The Art of Failure From the Perspective of a Chessplayer
Not everyone knows what it’s like to fail.
Not everyone knows what it’s like to deal with failure.
Not everyone likes to get outside their comfort zone.
Failing means putting oneself out there for a price. Multiple times.
I’m a former chess player, and for about 10 years I lost and failed a significant amount of times. More than 10 years later, the result is being paid off.
Why do humans dislike failure?
Humans need to know how to avoid failure, and, for an important reason — survival. Why? Because it’s painful. It’s painful in the mind.
The Loss Aversion Theory claims that the pain of losing is psychologically about twice as powerful as the pleasure of gaining.
Therefore, people will avoid paying more to avoid losses; one example is by continuing to do what they do without questioning it. On the opposite side, this is one thing that chess players learn to do after years of training.
Chess players learn to question everything. This practice leads them to both failure and success.
Fail a lot as you can
Chessplayers are called chessplayers because they dedicate their time to playing a nonsensical misunderstood game for years.
They study the game and then go and play tournaments hoping to win the big prize.
Tournaments mean lots of games. Lots of games mean lots of chances to win and to lose.
No matter how good one plays, the loss comes when least awaited. And when one loss arrives, it brings more pain than joy from winning 7 games.
If you think losing one game is painful, think of what it’s like to lose game after game. I experienced this feeling in many tournaments.
I’m playing for five hours, and I’m about to win when I make a bad mistake, and I lose. One mistake. Immediately, I realize I am losing and have to give up. In a state of disbelief, I go home and try to recover from this accidental failure. I prepare for the next game. The next day, I lose again. I try to recover. The day after, I lose again.
Losing is a weird feeling.
After every loss, you think you learn how to deal with it, but you never do.
Every new lost game brings new feelings and new lessons. Losing, at times, felt like a personal punishment. I felt punished for not being smart enough, for not being good enough.
However, the real issue wasn’t me but the inevitability of making mistakes; it’s a natural occurrence. Sometimes, someone beats you, and in turn, you beat them another time. The more you play, the greater your exposure to failure.
That doesn’t make the experience easier, but it teaches you that losing is an integral part of the game, and it teaches you to move on fast.
Learn from your failures immediately
After completing the game, the chess player heads home and analyzes the game on the same day, trying to find out what they have done well and wrong.
Why on the same day?
Because this is when the chess player recalls the details most vividly — not just the moves but also the accompanying emotions.
The chess player asks her/himself — “Why did I make this move? What triggered me to make it?”
The answers to these questions will lead to the root of the problem. The ultimate goal is to comprehend the rationale behind each move and avoid flawed reasoning.
Chessplayers do not decrease their failure rate by making more good moves, but by avoiding bad moves.
Doing this on an almost daily basis is painful. You go through each of your mistakes and dig into them. This is the only right way to experience failure.
Failure only holds meaning if you extract lessons from it. Otherwise, you’re merely losing your energy.
Also, you shouldn’t stop failing. Move on to the next game, try again, and persist. The true path to mastering the art of failure is to fail with grace.
If you have difficulty accepting failure in life, try chess as a starter.
The more you engage in the game, the more annoyed you will get, but more patient in the long term.
Why is chess a good start?
Because you do not need to put a massive offer on the table. You will pay with your time, a far less daunting commitment compared to what life may present.
Utilize this platform to assess your resilience in the face of failure.
Start to fail.
If you liked this story, you might want to check out these:
