Brian Johnson uses a chess tournament where his student lost to a much lower-rated player to show how to learn from losses. Celebrate what went right, find one thing to improve, then pick one specific change to make. Losing reveals what to fix next.
Questions this video answers
May 28, 2024.
1 win, 2 losses, 1 draw (1–2–1).
Approximately 500 rating points lower.
Move by Move by Maurice Ashley.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus one. In our last one, we chatted about Emerson's suboptimal performance at a recent chess tournament and how he made the connection between some off the menu food choices and his inability to play at his highest levels. As you may recall, Emerson lost to a kid whose rating was 500 points lower than his, which of course can and will happen, but really shouldn't happen. He wound up going one, two and one for the day, winning one game, losing two, and drawing one. It was, as we discussed, one of his poorest performances to date, to which we both said perfect. Win or learn baby. We went through our quick 1, 2, 3 process, celebrating what was awesome, identifying what needed work, and deciding what specifically we will do next time. As we fully squeezed all the winner learned juice out of the poor performance, we learned three things making the unofficial days tally four learning wins and zero losses. As discussed, we don't go off menu the day before a tournament, we do it the day after a tournament, which is what we'd always done before. And then the second thing was we get to the event 30 minutes early. We were also running way too close to the start time and couldn't dominate our normal pre match protocol. And number three, he's going to exercise more. Emerson hadn't been exercising much the prior several days. He decided he will specifically ride his bike around the trail every hour five times during the day. Note now would be a good time to remind ourselves of some wisdom from chess grandmaster Maurice Ashley's great book Move by Move, in which he tells us no one likes to lose. Yet how we handle our losses is one of the most powerful measures of our eventual success. Those who react badly after a loss, who pout, kick, scream and throw things, generally get no benefit from the experience. The great champions often look at losing as a way to gain precious competitive insights so they can raise their game to new levels. Losing, much more so than winning, can be a catapult, launching your game to new heights. And then he continues by saying the late great Kobe Bryant was once asked, what does losing feel like to you? His reply? It's exciting because it means you have different ways to get better. There's certain weaknesses that were exposed that you need to shore up. It sucks to lose, but at the same time the answers are there. If you just look at them, losing it sucks. But with the right mindset, it's exciting. Today's +1 think about a recent suboptimal performance you experienced. Yes, it's painful to bring it to mind. Perfect. We need to embrace reality in order to improve it. We want to squeeze all the wisdom juice out of the experience and throw it away. So let's 1, 2, 3 it what's one awesome thing about your poor experience? It could be one aspect of the event that went well, or worst case, that at least you went for it and showed up. What's one thing you know you could have done better? This is where that painful part of your performance comes in and or the cause of that poor performance. And then most importantly, what's one specific thing you can and will do differently next time to give yourself the best shot and at going next level? Get specific here. For us, it wasn't arrive at the tournament earlier. It was arrived 30 minutes before the first game. It wasn't exercise more, it was ride my bike for a loop every hour and do at least five loops during the day. I repeat, losing sucks. But if we do it right, it's exciting. Let's do it right today.
