Losing your way is normal
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. As always, I am Grandmaster Noël Studer, your host. And today I wanna talk about getting off track

And how getting off track has always been such a, bad experience for me because I attached a lot of shame and guilt to it, and well, I got off track recently again, but I'm happy to report that there is a little bit less shame and guilt about it. So let's talk about it

So I recently realized that I have been moving full speed, very convinced in the wrong direction for roughly the past six months. And when I realized it, for the first [00:01:00] time in a long time, I did not have a tremendous amount of guilt. Or maybe I have to say it differently. The instinct was feeling guilt, feeling shame, being like, "How could I be that stupid?"

Um, but then I managed to kind of see it in a different light for the first time

I finally realized that getting off track is actually absolutely normal. It's part of life's journey

So if you also ever got off track, for example, with your chess training and got slightly frustrated or have that feeling of guilt or shame, then I hope this one helps you as well. But to be very honest with all of you listening, this is more just a reminder to myself that I hopefully learn this lesson even better, maybe can re-listen to myself talking in a few months or years

So in my head, I think I had this illusion of [00:02:00] perfection

Like that there is this, like, one clear direction that is ideal for most areas of my life, and taking it is the correct choice and everything else is a mistake. Uh, you can imagine this like a tactical position where there is one correct solution, and everything else is not even close to be as good as the objectively correct solution.

And when you look back at this tactical position, you switch on the engine and you see one move is plus 10, and all others are at best equal. And so it feels very obvious, and you can easily feel stupid for not having seen that plus 10 move So here's where this illusion breaks apart First thing is that life isn't solvable like a tactical position

I needed to realize that there are no alternative life paths you can objectively compare. Like, you can't just live out 100 times, your life with different decisions and then say, "This was [00:03:00] the better decision." Good or bad are mostly interpretation and not truths like in a concrete chess position

Because nobody knows really how another decision might have played out, assessing that one is correct and everything else would be wrong is kinda absurd

And then the second point I realized is that we aren't born with 3,500 life Elo, so to speak, and can expect ourselves to get the right answer every single time, even if there would be this kind of objectively right answer

that the only way to get closer to a higher rating, right, to be being better at making life choices is, well, to make some wrong ones and learn from them, as we know from chess

So I kind of managed to shift my thinking from this kind of one ideal life path and everything else is a mistake, , more, into life is a [00:04:00] fluid moving stream of decisions. And in hindsight, some will seem good, some others will seem worse But those who seem bad are mostly decisions that help me realize what I don't want in life.

It's not if we look back to something and said, "Oh, I had to pivot after that, decision," that the decision in itself was necessarily wrong

And I really need to, you know, burn this into my brain that it is a fairy tale to believe that I will ever be able to look back over a period of five years, let's say, and say, "I exactly followed my ideal life path." What even is the ideal life path? Like, all right, we talk about values, we talk about what you want.

Maybe what you want changes in these five years, so obviously you can't follow the same path

So let me bring this back to chess. What does this mean concretely about chess improvement? If you listen to this podcast, I guess you know that if you [00:05:00] wanna improve your chess, you should do what matters, do it well, do it consistently, right? These are the three dos of chess improvement. Sounds pretty simple.

But instead, you might have been endlessly watching YouTube videos, playing some blitz marathons, or just you don't spend as much time on chess training as you would like to

And now, if you listen to this and you're like, "Yes, this is me," what I hope you can take away from this is the frustration that you feel is simply a lesson that improving your chess is really something you want in life right now. And you can use that lesson and go back on track and move towards what feels right now in this moment right for you, which is investing more time or investing time in the right thing in chess You can schedule your next training week or even just do one really good chess training as soon [00:06:00] as possible.

That will already be getting closer back on track. You wanna start small and build it back up

The most important, and this was the trickiest really for me because I've been pretty decent in that getting back on track. But what, followed or what I felt when doing it was so bad because I had this shame and guilt that I wasted my last weeks or months just because I realized, okay, I wanna pivot.

You know, this is something that matters to me. I wanna invest more time in it

And if these emotions are something you can relate to and you feel as well when you realize you get off track, you likely also measure yourself against an ideal kind of thing in your brain of how chess training should look like.

That if you decide that you want to train chess every single week, you should train exactly the amount with full focus and perfect execution, right? And once you say chess training is important, then every of your action will stream in that [00:07:00] direction. That's impossible. And I can assure you that even my most successful students are not doing that

So here's to getting back on track, doing this one thing that brings you closer to chess improvement again, and also realizing you'll definitely get off track again, and that's okay. That's just being a human

And just as a side note, if you want something that helps you get at least a weekly rhythm of one good training session a week, can highly recommend my Real Chess Training. You will find a link in description for 1,500 to 2,000 players. And a few days from you listening to this, I will have launched, or I will launch if you listen to this early, the 1,000 to 1,500 Real Chess Training as well.

You will find a link in the description

So if you wanna do one real good [00:08:00] training session per week, at the very least, consider joining Real Chess Training. You can check it out. Again, it is, you know, newly launched for 1,000 to 1,500, which I will call Real Chess Training Intermediate. And then we have the Real Chess Training Advanced. That's the one that has been already out.

That is for 1,500 to 2,000. One test every single week, six positions. You take your time, you solve them, and then you watch the solution video

that's it from me. Talk to you next week. Hey, guys, just two quick things before you take off. If you enjoyed this episode and want more structured chess improvement tips from myself, check out my newsletter at nextlevelchess.com/newsletter. It's totally free. It will always remain free, and it goes out every single Friday with the best, latest chess improvement tips that I have.

Most of the podcast episodes that I record [00:09:00] are based on a previous newsletter. So getting the newsletter, you'll get the advice earlier, and you'll get it directly into your inbox every single Friday. It's totally free, as I mentioned, and you can unsubscribe any time. So go to nextlevelchess.com/newsletter to sign up.

And one last thing, if you enjoyed this episode and if it helped you, then please take a few seconds and review this podcast. This helps a ton. It helps other people see, oh, yeah, many, many people profit from the advice given in this podcast. Let's give this podcast a try. And if you can, if you know anyone in the chess world that would profit from this episode or any other episode, make sure to share it with your friends, with your people online.

That's super helpful. Podcast growth is really just working through mouth by mouth recommendations. [00:10:00] So thank you, thank you so much for listening, and thank you for spreading the word about the Next Level Chess Podcast. Now, that's all from me. Thank you for listening, and see you next time.