The Things That Break Your Patience – Part 1: Variance after a bad period
In high-performance individual pursuits like poker, trading, and tennis, results don’t come from winning every moment — they come from making the right decisions repeatedly, and letting time, math, and skill compound the outcome. Even Federer, one of the greatest tennis players of all time, only won 52% of the points he ever played. That’s enough to dominate history.
It’s the same in trading. The same in poker. You can be right just a small percentage of the time and still generate an incredible long-term ROI — if you keep your head.
But here’s the thing: you’re not a robot. You’re a human being. And in the middle of a rough session, a brutal match, or a downswing, your patience can run out. That’s when the mind starts to break. Especially when bad luck strikes — the kind of bad luck that hits you right after things were already going south for a while.
Let me give you a few real-life examples.
Trading
You did everything right. The charts lined up. You waited patiently. Finally, a setup you trust. You enter. Then boom — out of nowhere, Trump announces new tariffs. The entire market flips. Not because of your decision-making, but because of a geopolitical bomb. You lose — again. And this one? You really needed it to work.
Poker
12 players left. You’re 3rd in chips. You shove all-in against someone just below you in the stack, with an 80-20 advantage. Perfect play. They hit their miracle card on the river. You lose most of your stack. Next hand, tilted, you punt. Just like that, you miss the final table — your salvation run. Gone.
Tennis
You’ve trained for months. You skipped other tournaments to peak for this one. You battle through qualifiers and make the main draw — and draw a wildcard entry, a top 30 player who just dropped into this small event to get rhythm. Anyone else in the draw, and you had a real shot. But not this. Not today.
In all three cases, you didn’t make a mistake. You did your job. And yet — you got punished. That’s when a dangerous thought creeps in:
“Maybe this isn’t for me. Maybe I’m cursed. Maybe the universe is against me.”
This is where a lot of talented people mentally quit — not because they lost, but because they lost in a way that felt unfair.
Here’s the truth:
Life doesn’t care about your narrative.
No one will look back 10 years from now and say, “Yeah, but she had terrible luck in 2025.”
No one will say, “He was great — just always ran into the wrong opponent.”
The scoreboard doesn’t care. Results don’t ask how you felt that day.
What matters is what you did, and what you kept doing — especially when things went sideways.
What causes this break in patience?
At the core, this kind of reaction comes from a belief that life should reward you for your effort, that if you do everything right, you’re entitled to a good result. It’s a belief rooted in fairness, control, and expectation.
But reality? It’s probabilistic. Chaotic. Unfair.
That’s why we crack: not because we’re weak, but because we think we’re supposed to win now. When that doesn’t happen, we feel betrayed. But it’s not betrayal — it’s just variance.
Short-Term Solutions (Mental Reset)
Breathwork
Mindfulness meditation
Walking in nature
Cold showers
Lowering caffeine
Solid sleep routine
These won’t change your beliefs, but they can buy you space. They’ll help you not tilt away your next decision.
Long-Term Fix?
You don’t need another hack. You need a mindset shift.
You need to stop expecting life to reward you just because you did everything right.
You need to embrace variance — not fear it, not curse it, not take it personally.
You need to accept that doing everything right and still losing is part of the game.
And not just part of it — it’s built into the design.
Let me tell you something personal.
I’ve had days in the markets where things completely collapsed for reasons outside my control.
The exact same pattern I’d traded successfully 100 times before — this time it failed. Not because I was wrong, but because life flipped a coin and I lost. Again.
And on some of those days?
I was totally fine. I took the loss, logged it, and moved on.
But on other days?
I broke.
“Enough already! What the hell did I do to deserve this?”
“How can it go against me every single time?”
“I just want my luck to turn — that’s it. That’s all I ask.”
I’ve screamed at my screen. Slammed my mouse. Wondered how I would pay rent.
I’ve heard myself say, “This trade HAD to work. I really needed this one.”
And that’s when I knew I was in dangerous territory.
Because when you start needing the trade to win…
When you start relying on the result to emotionally validate your process…
You’ve already lost the real game.
And I’m not alone.
I’ve read dozens of posts from traders, poker players, and athletes saying the same thing.
They’re not even asking to win — they’re begging for a break.
They just want things to not go wrong again.
They say things like:
“I did everything right. Why does the universe keep punishing me?”
“I’m tired of the grind. I’m tired of bad beats. I’m tired of this endless climb.”
But here’s the shift:
You can’t negotiate with variance.
You can’t reason with it. You can’t argue with it. And most importantly — you can’t let it break your mind.
In the middle of a downswing, the biggest mistake is going on tilt and compounding your problems. One forced trade. One reckless shove. One moment where emotions override logic — that’s how people go broke.
And what leads to tilt?
Expectations that were never real to begin with.
Expectations that this time the reward was due. That this time things had to go right.
So the real work?
It’s not in changing the market, or the cards, or the draw.
It’s in changing your relationship to outcomes.
If you want to protect your mind, you have to fix the mindset first.
You have to build a belief system where:
A good process > a good result
Variance is a feature, not a bug
Tilt is a killer, not a comfort
Emotional detachment is power, not coldness
Your worth isn’t tied to your P&L, chip count, or scoreboard
That means pre-committing to how you will react before the chaos hits.
That means rituals: journaling, breathwork, meditation, nature walks, screen breaks, turning off the noise.
That means designing your life to absorb volatility — mentally, emotionally, financially.
Because if your emotional state is glued to green or red days, to wins or losses, you will always be unstable.
I’ve seen it firsthand:
Poker players who couldn’t get out of bed after a bad beat.
Traders who ghosted the world for a week after a red streak.
Brilliant, disciplined people — shattered by randomness.
And on the flip side:
The same people walking around like kings when they’re on a heater.
As if they cracked the code. As if the world finally made sense.
But nothing changed — only the outcome.
That’s why process matters more than ever.
Because results lie.
They don’t tell you if you made a good decision — only whether the coin landed heads or tails.
But process tells you everything. It tells you whether you’re someone who can win over time.
And when you truly absorb this mindset — not just understand it, but embody it — something shifts.
Luck stops mattering.
Bad breaks don’t hurt the same.
You stop breaking.
You stop panicking.
You become dangerous.
Because you’ve become unshakable.
