mean, it sounds like a great book, you sound like a great person to learn from, but I'm not a poker player. And you said, have you ever heard of The Inner Game of Tennis? And I said, yeah. And he said, well, it's not— you said it's not really a book about tennis, it's really a book about what's happening inside of your head when you're competing. And you said your book is very similar to that. And so I went into your book with the understanding that it's not about poker. And I think that's true. I mean, I learned a lot, which we'll talk about over the next half an hour. But was that an inspiration for you writing this book?

Yeah, I've got it on my shelf. It was one of the 2 books I bought when I was a junior tennis player looking to gain an edge was Inner Game of Tennis. So I read that for the first time when I was 15 years old. And I must have internalized a lot of the concepts because I ended up beating a lot of players in tennis who were way better than me, and I had no business beating them because my mental game was was just better than theirs. And then that translated into me playing poker, and then as my poker career progressed, I needed to rededicate myself to the performance aspect of the game. And yeah, I quote the inner game of tennis. In the book, on the COVID there's an image of a tennis ball inside one of the chips because I really wanted to honor that part of my life and the influence that that book had on this work.

There are so many business professionals in the audience today, and so stick with us because I think that a lot of what Jason's going to teach us and talk about and create some curiosity so that you go out and buy the book. But what we're going to talk about today definitely applies to the business world. And so many other competitive endeavors. Uh, you said nothing's off limits, so I'm curious, are you able to share an estimate of how much money you've won yourself playing poker competitively?

Yeah, me personally, I stopped playing poker competitively many years ago, but it's, it's well into the 7 figures. And it's not— I didn't have like the most amazing poker career by any means. I was good. I enjoyed it. I made great money for many years, but I was never one of the top, top players, nor did I ever seem to be interested in making the sacrifices needed to get to that highest of levels, which is funny now because in the business I have now of coaching, whether it's poker players or business executives, which I do, I am extremely interested in the competitive juice is back around. I do want to be the absolute best at this. I do want to be known as the person who took everything to another level for people in their performance. So that's, that's kind of where I'm at now.

Yeah, that's really interesting. So you're finding more joy in coaching poker players and business professionals than you were playing the game yourself?

Yeah, I, in my early 20s to mid-20s, I would say That enthusiasm for actually playing the game was, was like, wow, this is the most amazing thing ever. And now that's how I feel about what I do now. There's never a day where I'm like, this is— I don't want to do it. This is just the greatest, the greatest thing for me right now. And, and so this makes it the right fit. But for those people who are still in that phase themselves of, yeah, poker is my thing, or whatever else they're doing. Business is my thing. Running a company is my thing. And I want to make sure I squeeze every bit of myself and walk away with no regrets. If someday this ends, then I'm here for it. I'm ready to roll.

Yeah, good. Well, you're present, which is a big word in your life. You sort of bookend the book. And what I mean by that is you talk in the beginning about how So many people, when they're starting a new endeavor, they get all energized by it. There's this childlike nature. They're all excited. They set big goals. And over time, through the lens of poker but also in business, typically that energy starts to go down as competition gets more complex. And I think the stakes are a little bit higher. And then towards the end of the book, you have an experience where you're talking to somebody that you're coaching and you bring them back. Like, what was that first experience like? And that person realizes they've actually flown past their goals. And I think that happens with a lot of people. And so what is it about starting? Is it blissful ignorance? Is it— what is it about starting that allows people to let their guard down and just be so present and playful with whatever the activity is, poker or business or something else?

I think what's happened— I think what happens is that When we start something, for most people, we're very honest and clear about what's true, about what we like about it, what we're interested in, our goals, what makes us happy about it. And then once you dive into any of these worlds, the people who are in there already, they start trying to give us these messages about like, no, you shouldn't want it like this, you should want to do it like this. This is what's supposed to be the most important thing. So the best example I can give is that the poker player who first starts out will say stuff like, wow, I really love to play. I just want to win a lot of money and have a great time and play how I want to play. That's what excites me. And then they'll run into other poker players who have been around a long time, the grizzled veterans, and the grizzled veterans will say, no, no, no, you shouldn't care about winning. You should only care about your process. You should only care about whether you're learning each day and getting better each day. And are you eating well and living healthy and making sure that you play a lot of hours? That's what should make you happy, is to just do those things. And then when you start buying into that, you get surrounded by enough of these people, you start to believe the message that this is what should make you happy, and, and you lose sight of what you actually love about it. And, and that's when the passion starts to fade. I definitely fell into that. in my mid to late 20s and had to kind of find my way back.

So when you're meeting with a new client for the first time, and you're going through this initial assessment of where did the joy go, I imagine, does that happen to most people? Is that why they seek you out as a coach? Is that one of the major problems they're looking to solve when they choose to work with you?

Yeah, I'm almost never the first coach somebody comes to. I'm always the one they come to after they've tried the other coaches who love to do the optimizations and the let's build healthy habits and let's reframe the situation in your mind stuff, because all that stuff seems like real low-hanging fruit that could really improve your life. But when you've lost the fire, you've lost the fire, and the only thing that's going to bring it back is for you to remember what it was and face it and really dedicate yourself to, to making that your highest priority is having the experiences that you had when you first started that made you fall in love with it. If you don't do that, no amount of other habits you add in are going to make a difference.

Hmm. It's almost like the more you learn about something, the more complex it becomes, because you're now weighing all these variables that you weren't aware of when you first started, right? Like, something that stuck out to me when I was reading your book, Jason, was And again, I, I'm not a poker player, but it sounds like as you become professional, you know how much money you make per hour on average. I think you said something like, okay, if I make $60 an hour and my goal is to make X amount per week, I know how many hours of poker I need to be playing. And that's just— now you're in spreadsheets and you're running formulas and, and like, yeah, I could see how that sucks you out of what you initially started with was, which was probably like the rush of earning your first couple of bucks.

Yeah, the freedom of living life on your terms, of doing things your way, of being the one in charge, and always knowing that you get to make the decision. Well, so many poker players and people in any other field, the deeper you go, you start to believe oh no, this is how I should do it, instead of this is what feels right to me. And the more you start to make decisions based on what you should do or what you believe you should do, what other people tell you you should do, then each time you do that, it takes you further away from that spark that, yeah, this is the thing that makes me love it. You take that away, all you're left with is the pain that comes with entrepreneurship or playing poker, right? And none of the good stuff. You gotta have that.

Yeah.

First piece, because otherwise the discomforts of being out on your own and not having the steady job and predictability of that, it becomes too much to bear.

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I think one one difference, and, and I'd love to hear your opinion on this. Hmm, how should I explain this? In the world of business, as Book Thinkers is growing, and, and, you know, throughout the last couple of years, I've tried things out that don't bring me energy. I'm very conscious of that, and so I choose to remove them. And now I'm realizing that to continue to grow my business, sometimes I can delegate the things that don't bring me energy but are an important ingredient or maybe necessary for scaling my business and getting it to the next level to somebody who does get energy from that activity. What's unique about poker or tennis is that they are solo sports and entrepreneurship doesn't have to be. And so do you work with business owners on that? I mean, the idea of delegating something that doesn't bring them energy but might be important to their business.

I do, yeah. And, and they often have a lot of resistance to it because of the kind of discomfort that comes with letting go of, of something and not having constant, uh, supervision over it, right? And then so that then we come back to the core skill of, okay, well, it is true that you want this and you are uncomfortable with the emotional experience you have around it. Well, that's not going to resolve itself into you having the exact outcome you desire until you let yourself experience the discomfort in a way that you still feel okay. And so a lot of people do get stuck on that of, yes, intellectually I see that this is a good idea to delegate this thing to somebody else, and I can't get over the discomfort around it, so I'm just gonna stay here and keep doing this thing that makes me suffer.

Yeah, I, I was there for a long time, I think. And in some ways, I'm sure I'm still there. Uh, when I was in college, Jason, I ran my own house painting business for a couple of years, and I had to hire a bunch of my friends to go perform the jobs that I was selling. And I would step in and I would do the work for them. And a boss of mine at the time, he would say, Nick, he who can do the work of 5 people is not as great as he who can get 5 people to do the work for him. And I struggled with that for so long. But, but bringing it back to The Joy of Poker, one of the most important ideas that you share early on, and I touched— I shared this on social media, is that a lot of people try to solve emotional issues with logic. And thinking is often the root of the problem, right? I mean, that's something that you talk about with your clients.

Yeah, absolutely. The thing that most people will come to me with is, I just can't deal with failure in a healthy way. I'm so miserable every time that something doesn't go my way. And I say, well, what have you tried to do it? And they'll, they'll almost always say, I try to be logical about it, remind myself how much money I won, how successful I am, how I should be grateful because I get to do this thing. I get to play a game and do well at it. And I said, does that help? They say, no, that's why I'm here. And that's the thing is the mind is amazing, obviously. The mind is incredible at solving problems. The mind is fantastic for taking you from point A to point B in, in so many ways. The one thing it cannot do is help you feel your feelings and be there, be present with them so that they no longer weigh you down. And because the mind is so great at all these other things, we've tried to shoehorn it into this last job. To try and find ways to— well, how can my mind solve the emotions? This is all these frameworks that people have come up with do, not seeing that it's because all you do is think about what you're feeling instead of actually feeling what you're feeling that you have this weight on you that doesn't ever go away.

I have, uh, maybe you can help me workshop this a little bit enough. I've thought too much about this, and it seems like thinking about it is the problem. But here it is. I'm starting to do some public speaking. I get asked because of the size of our social media following or some of my connections, hey, Nick, can you come and speak at this event? And I will be minutes away from getting on stage and my heart is pounding 1,000 miles an hour, and I'll try to logic myself out of it. Nick, You're not being chased by a saber-toothed tiger. You're just walking out on stage. You're here to serve, right? Logically. So you shouldn't be worried because it's about the audience. It's not about you. And I'll try to slow my breathing down, longer exhales, shorter inhales, and it doesn't work for me. So can you help me? What, what, what's a good suggestion maybe to help me through that moment?

Yeah, so the stuff that you're not doing is being completely honest with yourself about the experience that you're having. So really all we need is acknowledgement of the truth. So if it's like, okay, my heart is pounding, that's what I would— okay, man, my heart is pounding, that's crazy. And actually just notice and, and be with this. My heart is pounding.

Right.

And then, and then check in. Am I still here? Like, did the world blow up because I didn't try to fix that? Right. You're trying to fix it and make it go away.

Yeah.

You're believing that this is a problem, that my heart is pounding and I'm kind of angsty and, and fidgety, instead of just allowing that to be true, because it is. And, and your mind is having a lot of thoughts, right, of like, okay, yeah, I want to do a good job. I'm I'm afraid I'm not going to do a good job. What are they going to think? Well, yeah, you are thinking those things. That's not a problem in itself. You make it a problem by trying to divert yourself away from it, by making it not true, or distracting yourself and do something else. So it's just a simple matter of, wow, I got a lot of energy running through me. My heart's pounding, racing. I want to do a great job. I don't know if I'm going to do a great job. And to really just That's it. That's, that's all you have to really acknowledge to yourself and have that experience, and you'll on average do much, much better than you currently are.

Yeah, well, that's, well, that's really helpful, and I will practice that next time I'm walking out on stage. So that was a great glimpse into what it probably is like to have you as a coach. So if there's somebody in the audience that's like, I need a little bit of that, help in my discipline, where can people go to learn more about you as a coach? How do people get in touch with you?

Yeah, you can check me out over at pokerwithpresence.com. I'm also very active on Twitter, Jason B. Su, and I have a YouTube channel, um, on my name, Jason Su, or Poker with Presence. And yeah, everything I make, I tend to frame it in the viewpoint from a person playing poker, but people tell me all the time, they— the light bulb goes on and they'll email me and say, you're not talking about poker. And I'm like, yeah, you're right. I'm a poker player. And this is the world I have lived in my whole life. So it's easy to speak in these terms. But yeah, this is— it's human. And I'm in the human business very much.

Yeah, I have a couple of mentors, AJ and Rory Vaden, and they talk about breaking through what they call Sheehan's Wall, which is you go really niche and serve who you're best positioned to serve. And then naturally, once you break through the wall, you can expand out from there. And so Just like you. I mean, Book Thinkers has so much more room to grow in the author space, but we serve a lot of thought leaders that haven't written a book, mostly through referral. And we're not ready to prospect to them, but we serve them because it's a natural extension of what we do. And it sounds like you're in a similar situation where there's still room to grow in the poker community, I'd imagine, but that you get referred out to business people all the time.

Yeah, absolutely. I love Hanging out with poker players and, and talking about their experiences, because I am one. I still like to play sometimes. And at the same time, when a CEO of a business hits me up, I'm like, sure, let's, let's talk and see how I can help you. Or, or golfers have come to me for help, and, uh, you know, baseball, music, trading, it's all the same. It's like If you have an experience consistently of there's this thing that I do that I love, but I feel like I'm not doing the greatest job at it, well, that's probably something I could help you with.

Yeah, I love it. Well, you mentioned earlier your experience with tennis. You just mentioned that you serve golf pros too. When I was growing up, I wasn't the most talented athlete, but I loved playing sports. And so I really relied on a saying that was familiar with in my household, which was hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. And you had a line in your book that I really enjoyed, which is a weaker player who's focused and composed can often outperform the better player who's emotionally overwhelmed. And I think that's a similar thing. Like, you do the work on the front side to make sure that you don't fall off course. And talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, how many times have you seen that play out in high-stakes competitive poker?

Sadly, I had to be on the wrong side of that one many times in my, in my 20s. And the thing is, poker is a game where it does not matter how good you have been up to that point, it only matters how good you are today. And so it's, it's always on the line for you every time you sit down, no matter how good you are, no matter how much more you know about the game. than the person you're sitting there with, you still have to execute. You still have to perform to the level that you've trained yourself to play at. If you don't, there's always somebody there ready to take your money, to take your spot, to take the trophies that you think should be yours. And it's kind of like a cycle that everybody tends to play out many times of work hard, build up the foundations, the skills, execute at a high level, then think you've got it made and be like, okay, this is just who I am now, this is just my level now, and then conveniently ignoring the aspects that kind of glued it all together, and then having the fall and then having to kind of like start again.

Yeah, I'm a few months into, uh, playing chess, and I think in the first couple of months there was such a, a rapid learning stage that I started playing online, like live chess, timed. And the platform I'm using ranks players. And so I'd beat a player that's ranked higher than me and I'd get a little cocky and I'd get into the next game and I'd forget a fundamental and I'd lose to somebody who's ranked a lot lower than me. And it definitely happens. You know, thank God there's no money in these chess games that I'm playing because I've lost a lot more games than I've won over the last few months. But I can put myself in your shoes, I think, you know, just understanding what it feels like when that happens.

Yeah. And, and so you've had that experience when there's not much on the line. So you imagine the degrees of variance for people's ability to stay composed and perform when a lot of money is on the line, when your status is on the line, when other— what other people think of you is on the line, your legacy is on the line, then the more that's on the line, the more emotions you feel. And so if you can feel enough emotion from winning, uh, an online chess game to, to take you down, imagine what happens when there's lots of money at stake.

Yeah, we, we had, uh, it reminds me of something I read in a book called Flex Your Feelings by Dr. Emily Arnault. And she said that a marathoner will train for 6 to 12 months before a marathon, yet an entrepreneur or a poker player typically doesn't train their emotional intelligence very much, if at all, before starting a business or sitting down at a high-stakes game like that. And so it just goes to show, like, there's so much opportunity to improve, I think, as business professionals, because again, that's who's who's in the audience today for the most part. Um, you know, there's so much value in, in learning what you teach inside of this book.

Yeah, it's, it's a real question everybody should ask themselves is, do I want to be the smartest person in the room who knows the most stuff, or do I want to be the one who has the most success and makes the most money? Yes, because those 2 people are almost never the same people.

Yes. And by the way, Jason, I'm having this conversation all the time with authors and specifically about social media. Do you wanna be the person that has the most followers? Virality is attractive to people— likes, shares, comments, followers— but those are vanity metrics. Oftentimes they sit on the exact opposite end of the spectrum Then impact, breakthrough, money, right? High-ticket complex coaching or consulting is the opposite of virality because virality by its own definition in nature needs to appeal to more people. Yet when you're selling a high-priced service like you are, it only applies to a very specific type of person, a very small subsegment of humanity. And so yeah, you get caught up. Um, in these big fancy moments when what you're really looking for is to make money, because that's what at the end of the day is probably the most fulfilling when you're playing poker. It's winning.

Yeah, yeah. You can't buy groceries with likes, and, and you certainly can't pay the bills if you knew what the right play was in theory, but you couldn't do it in the moment when you saw the money going in front of you and, and you started feeling a little funny. And, and so it's like 2 very, very different things.

What's, uh, you told us that you've earned 7 figures playing poker. What's, uh, can you share with the audience what's the most amount of money that you've made because of this? You could call it like emotional catastrophe, you know, losing control.

I've, I've won a couple of poker tournaments. Uh, like I said, not, not like the most amazing career, but you know, Reasonable. I won a couple tournaments of around $150,000, so I'm pretty, pretty proud of those. And, and definitely those were times when I was, I was very locked in, focused, kind of seeing the whole picture without— I wasn't like hyper-managing and trying to like get every detail, but it was all just coming in. I was really in the zone, um, for those 2. So yeah, those are, those are my biggest wins of From my, from my life.

What are your biggest losses?

A couple times ranging from $10,000 to $15,000 in a day.

Yeah, that is a lot of money.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, you get used to it. When that's the world you live in, it starts to, it starts to just become an experience that you can start to get used to. Yeah, the first time you lose $10,000 in a day playing poker, it does not feel good. I won't lie. And many people, when that happens, they don't deal well with it. And then that causes them to tailspin into performing worse and worse until they eventually can't keep going. And so a lot of what lets people succeed in poker is being able to do that. Have a day where it's just not your day and you lose huge. Can you stay present with that feeling instead of running off into whatever people do? Overeating, smoking, drinking, blah blah blah, to distract yourself from that, or having to take a long break. Can you just be there and, and acknowledge the truth? Yeah, I lost huge. This is what it feels like. This feels awful, but I'm here for it. I'm, I'm just having this experience. And if you can, then you'll be able to let go of it without regrets, without being able to— without having to like stay up all night thinking about it. You'll be able to go to sleep Wake up and still feel the pain, but ready to continue the journey onward. And that's what it's all about. No matter what you're doing, it's never just a straight line up. You put yourself out there, sometimes you get knocked down, and that comes with big emotions. And that's when the real game starts. What are you going to do there? Because everybody does great when the cards are rolling in your favor. Everybody is a genius. Everybody executes perfectly when everything is going your way. What are you going to do In the rest of the moments.

It reminds me of a line you have in the book where you say emotions are neutral. And you also talk about how presence, which is a big word, presence is a skill. So talk to us a little bit about that. I mean, how is that skill cultivated? You know, how can somebody in the audience actually build more presence?

It's, it's your ability to Kind of like we've been talking about, actually notice what the true experience is that you're having. So many people get caught up in believing the nonsense that their mind comes up with, right? Like, oh, I'm getting screwed over here. This is so unfair. No, that's— none of that is actually true, right? Or I'm, you know, I'm freaking out because of this. No, that's not true. You're just freaking out, and that's the end of the sentence.

Mm.

Can you allow yourself to just freak out without needing to solve the problem, without needing to make it go away? And each time that you can get through that experience of, yeah, that's, that's what's happening, and I'm gonna let myself just have this experience, you come through the other side and you gain real confidence. Because now you know, like, oh, that horrible thing happened in the past, that would have like set me off and I would have been Doing all this other stuff that would have made everything worse. But this time I didn't do any of that. I just, I was just there for it. And now I feel fine and ready to keep going. And all that extra time you save, imagine what you can produce and create with that when you're not freaking out or beating up on yourself or telling yourself that you shouldn't be feeling how you feel, telling yourself you shouldn't be thinking what you're thinking. That's a lot of time that people spend doing those things. When it takes a lot less time to just have the experience you're having with total honesty and, and then move forward. And, and so that's the skill that you can very much learn how to, how to grow.

I had a funny moment. I shared this with my wife the other day, but I was driving back home from somewhere, the gym or the coffee shop, and I had a young kid cut me off, like very unsafe. I was driving straight. He cut me off horizontally. And actually flipped me off when he drove in front of me. And Nick 10 years ago would've reacted poorly to that situation. But instead of building a story around it or taking it personally, I just sort of experienced it and then I let it go and I moved on with my day. And I, it got brought up because it got brought up in the car with my wife later on. It wasn't like I was consistently thinking about it, but I just— You know, it helped me look back and say, yeah, you know what, I have grown a lot emotionally. And I'm sure that that applies to the sales calls I host when somebody says no and hangs up the call or whatever the case is. Like, I just, I'm not as attached anymore, I think, to those experiences.

Yeah. And a lot of people kind of get to where you've gotten from just having it happen over and over until you just kind of accept that this is just kind of what it's like being in my business, is a lot of people say no. And, um, and so, okay, that, that happened. And, and so that's, that's one way to do it. And then, uh, the way I, I teach people to do is, oh, we can get there much faster, right? There's like very specific building blocks to the experience of that final level of acceptance of like, this is this is kind of what's happening, that you can, you can really train yourself to do. And then, uh, you know, the, the faster you can do that, gain acceptance of things happening that you don't like, that's, that's superpower. Now we're talking into superpower territory.

Yeah, we are. Uh, well, now I'm curious. So I, I'll mention that I'm a really big fan of Stoic philosophy. It's an actionable philosophy And it does talk about the difference between what's within your control and what's outside of your control. I think a lot of people, there's this, and you talk about it in your book actually, there's this illusion of control where you mistakenly think that something is in your control that's not. And, uh, is that, is that one of the key distinctions in accelerating that acceptance or?

Yeah.

Tell me a little bit about that.

Yeah, 100%. Actually, I, I've Come across a lot of people who say they're into Stoicism, but then they, they botch this part about the what is actually in your control versus not, and they try to control stuff that is actually not in their control. Like, what are you thinking about right now? You have zero control over what you're thinking about right now. What are you feeling right now? No control over what you're feeling. What do you want? No, no control. You want what you want. You love who you love.

Right?

So much great art and literature has been made about people who love who they love but try to tell themselves they don't love that person. And that's the 3 things that I see people are, are really off on. And when you try to start manipulating your experience on what you want, what you're thinking, and how you feel, Mm-hmm. instead of just accepting That, and then being present with the emotional experience that comes with each of those, that's what creates problems in your life, because now you behave differently compared to the version of yourself who does. And what I always tell people is you don't have to like how you feel, you don't have to like what you're thinking, you don't even have to like what you want, but you better accept it if you want your performance to be good moving forward.

Yeah, now we're getting to Mastery. How long did it take you to realize that most people were getting that wrong? And was it an experience in your own life? Or was it just through coaching and observing other people?

Yeah, probably the last 5 years since I put professional poker on the, on the shelf to coach exclusively. And now instead of spending thousands of years playing poker and spending thousands of years coaching people and, and just completely living in this place of what creates high performance and what creates friction, to— started to see the patterns of, okay, wow, these are, these are clearly the things that when people have resistance to what's happening and they want it to be different, it doesn't matter how much skill they have, they, they start performing worse. And, and, and sadly, I did not know these things when I was playing. There's this part of me that I was like, man, if I knew these things when I was playing, I would have done way better, but somebody had to figure it out. And, and so in the, in the poker world, I'm, I'm happy to be the one who did it.

Yeah, I've spent, uh, over the last 10 years, I've spent a lot of time, as I mentioned before, working on what, what a lot of people would call emotional intelligence. And I think a big piece of that for me has been meditation. And I've done a lot of interesting forms of meditation, like trying to anticipate your next thought. And seeing that it's impossible, obviously. I was like, oh yeah, no, seeing that it's impossible and, and, um, you know, trying to view myself from a third-party perspective. And so Nick, who's about to walk on stage, whose heart's pounding through his chest, and then viewing that Nick from a third-party perspective, just realizing that, yeah, the only way to get through it is acceptance, which I think is a really wise way of phrasing That.

Yeah, that's, that's cool. I love meditation. I'm a big fan. I'm all about it. And what I've noticed is lots of people come to me telling me they're meditating every day and exercising every day, doing all this stuff. But the whole, the whole goal of it, I think, is to get you into acceptance of what you're thinking, what you're feeling, and what you want. And, and so if you're just sitting there, but then you don't end up in that place, you're just sitting there thinking about what you're gonna eat for dinner. And it doesn't, it doesn't really do anything. So I always tell people, yeah, whatever you need to do to get to that place of acceptance. If it's meditating, fantastic, then meditate every day. Or if it's cooking dinner, great, do that. I don't care what you do, but you got to get here.

I love the yes, and there. Does that come from the improv world?

Yeah, it must, right? That's, that's the The turning point of my life was finding the first improv class and remembering how to play as an adult, which I had forgotten for so many years.

Yeah.

Do you think that— do you think your book is a good exercise in play? You know, people are going to pick it up because They're trying to solve a problem, you know. And I think that oftentimes— I'm wearing a shirt today that says read less and apply more. I think that oftentimes reading becomes the task that people focus on instead of the application, and, and they don't allow themselves to slow down and enjoy the process. They just try to get through as many books as possible. And so, you know, does your book—

Yeah.

Do you think your book would help the younger version of Jason who Yeah. Had lost his, uh, instinct to play and get you back into that place.

So, so much. What, what I'll say is that my book, everything I do, if you really use it, you will solve your problems. Because a problem is not a situation. A problem is your inability to accept the situation. The moment you accept it, it's not a problem anymore. It's just that this is what's happening and Now let's see what I want to do next. So you— if you really use the things I talk about, you will solve all your problems. And as a byproduct, you will be having a good time while you do it, because that's our default state. Our default state, if you go out and watch kids run around on a playground, is to have a good time and whatever is happening, accept it, and then build on it and see what we want to do next. It's not to See what's happening, complain about it, whine about it, tell ourselves that we screwed up, and then see what we want to do next. So the path of acceptance takes you to ultimately who you really are and reopens you back to your capacity to engage with what's happening in a way that's playful, opens up your curiosity, brings your creativity, your uniqueness back to the situation, takes you out of the formulas and the structures and this is what I should do, and instead, oh, like, what, what do I want to do? And what, you know, what would be, what would be like an enjoyable way to do this? And, and once you start doing that, you remember how to do that. If you have a consistent, reliable way to do that, you'll never want to go back. Hmm.

And you're allowed, you're allowed to pick on the next question a little bit, but I'm curious what your take is In Stoicism, there's a Latin phrase that gets quoted a lot that's accredited to Nietzsche, amor fati, which is the love of one's fate. And the idea behind that is that first you recognize what's within your control and what's not, and then you take everything outside of your control and you view it as either neutral, which is, I suppose, a form of acceptance, Or positive, you love it, which I think maybe is another form of acceptance. But what you're saying is that you don't have control over what you love. And so maybe there's actually an exercise in, in unnecessary resistance happening when you try to love things that you know are outside of your control, but also create a negative state when you interact with it. Does that make any sense?

Yeah, I, I strongly believe that this is where a lot of people's source of frustration and suffering comes from, is telling themselves, this is not how I should be feeling right now, this is not how I should be responding to this right now, I should not want it to be this way, I should want it to be that way, because that way is, I know, better for me in, in the long run. And so yeah, you don't, you don't control your reaction to anything, you don't control your Current opinion on anything. You can't just tell yourself to change your opinion, and then it changes. So if it's like this happened, and it's out of my control, and I really don't like it, that's the truth. You can't be like, "I don't like it," but okay, wait, wait, wait. What was I supposed to do? Oh yeah, I love it. Well, you're gonna become insane if you if you try and live your life like that. And, and you're having an emotional experience that is completely opposite of what your mind is saying. So now there's all this like tension inside you, and you think you're doing something correct. But when is it ever correct to lie to yourself about the experience that you're having?

Oh, there we go. That's a mic drop moment right there. Yeah, you know what, I, I mistakenly thought in my past that by focusing on emotional intelligence and being more aware through meditation and other practices of mindfulness and stuff like that, that I could change my default response to things that would trigger me to feel negative, and I could get them to trigger me to feel neutral or positive. I did make that mistake. And then as you research the brain, you realize that there is an immediate emotional response to any stimuli into your brain. And the logical part of your brain doesn't kick in until after. It will never kick in before the emotion. And I love what you said, which is that if they are in disagreement, then that misalignment creates, uh, I mean, there's obviously like some weight there, right? And so, um, I love what you're saying.

Yeah. So love is acceptance. Acceptance is love. If you truly love somebody, you accept them exactly. As they are, right? When you accept somebody exactly as they are, you love them. And and so you know amor fati love accept what is, right? It's this is what's happening. It's not good or bad. It's just what's happening. Your experience of it, your relationship to what's happening will either feel positive or negative depending on whether or not you accept it. Right now.

Towards the end of the book, in the acknowledgments, you talk about how you're the luckiest man in the world, not because of your poker play, right, but because of your wife and your daughter. So do you ever find yourself not accepting them as a partner and as a parent for exactly who they are? Or are you at this stage always in acceptance mode?

So 2 things can be true. I can be— and this is going to be about the kids specifically— I can completely accept that she is who she is and really not like something that she's doing. And then I can accept both of those things at the same time.

Both/and. There it is.

Yeah, both are true, right? It's like, yes, I accept this is how you are, and I don't like what you're doing right now. And I'll tell her, I'll be like, I don't like what you're doing right now.

Oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense. As I was sharing, I'm always looking for parenting advice, so I think that was good parenting advice. Back to, uh, the core of the book again for the audience. We're talking about The Joy of Poker, which is not just about poker, it's about life. Um, you share a brilliant distinction between achievement and success, and you use Michael Jordan as an example. Talk to us a little bit about why Michael Jordan Might not be as successful as most people think he is.

I defined success as accomplishments that are both sustainable and enjoyable, where each time you accomplish something, it fuels you, makes you feel better, makes you feel more energized, more motivated, more creative, more inspired for the next thing. And that's, that's a much different bar from just achievement, which is just like Whatever it takes to get the thing done, and and so Michael Jordan very well known for using revenge and being upset about being underestimated and people not respecting him, using that as his fuel to get the job done. And I'm not saying it doesn't work; it definitely works for a lot of people. A lot of high achievers, most almost everybody goes in this direction. I'm going to use. These slights or, or these problems as ways to fuel myself to greatness. The problem is that if you want greatness, you require the thing that you hate. So you hate people doubting you, but you need them to doubt you in order to be great. And you're not going to give up the greatness, so you're just going to keep seeking out people who doubt you. And, and there's many different forms of this that people do. But the gist of it is that you live this way and, and you require the thing that you hate the most in order to accomplish what you want to accomplish. And the more you accomplish, the worse you feel. And you have to keep getting larger and larger doses of the thing that you hate to keep taking yourself to the highest levels. This is why so many of the wealthiest, most quote-unquote successful people in the world are the unhappiest and most miserable in the world.

And that's a fact, by the way, Jason. I mean, I have an entire wall of books behind me that demonstrate that exact thing.

Yeah.

And I think one of the greatest lessons I've learned, you know, I'm 31 years old, is that you should never sacrifice, uh, the joy of what you do in exchange for something like money. It's just silly. Every single person who's ever played that game has ended up regretting it. And I've just read that story play out far too many times to go down that road. Yeah. Yeah.

And everybody knows that logically, right? But without an alternative of like, okay, yeah, but I want to have a lot of money and I want to accomplish all these things. You got to— you can't just say like, that's not a good way to live and then set them off. You have to actually give an alternative to living in that way.

Yeah, very true. I, you know, I look back 10 years ago, if you would've tapped me on the shoulder, I would've said stuff to you like 40 hours a week. I remember my first part-time job and I would wear, and I'd wear burnout as a badge of honor and I would outwork everybody around me and I didn't enjoy it, but I pretended like I did. And so I think sometimes you have to go through an experience like that yourself in order to realize that It's not the path. It's kind of like, it's kind of like those that say money doesn't bring you happiness. Sometimes you need to experience a little bit of money to realize that it's not going to bring you happiness, right?

Yeah, you do. And that's why, that's why the people who come to me, it's not their first rodeo. Uh, they're, they're kind of veterans of the industry of whatever they're doing. For the most part, they've, they've lived the mistake half, and they, they believe I can, I can help them not live that way. And And yeah, what it comes down to that I wrote about in the book is you've got to find fuel that doesn't drain you each time you use it, that lifts you up, that makes you more motivated, more excited. And really the only true fuel of that is learning how to honestly acknowledge everything that's true, how you feel, But also what you've done, what you haven't done, what you want to do. See, people don't like to talk about these things because it's considered taboo, or you're not being humble, you're bragging if you say, I want this, I did that. We get taught early on as kids, don't talk about what you did, right? But as a result, now we have a bunch of people who have imposter syndrome. Because no matter how much they do, they don't feel like they've done anything because they haven't actually registered it inside, all the stuff that they've done, because we've all been pretending we don't do anything. So, so now we behave that way.

Yeah, there's a mentor of mine, and when I say mentor, I don't mean personal relationship, I just mean I've read a lot of his content and taken his courses, uh, named Dan Sullivan. And he talks about that, Jason. He talks about how you don't have to justify what you want. That's one of the taboo things is you, people think you have to use the word because. So I want $10 million, or I want to be the best in this certain thing, or I want 100 customers this year because, and then that because adds a layer of justification that's usually not real, and therefore it, it comes across as fake. I don't know, it just, you don't have to justify what you want. Like you said, you don't have control over it.

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah. You don't control what you want. And then there's a huge level of discomfort for almost everybody of just saying, I want to be the best in the world at what I do. So if you actually hear yourself say it out loud, you just notice what happens inside you and how uncomfortable it is. And that's why they add the because, so that they don't have to actually just have that experience. But as a result, they don't get the fuel that would come from just staying present in that experience of saying, I want to be the greatest who ever lived at what I do, and then it actually registers, right? Or, I did an amazing— I think I did an amazing job here, and actually let it register instead of just like, oh yeah, I did my best, blah blah. People will say anything to not just say what's true and leave it at that. They'll always add something that's not true.

On top of that, you talk about the importance of celebration in the book. Why is celebration important? And why in the poker community specifically is celebration off limits?

Poker players love to shame each other for lots of things. And like being happy that you won is considered like nonprofessional. If you, if you, if you demonstrate in any way That you're happy that you won, or if you demonstrate in any way that you're upset that you lost, there's a large group of people who, by the way, are very mediocre performers. And, and if, and if they are high performers, they're very, very unhappy and miserable inside themselves, who will say you're being unprofessional. This is not how you do it. You should not be able to tell if somebody's winning or losing based on what they look like. But it's like, why not? Because if it's true, it's true. If you're happy, then you're happy. And this is the problem. People start winning money, they're happy, they push it down because everybody's telling them you shouldn't be happy. So I'm having the wrong experience. The moment you do, I'm having the wrong experience, your performance drops.

Yeah.

Or if they're losing and they're upset and they're really agitated, but everybody says you shouldn't be agitated, you just, you just keep going, just play your game. And again, I'm having the wrong experience, I shouldn't be agitated. So again, your performance drops. And so no matter what happens, Performance drops until you realize everybody's wrong, which is kind of how every industry is, is like everybody's wrong. And maybe if you knew how that person felt inside who's giving you this advice, you would very quickly want to do the opposite.

Yeah, very true. You know, it's like the get-rich-quick author who's broke and, and that kind of thing. They're in every industry.

Yeah, yeah.

I've got a couple more questions. But before we wrap up, or as we wrap up, but before I ask them one more time, where can people go to get a copy of the book or maybe to hire you as a coach?

Yeah, The Joy of Poker is available on Amazon in basically every market that they have it. And then yeah, if you want to find me, work with me, or just talk with me, I'm over at Poker with Presence And even before I recommend working with me in any way, I, I write a daily email newsletter that I strongly recommend people check out because I, I just keep talking about this stuff every single day. I tell stories from the past, talk about whatever big ideas that I'm having that day. It's my favorite thing that I do. People message me all the time to tell me that they love it and it's the only one they read each day. So at this point, I, I don't even want to work with anybody unless they've at least been reading that for a little while first, and it's free. So I think that's just like the easiest way to really get to know me much more deeply.

Do you suggest it as a prerequisite for working with you so that your clients self-eliminate or disqualify themselves in the process if they're not going to end up following your suggestions or vibing with your material?

Yeah, it's definitely a part of it. Like at this point, I don't have a lot of time. I'm not, I'm not just gonna like get on a call with everybody who wants to talk with me. I don't— we're way past that now. And so a lot of it is just like, hey, I put everything I believe into these emails. You can read them and figure out if I'm for you. And if not, we don't, we don't have to take this a step further. But if, but if everything I say resonates with you, then yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to chat and see how I can help. So there's, that's definitely a big part of it.

Hmm. Yeah, I respect that a lot. Okay, the final subject that I wanted to talk with you about is confidence. And we've talked about some of the ingredients that I think would result in a byproduct of confidence already. But, but unpack that for us a little bit. How do you teach confidence to your clients?

I think what people have lost when it comes to confidence is clarity of what they want, because what happens is things start to not go your way. And then you lose confidence, right? That's, that's kind of the general thing. When things start to unravel, we lose confidence. We're like, am I doing this right? Can I do this? Should I have done this with my life? And what happens is we get stuck in a place of just anything but this, right? Not this, not this, not this. I don't want this to keep happening. I don't want that to keep happening. I don't want to feel this way. We live there. We exist there. That's all we can see. And, and we lose touch with what— well, what do you want, right? If you, you can't remember what you want and you can't feel the experience of wanting it, you're never going to get your confidence back because you don't— you have no idea where you even would want to go.

Hmm.

And, and so that, that first piece of clarity is, is like what's needed. How do you get that clarity back? You don't get it just by asking, what do I want? Because when you're in a highly emotional state, your answers to that change dramatically. I've talked with poker players when they're feeling really good and riding high, I say, what do you want? They'll say, I want to be the greatest player who ever lived. And then I'll talk to that same player who's been losing for a couple months, say, what do you want? I just want to be able to make a living playing a game that I love, right? And it's the exact same person 2 months apart. So you can't start by asking the question, what do you want, when you're feeling unconfident. You got to get back to that point of control of, okay, what am I feeling? I'm gonna feel it, right?

Mm-hmm.

What am I thinking? Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna just let myself have that thought. It doesn't, you know, it might be true, it might not be true, but I am thinking that, right? And, oh, is there, is there something I'm noticing I'm wanting in this moment? Okay, I'm just gonna let myself want it. And controlling that stuff acknowledging this truth through the practice of celebration. I define celebration as just acknowledging and commemorating what's true from a present state of having the emotions that you're having, not like I'm having a party, right? So celebration meaning just to acknowledge what's true from the present state. You can party too if that's what you want. But, but yeah, if you just acknowledge what's true, that's the only thing you can control. Acknowledge what's true. That starts to shift the state back into, I'm feeling a little bit more myself again. Now that I'm feeling a little bit more myself again, okay, what do I want? And, and the answer starts to emerge. And then I remember what I want. Now I have a place to go. And when we have a place to go and we're feeling pretty clear emotionally, having felt all the feelings, we tend to get moving in that direction. And, and all of a sudden we're feeling good again.

Hmm. That was incredibly profound. I don't think most people recognize that what they want when they're in flow and winning and what they want when they're out of flow, which I think for most people listening is most of the time, yeah, uh, is different. And so, over the last couple of years, Jason, I've participated in a couple of— you could think of them as masterminds, but they're more services. that help me with things like branding or entrepreneurship. And I find myself walking out of those rooms, most of them meet quarterly, my biggest, boldest, baddest self, reminded of who I am and what I really want. And then I use that space and that energy to make bigger decisions because when I fall back into working in my business instead of on my business, and that's how I've articulated the difference in the past, I want less and I want smaller things. Um, so that, that really helped me think about that. You know, it's, it's in that space of winning, and I think that I'm reminded that I am a winner when I'm in those rooms. Oftentimes I think that's how it happens for me because I'm not at a poker table very often.

Yeah, I think that's literally the, the most valuable part about these business masterminds or, you know, groups, um, is that it puts you in the space of remembering what you want, what you stand for, why it's— but most importantly, you can feel it because you've, you've removed yourself from the environment where all you're doing is feeling all the other stuff, the drain and the lethargy, and you're not really accepting it because you don't even know it's there. And so you remove yourself from that for a period of time, and then all of a sudden you you just hear, they're not really giving you any, like, mind-blowing ideas that you haven't already considered, right? But they're just— you're just making the decision to go from here to here. Give myself space to feel that again. And all of a sudden, all my problems are gone.

Yeah. And if I could find a way to get there without paying money, I would. But like, right now, that's the fastest path to feeling that way.

And it's repeatable. Chapter 9, Chapter 9 in The Joy of Poker. You know, what I say?

Jason, it's been a lot of fun today. If you, if you had to delete the book, but leave just one sentence, one feeling from the book, what would that be?

What? Okay, give me a second. This is a big question.

It is a big question. And I didn't give you any time to prepare for it.

Yeah. And yeah, you did not tip me off. Okay, here's what I got. You can have everything you want And have a great time while you're getting it.

Have your cake and eat it too. I believe that as well. Great time talking with you. We went long today, Jason, but for anybody that's still on with us, grab a copy of The Joy of Poker: Win More, Be Happy. It's short, it's easy to read, it's powerful. You'll get more of what we just talked about today, and you'll have the ability to reference it again and again and again. Thank you so much.

Yeah, thanks so much, man. Enjoyed it.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives, and by reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.