A Lifetime of Negative Self-Talk
And then, how I got better at overcoming it.
It happened on a chessboard. I was around seven years old, playing chess against my dad during a Buffalo Sabres game on a Friday night.
My dad is a gentle, compassionate figure who operated by the credo of “Fish for a man, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime; make a man learn to fish on his own and he’ll either become the best fisherman ever or hate fishing. Toggle between all three methods and see which one works best. Do it at random.”
When it came to chess, my father picked the third route — I would play him, and he would win, and it was up to me to learn from my mistakes until I could beat him fair and square. Over the course of a night, he must have beaten me ten times in a row. At this young of an age, when the lowest of stakes still feel too high to hurdle, this is a fate worse than death itself. I refused to give up until I had won outright. The final time I’d lost, upset and infuriated at my own inadequacy and inability to overcome my own feeble idiocy, I slammed my fist on the chessboard and threw the pieces across the room. I was scolded by my mother, sent to my room, and that was the last chess game I ever played against my dad.
