Brian Johnson shares a story about his son Emerson's chess tournament where he lost to a top young player. The coaches told Emerson he needs to slow down and calculate more deliberately to reach Grandmaster level. The lesson: identify your one thing to improve and start today.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. There are a few other things tied for first, but nothing gives me greater joy than spending one on one time with Emerson in our boys only weekend chess adventures. Now I was typing this on a Monday morning after our most recent adventure. It was awesome. Fell asleep holding hands, dominated our pre match protocol and got some laser tag in between long breaks. Between games, Emerson won two and won three more via some lessons learned which is one of the few times his ratio was skewed in that direction. As you can imagine, the better he gets, the better his competitors get. So his third game on Saturday started at 7pm when he'd usually be going to bed. It ended at 10:30pm making our bedtime tied for latest ever right there with the night after. We all enjoyed the Bulls game together a few weeks before. Now he lost that game to a little guy who is one of the best nine year olds in the country. Afterwards he had a sweet interaction with the little boy's mom. Apparently she complimented him on his posture while playing chest up, chin down. And she told him that her son has been working with one of the Grandmasters in Austin. So when I went through our post match 1, 2, 3 to operationalize how we would create a win out of the learning opportunity, Emerson pleasantly surprised me with what he knew he needed to do to get better. Long story a little shorter. Emerson is a very intuitive chess player. He likes to move fast. His coaches have been telling him for months now that if he wants to go to the next level, he's going to need to slow down a bit and calculate his moves more deliberately. Now, he hasn't been a huge fan of the recommended ways to master that skill until he lost that game. Then he knew it was time to step up his training and master that skill so he could achieve his next big goal en route to his big, big goal of becoming a Grandmaster. We'll chat more about his plans in our chat on the science of motivation as applied to his training in the next one. For now, spotlight on you. Have you lost any matches in your life lately? Of course you have. A, you're human. B, you're striving to be heroic. Now, what's one thing you know you need to do to get better? You got it? Now get on that today.
