All professional poker players frequently face adversity. It’s part of the job. In fact, anyone who plays poker regularly knows that you can have good and bad periods dictated by the variance of the cards, the number of coin-flips you win and much more. When things are going well in poker or in business, it is easy to pat yourself on the back and think this is down to your skill or acumen and good decisions, but it's not so straightforward. Equally, when things are going wrong, and you are losing chips, money, clients or faith in your product, the emotions can swing the opposite way, and you can feel like it’s your fault. But the real trick is to avoid hubris in the good times and learn from the adversity or failure in the bad. Poker teaches you this, sometimes in brutal ways and bouncing back from this is key if you want future success.
It helps to remember that nearly everyone has, or will go through, these adverse times. Successful business founders often have failed businesses in their past. Learning from these failures is the superpower that can drive them to succeed in the future. It’s the same when things go wrong in your daily work life. It can help you get perspective on what areas aren’t working and the impetus to correct them, setting up a pathway for a smoother future. After adversity, you have the chance to reflect and reset, which comes with benefits, even if getting there was painful.
Poker players learn to deal with runs of failure. Most tournaments they enter will result in them losing their buy-in. It’s maximising returns on those in which they are more successful that will define how profitable they are over the long run. When they play perfectly and still lose, they learn to brush this off and stick with the process. When they make a mistake, the key learning is not to make it again. This adversity can therefore help with success down the line. And this is as true for executives in business, founders and poker players alike.