The stillness hypothesis goes like this: During poker, each moment of stillness is a moment of less unhappiness, and less tilt, which is pretty much the same thing. By tilt I mean any non-A-game performance or mindset.
A scientific hypothesis should be falsifiable, meaning that the hypothesist provides an experiment that could disprove the hypothesis. I will do that. It’s not ideal that the experiment will rely on your subjective reality for data, but we’ll get to that.
Why bother?
What is our ultimate objective, really? What is the one desire we all share?
We want to feel better. So we do things and ingest things to make ourselves feel less bad. I believe that stillness makes us feel less bad. You could even say it does nothing but. So I think we should do it.
Let me ask you something. If you were to stop moving in-between hands as an attempt to improve your poker mindset, do you think it would make you play worse? Me neither. Which means stillness is a freeroll. So I think you should do it.
People watch me play with no frustration or impatience ever and they think, “This dude is tiltless.” But that’s not true. The tilt is strong with this one. But it can’t compete with the stillness. So I keep doing it.
What it’s like
Let’s say I just played a pot, or I engaged in small talk, or maybe I replied to a text. My mind is rustled up and my body is in motion. If I tell myself to come to a stop and then do it, there’s a woosh feeling, like a quick shift in locale. Think of coming in from the cold, or falling through an intergalactic time portal. One minute you’re sitting there, aimless as usual. Then you plunge into stillness and suddenly you’re sliding sideways on a mobius strip of consciousness, or something like that.
How can I just, stop moving?
First is the intention to be still. This special purpose has to remain top-of-mind because this kind of stillness never happens by accident. You need to plan and execute. Many of your stillness plans will fall through, so you need to make many plans – which is all part of the plan.
To initiate stillness, all you have to do is talk to yourself. When you’re between poker hands, and you’re not doing anything in particular, if you tell yourself to stop moving now, chances are good that you will.
This whole idea of doing nothing on purpose, it sounds so weird.
It’s plenty weird, at first, as you figure out what the heck to do with your body and your mind during this all-new experience. Water-skiing is weird, as is throwing a frisbee, or playing bassoon, until you learn how to do it. Stillness is like that. It’s a skill. To learn it, you do it, and weird becomes wonderful.
To disprove the hypothesis
The stillness hypothesis claims to apply to everyone, so it only takes one fail to fry it. If you do the stillness, and it doesn’t improve your poker, then you have disproved the hypothesis.
According to stillness theory, when stillness goes up, unhappiness goes down.
What does “do the stillness” mean?
It means going into your next 20 or 30 sessions with enthusiasm and curiosity. It means being eager to experiment with motionlessness throughout each session, and monitor your mindsets.
You could bring a more subdued energy to the project and still obtain viable data. I’m just saying, when it comes to effort, more is more.
As to the duration of the trial, you might be immediately convinced that occasional inaction agrees with you. Or it might take a while before you get the hang of it to where you notice some befores-and-afters. I’m talking about recurring situations that are notably better than before, because of the short-term and long-term effects of the stillness. You’ll notice when an annoyance doesn’t annoy you. Or when a scary player doesn’t scare you. Or best of all, when a massive suckout doesn’t tilt you.
If nothing like that happens – if you notice no improvements – then you debunked the hypothesis.
But if you do experience any of the common side effects of stillness – such as enlightened perspectives, merged ideas, and equanimity – then it’ll be up to some other lab rat to disprove the hypothesis.
Stillness in action
According to stillness theory, when stillness goes up, unhappiness goes down. Let’s look at this relationship in action.
Bombs – The wrong person says the wrong thing at the wrong time and pushes all your buttons and Danger! Danger! The next few seconds are critical. It’s like in the movies. There’s a bomb about to blow and you’re racing toward it, holding the cutters. If you can cut the wire in time, you’ll defuse the bomb and save the world.
Stillness creates a wedge of awareness that allows you to observe the conflict, and your role in it, from afar. From there you might choose a lighthearted reply, rather than bitter, or calmly say nothing at all. Either way, the world spins on. Stillness can be heroic in that way.
Focus – Think of the phrase clear your head. It sounds refreshing, and sanitary, and it is. It feels great to sweep away our smelly old mental rubbish and start fresh. Stillness does that. It works on your mind like a broom. The more often you sweep, the clearer your head. The clearer your head, the better your focus to play an optimal poker strategy.
Joy and happiness – There’s a black hole in your head. It’s a dense mass of fear and frustration and all the other bad stuff you don’t want to get sucked into. Around the black hole is the event horizon. Venture too close to the horizon, and into the hole you go.
To avert this fate, stop all propulsion and remain adrift in outer space, far from the horizon. It can be boring out there, but at least you can’t be stretched into stardust. And who knows, maybe there’s another hole in your head, a white hole, made of compacted joy and happiness. What if stillness was like, a spaceship, that only gravitates to the white hole?
All aboard!
