Brian Johnson recounts a proud parenting moment: his 10-year-old son Emerson, an avid chess player trained on chesskid.com by instructors like Fun Master Mike and Nick Mata, recently won novice and JV state tournaments. During a live Zoom where Emerson finally got to play Fun Master Mike, Brian used a physical demonstration—pouring coffee beans between two bowls—to teach Emerson about focused attention: keeping 'all the beans' in the focus bowl rather than letting distractions move them to the other bowl. The piece closes with an exhortation to "activate your soul force" and keep attention on what matters.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last plus one we talked about a couple of recent opportunities. I had to practice my philosophy and activate my soul force by focusing my energy on some wins with my kids. I promised I'd talk about the plus one. I started writing called Lucky Number 13 and we'll get to that tomorrow. I was laughing as I typed this, but I've got to share another story about another win target swipe opportunity with Emerson from the morning. Here's the quick context. Emerson, as we've briefly discussed a few times, is really into chess. As in really into chess. I'll repeat, we really love the website chesskid.com it's truly phenomenal. I highly recommend it for any parents or grandparents who have kids who are expressing an interest in chess. Fun Master Mike, the Chief Chess Officer of Chess Kid, is literally one of the best teachers I've ever seen. He has an incredibly engaging, authentic, funny and magnetically effective style that has won Emerson over and helped him quickly develop his skills to the point where he recently won his first rated tournament for the Unrated Novice division for his age group, which happened to be the regional, state or regional championships. Proud dad moment. And then later he won the state championships for his JV division. Shout out to Emerson's coach@chesskid.com as well, Nick Mata, who combined with Mike to help bring Emerson to the next next level. So Fun Master Mike is one of Emerson's heroes. Now Mike plays kids in a little live zoom thing he does that he calls Beat Fun Master Mike. Now a lot of kids are online trying to play him when he does these live zooms. Emerson has tried to play him a bunch of times but never got lucky enough to be one of the kids who got through to play until earlier today. So Emerson plays Fun Master Mike who is doing this particular zoom with one of the youngest women international masters who's around 12 years old. And then he comes bursting into my office to tell me with all the ineffably engaging enthusiasm of the beautiful 10 year old, I absolutely adore Daddy, I got to play Fun Master Mike. I didn't win, but that's okay because I got to play him. To which I replied, dude, that's amazing. Then I shifted my focus again to this win as I knew it was a really important moment for him and I wanted to help him savor it. So we go to the live stream and replay his game and watch him playing as hero and he tells me it was really hard to play him because I was listening to him talk about our game with the international master while I was playing, to which I said, dude. Then I continued by saying, it's impossible to play him well when your attention is split between focusing on playing your game and listening to him talk to another person about what they're thinking. Then I knew we had a really good teaching moment opportunity. So I celebrated how awesome it was that he was able to play him. And. And I celebrated how well he framed the experience. And I hunted through our pantry to look for some beans of some kind so I could make a point about the power of focusing your attention on what's important. Now, I couldn't find any open packages of normal beans, so I grabbed a bag of coffee beans. Then I grabbed two bowls. I poured the coffee beans into one bowl, stir so it was full, and I left the other bowl empty. I said, you see this bowl full of beans? That's your brain focused on one thing. Playing chess. Then I said, you know what happens when you think about other things besides playing that game of chess? Like listening to Fun Master Mike talk while you're playing. Then I grabbed a handful of beans from the full bowl and I put them into the empty bowl. Those beans go over here. Then we talked about how being so excited and nervous and thinking about all that was going on was another scoop of beans into the wrong bowl. Then we talked about the fact that as he kept on listening to Fun Master Mike narrate every move, he was taking another scoop of beans out of one bowl and putting it in the other. And then another scoop of beans as he worried about his five minute clock running out. And and another scoop as they kept talking on and on and on until there were very few beans left in the focus bowl. Then I asked, how well do you think you're going to play when all the beans are in that bowl of distractions? To which he replied with a big smile, not as well as I could if all the beans were in the other bowl. To which I replied, exactly, and that is today's plus one. How's your focus? Remember the coffee beans and keep them in the right bowl. Hiro. Activate your soul. Force focus on what's important now. All day, every day, especially today. Little P.S. we got some highlights from that regional championship weekend in the pictures below in the PAS 1.
