Force yourself to be smarter by staying a little anxious. Advice from Tyler Tervooren on winning big.
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“Play interests me very much. But I am not in the position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous.” — Alexander Pushkin
I don’t bring it up often — it’s not very interesting except in certain circumstances — but I have a bit of an unsavory habit. I like to gamble.
To be more precise, I like to play blackjack. Why? It’s one of the only table games with reasonable odds. If you play perfectly, you gain a sliver of an advantage over the house[1].
That doesn’t mean you’ll win every game. In fact, you might face an epic losing streak taking you down to your last chip. But, in time, the odds say you’ll win.
When I sit down at a blackjack table, I instantly get anxious. All my senses perk up, and, without thinking, I try to read all the different inputs at the table — what the dealer looks like and her disposition, how many people are at the table and what they’re doing / how they’re playing.
I’m far from a perfect blackjack player and the stakes I set for myself are low — I’m not trying to make a living at the card tables—but I’ve always wondered if the anxiety I feel makes me a smarter, more careful player. If that bit of uncertainty about which cards will come next keeps me from stepping outside my bounds and making dumb decisions.
Turns out, it does. Anxiety is what smart gamblers use make the best choices at their trade. But it doesn’t end there. A little uncertainty has been scientifically proven to keep you focused on smart risks in every area of your life.
Here’s how it works and how you can harness it.
How Your Emotions Hijack Your Decision Making Skills
For decades, psychologists have known your decisions change wildly according to your mood. Positive? You’ll make one choice. Negative? You’ll make another[2]. For a long time, though, that’s all we knew.
The accepted belief among most of us is you should make decisions in a neutral mood. That way, your choices aren’t colored by blind optimism or pessimism. You can make decisions with pure logic and rationality.
But, in the late 90s, two researchers — one from Columbia, the other from NYU — tested a new hypothesis. They wanted to know if different states of emotions could lead to different decisions in certain scenarios.
So, they did what any good researcher would do and rounded up a bunch of broke college students to perform psychological experiments on.
They gave their subjects stories to read to subconsciously prime them into one of three moods: neutral, sad, or anxious.
And then? They made them gamble[3].
The college science subjects had to choose between a wager that would pay $5 with 60% odds of winning or one that would pay double, $10, but had half the odds — just 30%.
What would they choose? The results were clear as day. While all the participants skewed towards the less risky gamble — the one that paid just $5 — the anxious gamblers were far more likely to choose it over the riskier option. And, to be noted, the sad ones were far more likely to choose the risky gamble.
What does it mean? If you want to make safe bets, your best… wait for it… bet is to keep yourself in just a slightly anxious state.
If that sounds crazy and you’re wondering what on earth this has to do with smart gamblers, you need only ask yourself, “Which decisions have brought the best results in my life?” to understand.
How Low-Risk / Low-Reward Gambles Lead To Massive Success
Did you ask yourself that question, yet? Which decisions have brought the best results in your life?
Let’s ask it another way: Have you gotten more long-lasting, positive results from the small choices you repeat every day or from the big ones you make every once in a while?
Most of us would answer the former: It’s those decisions you make over and over — the habits you build over time that lead to the best things you’ve accomplished.
- Getting up and running in the morning has made you happier and healthier than the time you decided to run a marathon without any training at all.
- Writing 500 words every day in your journal has given you more satisfaction than the time you joined NaNoWriMo for the hell of it.
- Practicing an instrument regularly keeps you happier than busting it out once a year at parties to show off to your friends.
None of those things — running a couple miles, writing a few words, practicing a few minutes — required much of a risk. But, over time, they added up to a skill or a habit that provides great returns in your life.
It may feel exhilarating to run a marathon without training or jump off the couch and write a novel. That is, if you succeed. But, if you don’t, it could permanently wreck your confidence and feed into a belief about yourself — that you’re not capable of doing big things — even though it’s not true.
When you do a side by side comparison, the logic behind how a smart gambler gets rich at the card table works the same way: by continuously making smaller bets on hands she’s likely to win, and avoiding betting the farm on risky hands she’s more likely to lose. She wagers on expected value.
Let’s go back to the gamble those college students made. If you took the $5 bet and won 60% of the time, you’d have $10 after ten rounds. If you took the $10 bet and won 30% of the time, you’d have $40. Oops, I forgot to put a negative sign on that. You’d havenegative $40.
Now, what if you did the same for 10,000 rounds? In one case, you’d have piles of money. In the other, you’d have some foul character in a hooded sweatshirt coming to your house to break your kneecaps.
Do This In The Next 10 Minutes
Imagine that! You can force yourself to make the smaller, smarter bet just by keeping yourself in an ever-so-slight state of anxiety. Just enough to keep your senses keen and focused on gradually winning over the long-term than hitting it big in the short.
But how? How do you actually put this to work?
The prescription is to take something important to you and make a small but meaningful stride toward it each day rather than an epic swing-for-the-fences gesture once in a while. And to keep yourself in a slightly anxious state — one that will make sure your eye is on ball — try connecting those actions to two visions you can see in the future.
In the first, picture your life vastly improved by putting in the work, day in and day out. See the good results you earned for yourself. In the other, picture the disappointment that comes if you don’t.
The difference will keep you anxious. And that touch of anxiety will keep you hungry.
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This article originally appeared on Riskology.co
Photo credit: Adrian Sampson/flickr