The importance of BR management and avoiding tilt

So other than the flopped royal flush, I had a pretty bad night tonight. Couldn't seem to get a hand, didn't get paid off on my good hands (such as my royal flush). But because I am playing within my bankroll I have only lost $15 (BR at ~$250). And although I spent 2 hours losing what I've averaged taking 3 hours to win (net loss of 5 hours in my mind), it's not the end of the world.

Before I took the advice of people here, I would have been playing at least $0.25/$0.50, and rather than the $0.05/$0.10 losing 15 it would have been 15*5 = $75. I'd be sitting with $175, worrying about if I can stop the down slide, played a $50 HU or something stupid and probably lost a lot more. Instead I'm stopping for the night down $15, confident that a bad streak doesn't last forever. I looked at the PT graph and I can see that although I've had several ups and downs (at least one other about as bad as this one), there's been a steady trend upwards (started with $100, up to $250 at a rate of around $5-6/hour), and looking at the bigger picture this streak doesn't seem that bad. I'll survive it and it's all because I am playing within my means and being able to survive a little variance.

Although I've gotten a lot of great advice here on pretty much everything, BR management has been the best lesson I've learned. Sure I sometimes get a little frustrated that I still have another $250 before I can even move up to $0.10/$0.25 when I've played $0.25/$0.50 before, but I've stayed disciplined, and my current goal is to $500 by Thanksgiving. Just an example why BR management is important. The rule someone told me was max buy-in for a table should be at most 5% of your entire BR, or have at least 20 max buy-ins at a certain stake. I urge other people to take this advice as well, it's served me well. Thanks.

Great to see you're realizing the importance of it. BRM and discipline are probably the two most important (yet boring) aspects of poker.

Hope your luck turns around.