[einbert]

Self-control is not easy at all. Most people just don`t realize exactly how little control they have over themselves.

Carelessness can be extremely costly in poker, especially little mistakes that should not have been made. They add up very quickly and will hugely effect your bottom line.

I will suggest a couple of steps you could take:

-Accept that you will do things carelessly in your life. No matter how much energy and work you spend on this problem, it will be something you struggle with forever. Everyone does. Some people have much more self-control and patience than others, but everyone is impatient, impulsive, and irrational at times. Accepting this will help you make much progress.

-Realize that poker is difficult. Many 2+2ers are convinced that it is a ridiculously easy game that allows them to take money from dumb people. That might be exactly true at $.50/$1.00, but eventually most good poker players get to a level where it isn't so easy. And even at $.50/$1.00 tough decisions come up quite frequently--to those players it makes the difference between 5 BB/100 and 6 BB/100 (or something), but to higher players it might make the difference between a 1 BB/100 winner and a 1.5 BB/100 winner--percentagewise a much larger difference. Learning that these decisions won:t ever all be easy will give you a step up on the crowd.

-Practice taking your time on every decision. Think through decisions that are totally automatic for you. Understand what factors you can compare against each other to determing that automatic decision. Do EV calculations for the decision you made and for the decision you didn't make and compare them. If the numbers are close, the decision probably wasn't an easy or automatic one. Study particular hands in depth and try to figure out which concepts weigh more against others in specific situations. A deeper understanding of the game will allow you to analyze these situations correctly. So then the *rationalizations* you make will be justified. It is natural to say that you made an irrational decision when a play doesn't work out, but it's easy to let it slip when you win the hand anyway. Don't allow results oriented thinking to get in the way of your own self-analysis.

These steps are difficult and take time, but I believe they can help you accomplish the things you want to do in poker. I hope something I've said here will help you. Good luck.