Rich pulled me aside and said something along the lines of, “You can tell when a player is in the zone, because he uses his cards as weapons, as tools.” At the time, I was still in a bit of trance, so it didn’t sink in very well. It seemed all around me, people were taking notice of things that I was just doing. It wasn’t that I was not doing them intentionally, as I clearly was, but I was declining to take part in the spectacle of my own play, and looking back, I think that was an important distinction to make that week. Getting caught up in any one play or moment turns good play into something of a shrine, rather than a benchmark. If you pat yourself on the back every time you make some insane play, you come to view those plays as extraordinary, and be that as it may, you can subconsciously convince yourself to make those plays less often because they are not expected out of you often. If, only the other hand, you decide that that is the level of play you expect out of yourself time and time again, and register the moment as good play, but nothing out of the ordinary, you are going to return to that place much more often, as it is expected out of yourself.

-- Conley Woods, http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/breaking-through-day-2-saboteur/