Books that can help me with my philosophical meditations

[amateur philOP No.20836581]

Recently I've been working on developing my own philosophical system to aid me with my life and I need some suggestions that can help me on this pursuit. I also hope that you will challenge my ideas and find inconsistencies, so that I can work on them. But before I start, let me briefly give a background about myself, so that you have some idea where I come from.

I'm 35 yo professional poker player, playing mid-high stakes online. I mainly play NL200-500 at Pokerstars and ACR. At 18 I started playing poker, quickly moved up to NL100 making around 4k-5k a month and stayed there for years. I studied poker, worked with solvers a lot and when I played my A game I was much better than my peers. However, I always had tilt issues. My A game was really good, but my B game sucked and when I was not ON I could lose 5-6 buy ins in a matter of minutes. That was the reason I couldn't move up to higher stakes. This crappy situation continued for years, even though I tried to work on it. I tried psychology books, self help books, youtube videos and even hired a mental coach... nothing changed. 2 years ago, the inevitable thing happened. Field at NL100 got stronger to the degree that I, coupled with my tilt issues, couldn't beat the field anymore and I was forced to move down to play NL50. Luckily, I came across stoic works and after reading Epictetus and Musonius I adopted some of their tenets. Namely these 3 principles:
>Don't worry about things out of your control, focus on what's in your control, mainly your own thoughts and actions
>Don't have expectations
>Imagine the worst
These principles turned tables around, in a week or so my tilt issues were gone. Especially, exercise of imagining the worst made a huge impact. Before I make a big bet or bluff catch on the river, I imagine opponent showing up with a better hand. This simple exercise completely healed my tilt issues. I can honestly say that in the last 20 months I didn't have a single session where I was on monkey tilt. I was able to quickly move back to NL100 and then to NL200 and NL500.

[Anonymous No.20836586]

Sounds like you could write some shitty pop psychology book that incorporates Stoicism and gambling principles. You'll be the next Ryan Holiday in no time!

[amateur philOP No.20836588]

>>20836581
cont.
These three concepts, not only improved my poker career, but also my life in general. I'm less concerned about what people think and I'm more productive. This is why I got interested in philosophy. I used to think that philosophy is useless intelectual masturbation of turbo-autist incels, but now that I got real proof that philosophy can be helpful in real world, more so than any self-help or psychology book, I started taking it more seriously. But the problem was that I didn't agree with most of what I was reading. I don't buy metaphysics(Plato's theory of forms) and in my opinion many philosophies argue against human nature. Stoics say that having strong desires is bad, which can't be true, because it is human nature to have strong desires and strive for power, status and pleasure. Epicurus says that happiness is absence of pain and negative emotions, which is also can't be true. We can use painkillers to never feel pain, but if we dislocate our shoulder, we won't have signal from our body that smth wrong with our shoulder. In a similar fashion, negative emotions can be useful signals of something being wrong(weakness, bad decision etc.) and can help us to make strong resolutions, focus on what's needed to be fixed and make better decisions. Long story short, I started developing my own system based on my observations and testing my ideas with different thought experiments. I won't go into too much details regarding how I arrived with everything, but I'm ready to expand if needed.

[amateur philOP No.20836779]

>>20836588
continue.
We are unhappy when we go against our identity, our beliefs, values, principles, vows or goals, so the only way to be happy is to
>Be true to yourself
If we expand it, it means that we need to be true to
>Human Nature
>Our ethical principles that we adopt
>Our wisdom principles that we adopt
>Our goals and dreams
Let's go through these one by one and try to be more precise on what these are. And after that we will talk briefly how to stay true to each of them.
>Human Nature
>>Go after basic human needs desires
>>Don't go against your own basic human needs and desires
>>Be earnest
Every human being has innate basic needs and desires and it is in our nature to want to achieve them. These are health and absence of pain, tranquility of mind, safety, food and shelter, sex and intimacy, family, acceptance, respect, freedom, power and status. We can be happy without having some or most of these things, but we can't be happy if we don't strive to achieve them. It is in our nature to desire these things, so we shouldn't suppress these desires or do anything that goes against these things. It is not easy to achieve these things, but the point is that we don't need to achieve all of it. Rather, just the action of moving to achieve them by itself makes us happy.
Going against our basic needs and desires also makes us unhappy, so we shouldn't knowingly go against these needs. Self humiliation, which is going against our desire to be respected, is an obvious example of what we shouldn't do.
Pretending is going against our identity, therefore it is important to be earnest at all times. We shouldn't pretend being happy, unhappy, caring, liking, knowing what we don't know etc. Being earnest also means giving 100% of our attention on what we do. Half-assing is pretending and makes us unhappy.

[Anonymous No.20836790]

>>20836581
This is some Principles by Ray Dalio level shit

[amateur philOP No.20836985]

>>20836779
continue.
>Our ethics
Ethics is subjective, whatever ethics we adopt for ourselves ought to be correct, keeping in mind that we shouldn't go against human nature. Important thing is that they should be set on stone for us. For myself, I set to develop fewest possible ethical principles. There is no right or wrong, but some things might lead to the end of humanity if everybody does it. Killing some one for no reason might lead to the end of the humanity if everyone starts doing it. In contrast, killing your enemy won't lead to the end of humanity, because the winning side will continue its line. Therefore it might be ethical. Extrapolating from here, our first ethical principle is this
>Don't harm anyone, including yourself, for no good reason
Which applies to everyone, including people we don't know. However, we are social people and we have our own close circle of friends and family and we should treat them as our equals. Rather than golden rule, I decided to adopt silver rule for this:
>Don't treat your equals in a way that you don't want them treat you
Which basically means we should respect their autonomy, should never do harm to their property or health, shouldn't push them to sacrifice for us or go against their own interests, be just and if we can, be beneficial to them. These are two ethical principles that we need to follow.

[amateur philOP No.20837097]

>>20836985
continue.
>Wisdom principles
If we don't have wisdom we will make bad decisions in our life, which will put us in situations where we have hard time chasing our innate desires. Because of that, we need to become wise by gaining knowledge, developing mental models and principles that we can use to make better decisions. These are different from ethical principles. Not worrying about things that are not in our control is not an ethical principle, but it can greatly help us to live a better life. We need to study mental models and meditate on how we can apply them in real world and most importantly follow them meticulously, because knowing and not doing accordingly is even worse than not knowing at all. Wisdom is a huge topic and a life long endeavor, which also includes things like decorum learning how to study, how to master things, how to seduce, how to manage time etc.
>Our goals and principles
we should make a simple, straightforward plan to achieve our goals and give 100% to achieve them. However, they shouldn't go against our innate desires and our principles and we should know when to give. Going after our goals and giving 100% is more important that reaching them.

[amateur philOP No.20837113]

that's it for today, I will come back later and write my thoughts on HOW to stay true to yourself and how to master self control.

[Anonymous No.20837142]

normalfags need to stop calling self-help shit "philosophy"

[Anonymous No.20837160]

The Satan told me to ask if you would still play well if you never win.

[amateur philOP No.20837451]

>>20837160
I'll set different goals for myself, but only after realizing that I will never win.

[Anonymous No.20837526]

>>20837451
>only after realizing that I will never win
When is that? What if that's the exact moment your losing streak stops? At what point does your faith break? Satan wants to know, he promises not to abuse this information.