Thanks for all the positive feedback on last week’s newsletter titled “You are not your rating”.
It really hit home hard for me that identifying with results, believing one is only worth something when you play well, isn’t just an experience professional players have. It sort of became an epidemic, both in chess and other areas of our lives.
I have by no means all the solutions, because I am still struggling with most of the mindset things I write about. But oh boy do I have a lot of experience working on this.
So if any of it helps, I’m happy to continue sharing my own struggles.
Today, I want to dive a little deeper into a vicious mindset I see in myself and many of my students. It is an absurd story we tell ourselves, along the lines of:
“When I achieve XYZ, I can finally be happy / relax / proud / worthy”
Underrated, stressed, chasing after the next big thing
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers
I’ve lived most of my Chess Career in a state of stress. Most of the time, I was convinced I was severely underrated – and that my real breakthrough was just around the corner.
I always waited for the moment to achieve the next big result, so then “I could relax and be proud of myself.” This constant chasing – and simultaneously trying to escape the current reality – has put a big toll on my mind and body.
I felt this was necessary to achieve Peak performance. I had the belief that if I stopped pushing myself this way, I’d lose my drive and not improve anymore.
The story I told myself was that if I’d be happy with what I had right now, then I’d become lazy and would never improve anymore. Pain drives action, baby!
Now I realize this faulty mindset was one of the core reasons my body wasn’t able to recover from a traumatic brain injury (as mentioned in last week’s newsletter). And one of the core reasons I stopped playing Chess because I simply didn’t enjoy it anymore.
For a long time, I thought this was a me Problem. The more experience I get as a coach, blogger, and author, the more I realize this is a widespread issue.
Most of us think we are underrated. Most of us believe that when we achieve XYZ, THEN, we can be happy, proud, and finally enjoy chess…
If you relate to this, this newsletter is for you.
Why It Does Not Work
Let’s go a little deeper on why this mindset isn’t good for us.
Honestly, that’s a severe understatement. I’d argue this way of thinking made me miserable, unhappy, and ungrateful.
The main reason is that it is one big giant lie. Here are some of the Milestones I hit and told myself I could then relax. Yet, I never did:
- Swiss Youth Champion
- International Youth Medal
- IM Title
- Swiss Champion
- Becoming a pro
- Having my first big sponsor
- Finding a great Coach
- Youngest Swiss GM ever
- Earning money as a Chess coach
- Launching a course
- Launching a second course
- Building a 6-figure business
The list goes on. So why didn’t I relax?
The process is the Problem. I was constantly projecting my happiness and relaxation into the future.
From mindfulness and Stoics, I’ve learned that “happiness can only exist in the presence” (probably a thousand smart people associated with saying something along those lines, but I can’t find a proper quote on it).
If you always think you can be happy 5 minutes from now, every single moment of now will not be a happy moment. So close, but yet so far.
So whenever I hit a goal, or was close to hitting a goal, I just set the bar higher.
The Problem is, there is literally no end to this. Chances are, you can always play better Chess, earn more, be smarter…
That’s how we get greedy Billionaires that still worry about making more, instead of enjoying what they have. It looks so ridiculous from the outside, but they are simply on their 1000th repetition of “If I… then I can relax / be happy / have enough” (ok, some billionaires are also just egomaniac assholes, let’s leave that aside for now).
When I thought I was underrated as a 2400 Player, by the time I hit my goal of 2500 rating, I thought I was underrated as a 2500 Player. In this state, I always just saw why I was being unlucky and should have had better results. I didn’t see all the things that went well or took a moment to be proud of my Achievements.
Still today, I have some of that, even when I play a simple card game against my wife Alessia. Sometimes she tells me:
“You never are happy with the outcome, even when you get lucky!”
What happens in my brain?
I solely focus on all the times I could have been a little luckier, or when Alessia was lucky. Even when I win with several hundred points difference (we usually play a race to 10,000 points accumulated), I only see how I could have gotten even luckier and won with a bigger margin.
This is like winning the lottery and getting mad that “it is so unlucky there was only 20 Million as the top prize, last week it was 100 Million”.
(I didn’t win the lottery, but yes, I had winning days in Poker when I won four figures and only worried about it not being more instead of enjoying that nice win…)
What I effectively do is compare the present to an ideal version of the present, or an even better version of the future. Then, my actual situation is nearly always “worse than it could be”, leading to me being disappointed, even when from the outside it looks so silly…
The Solution: Accept – Then Improve
The solution sounds simple, but for me, it still is incredibly hard to apply. Even though I rationally understood it for years, applying is still a daily struggle. I’ll share the Quote I started this newsletter with once again:
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers
My constant chasing, and probably also yours, is an attempt to run away from the current situation. “If I… then I can relax/be happy/be proud” projects a better life in the future, and thus makes the current situation more bearable.
For me, the only solution to stop it is to start accepting what I have right now. When I do this, somehow magically, I don’t need to stress about a better future.
And even more magically, I can then actually put in the work to make my chess even better, create meaningful content, or just enjoy the present moment. Without feeling miserable or left behind.
This is what Tara Brach calls Radical Acceptance. I can’t recommend her book with this title highly enough, but brace yourself for some challenging moments while reading it.
During my professional chess days, I had glimpses of radical acceptance, but for all the wrong reasons. It only happened when I was so exhausted, so upset, so defeated, that I “accepted” I’ll never achieve my high expectations.
Here is that vicious cycle in play:
Trying really hard –>
Not being happy with my results –>
Feeling underrated, left behind –>
Trying even harder –>
Making Progress, but not enough –>
Trying even harder until –>
Giving up –>
Accepting I won’t achieve XYZ, or maybe even saying I don’t even need to achieve it –>
Magically improvement comes —>
Raising expectations (if I just continue like that, I will…) aaaand let’s start from square 1.
I remember seeing Alessia go through the same cycle when we first met (it is always easier to see it in others than oneself!).
She played a horrible World Championship in 2016 and lost over 100 rating points (I also lost 35 rating points at this tournament we met, we bonded over being annoyed at losing).
Then, she was more than 200 points below her all-time high. For quite some time, she was fixated on “being totally underrated” and felt the stress of having to win rating points quickly. That led to emotional decisions, bad moves, and even worse results (let’s not even start talking about not enjoying chess the slightest in that state).
Similar to how I explained above, she had a moment when she crashed so hard that she just accepted herself as a 2000 Player and tried to do her best.
Acceptance. She enjoyed her games more. And suddenly had better results.
In hindsight, it always looks so easy. But from my very own experience, I know how hard it is to get to this point. Often, I really waited until the pain was so big that I finally let go of my unreasonable expectations, accepted my situation, and was able to improve, with less stress.
I’m by no means an expert now. I still need reminders very frequently. I’m reading the book Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach once again to fully embrace it – in business and my private life. Still, I’d like to share what usually helps me make a switch.
Three Steps That Help With Acceptance
Step 1: What would I do and feel if I achieved XYZ?
This question helps me understand what feeling I am chasing after. For Chess, I often came up with something like:
“Enjoy every game, put less pressure on myself, try my best, enjoy the journey, Play tournaments I look forward to.”
Then, and this is really important, I ask myself:
Step 2: What is the objective reason that I can’t do this right now?
If, for example, Health is my issue, I simply can’t do certain things, even if I’d like to. But way more often, what I think is only available in the future is already possible right here, right now.
As for my Chess, no matter what rating I have, I can definitely:
“Enjoy every game, put less pressure on myself, try my best, enjoy the journey, play tournaments I look forward to.”
This is not something reserved for Players of a certain rating, status, or with a certain income. As for you, dear Reader, as an amateur Chess Player, this is even more true.
You can Play Chess without pressure. You can enjoy every game. You can feel okay with your current rating.
And if you think immediately “Easy to say for a Grandmaster, but I’m only XYZ”, then I’d like to remind you that your Chess strength says absolutely nothing about you as a person. And at some point, we both will be dead and forgotten.
Yup, that sounds pretty harsh. But actually, thinking of our inevitable end in a coffin has helped many people for centuries to put less pressure on ourselves and enjoy our life a little more (as I understand, the stoics called this “memento mori,” Latin for “remember you must die”).
It does help me, too, even if it first freaks me out a little. It goes something like that for me:
“Die? Me? Holy sh*t. Why do I worry about so much nonsense?”
Let’s get back from the coffin to the now. And the final step I use to be a little more grounded in presence and accept my current state.
Step 3: How can I implement ways of thinking, doing, and feeling right here, right now?
This is putting a new mindset, a view on life, Chess, or business into practice.
As silly as it might sound, here is a list of things I tried to do back when I worked on this for my Chess:
- Smile at least once during a game
- Play as if there would be no rating
- Trust my gut – instead of triple-checking everything
- Be proud of myself for good results – and celebrate them (my autopilot was “this was to be expected, what is next?”
- Be okay with bad results
- Train hard – but with a smile on my face
When I have the same worries about finances
“When I have X amount of money, I can finally relax”
I realize that the main point of my having this amount of money would be to stop thinking about money so much…
So why not stop thinking about it right now?
What matters most is that we all realize that:
“When I achieve … I can be happy / relax / be proud / be worthy”
is a totally dysfunctional way of living. It makes our lives miserable. And absurdly enough, it also makes us less successful.
And even if not, what does it help us if we are successful but miserable?
It won’t spare us from our inevitable end – in a coffin, forgotten.
So let’s enjoy what we have, right here, right now.
I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes of one of my favorite thinkers, the Stoic Seneca:
“True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”
GM Noël Studer
PS: For those curious, here are some resources I enjoyed on this or related topics.
Books:
- Radical Acceptance – Tara Brach
- 4000 weeks – Oliver Burkeman
- The Tao of Seneca – Three free PDFs put together by Tim Ferriss
- Meditations – Marcus Aurelius (many different versions of it online as PDFs available, just Google it)
- Awareness – Anthony de Mello
- Mindset – Carol Dweck
- The Gifts of Imperfection – Brene Brown (recommended by Alessia)
- All Books by Ryan Holiday on Stoicism; start with “The Obstacle is the Way”
- The Courage to be disliked – Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi
- How to stop worrying and start living – Dale Carnegie
And if you need a little wake up call, this 7 Minute YouTube Video usually does it for me:
PPS: This article was initially sent out to my Newsletter list. If you want to get chess improvement advice for free in your inbox, join 17,000+ chess improvers by signing up for Friday Grandmaster Insights here.
