Change the way how you think improves your performance

Whenever I steam or go on tilt, I notice that I play a lot better after I change the way how I think about the game. Why is that? 

I notice this every time, whenever I'm having negative thoughts about the game, I usually end up playing pretty badly. 

When I change the way how I look at the board, I instantly play better. When this happened, my rating went from 1200 to 1900. 

It might have something to do with the fact that when someone forks me, I feel less intelligent but I've come to learned that even when you're down in material, there are still a million possibilities to find tactics so long as you still have some minor pieces. 

Also this is a very important point i'm going to make. I find that I play so much better when I get my head off the rating system and totally ignore it. For some odd reason the moment I find myself thinking about rating, I will tilt and this happens every single time. I tend to want to focus on it, so the goal lately was to figure out how to suppress that thought. For example when I start a new game with someone and when I notice my eyes would shift toward the right side of the screen where the ratings are located, I Know i'm getting tilted. 

So I really wish there was an option to just hide the rating from display. There's are too much visual distractions on the internet anyway. 

I know man, I went from 1900-2600 instantly by changing the way I looked at the board, if only I could remember to do that in my games.  Ok on a serious note though, forget about your online ratings, they are a joke, go play OTB with real people, it is way less tilting and way healthier for your chess and brain.  And you can turn on focus mode anyway which removes the ratings.

Steaming and tilting in poker mean playing an angry, agressive but confused style. That's not the best prescription for chess, but it may help you if you are not aggressive enough without it.

I used to be absolutely awful playing Black. In an OTB tournaments I'd go 2-0 or 2-1 with White, but 1-2 or 0-3 with Black.  I finally realized that setting up a strong defense isn't enough: you have to make aggressive, threatening moves - even if they just threaten control of the center or a file.

A little steam can help you motivate yourself to be more challenging.  But you'll be even better if can be calmly aggressive with some thinking behind it.

Here's an example of how I would have probably lost when I was less aggressive but ended up winning in a 14 move game because I thought at move 10, "How can I attack?" instead of my previous thinking, which would have focused on "How can I defend?"

Yeah you are right about "steaming". I had been reading a book on poker before writing this post so it's probably the wrong usage. But anyway, 

Black could have maybe survive the game had he played h5 to guard the knight instead of panicking about f7. I'd just let either your knight / bishop take it and just move the rook, but i would lose h7 pawn eventually. But yeah, the trapping of his own bishop was the rookie error as it was the primary reason to end up in this losing position as nothing good ever arises from a game where you've lost your bishop in this manner.  

Good stuff guys!  I just wanted to throw in a little more about tilt.  Tilting in poker can mean many different things, but usually involves any excess emotions which disallow your highest levels of cognition and precise problem-solving.  You can even experience "winning tilt" in poker in which an excess of positive emotions can negatively affect your play! For example:  If you are up X amount for the month, losing a fraction of that amount can feel almost erroneous if you are still riding the emotional high from your wins.  Emotions in excess will ALWAYS interfere with focus. 
       Another example, put yourself in this scenario: you just found out that you won 15 million dollars in the lotto, and seconds later somebody asked you to solve a semi-simple math problem, like 15x18, it might take you 5x as long as it normally would and you are much more likely to get it wrong than if you were calm, focused and not ridiculously excited .  Emotions hijack our brain. (I learned this from Jared Tendler's first poker book actually, the mental game of poker, great read if you haven't read it.)
       In poker, being slightly angry at yourself CAN be utilized and channeled into focus, discipline and competitive energy, but there is a threshold that once passed will quickly have extremely negative benefits, and in an instant you can make a chain of terrible decisions.
       For the most part, in chess and poker I think all emotions are more of a risk than a reward, and all emotions should be dampened as best as you can.  Talk to yourself, get some fresh air, meditate before and after playing (or just take a few minutes of silence to assess yourself) , sort out immediate issues in your personal life, bring as little baggage to the table or chessboard as you can and try to play like a logical supercomputer (who is also a calculating bloodthirsty killer).

Emotions can provide motivational energy, but they very quickly can cause impulsive, careless decisions