"Two exposed sevens might not mean my pair can't improve." Can you think of five lies that start with three?
Try it. Try! This is called thinking about your game, and the more honest and articulate you are about Your game, the better Your game will get. Look, I don't care if you lie to Your friends; I don't care if you lie to Your spouse; I don't even care if you lie to me, but you Safe as hell better not lie to Yourself.
If you ask Yourself how much you won or lost last night, how long it took you to do it, and why, you'd better have an honest answer, and not only that but a damn detailed one as well! Because this is the simple stuff, Poker Honesty 101, and if you can't get this part right, you have no hope of mastering the rest.
Trouble is, lies are a double-edged sword. Lies come back to bite you. You lie to Your enemy when you represent a hand you don't have.
That's fine; that's part of the game. Over time, however, you become habituated to lies. You start to think that lying is a good idea. You start to focus on falsehood as something essential to Your poker (it is) and thus to Your life (it is not).
Here's another one for Your notebook, the critical difference between deception and delusion:
Deception is what you do to others. Delusion is what you do to yourself.
When you've got deception working for you, everyone at the table thinks you're stuck and bleeding, but you know you're not. When you're lost in delusion, however, you think you're still playing well but Your foes all know you're on tilt.
Where are you then? You're on Your way to speaking liaise.
