Episode 109 - How to deal with pain in chess
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hey, and welcome back to Next Level Chess Podcast. I am Grandmaster Noël Studer, your host, and today I wanna talk about how to deal with pain in chess Now, this comes up because quite a few people have asked me this recently. Like, I Explain a lot of mindset advice, both in my free work, but also in the Simplified Chess Improvement System.

Some people said, "Well, I do understand it. I should have a growth mindset, but how do I handle the pain? It still hurts when I lose, and what do I do with that?" And so today, I wanna talk about this, and just as a

Small information before we start. Very often the advice you need to hear is not [00:01:00] the easy solution you hope to hear, and that is definitely the case today

So be it when hanging a piece in a winning position or playing a perfect game only to lose because of time trouble, there are many ways that a game of chess can end painfully

And the instinct that most of us automatically go to is thinking about how we can make that pain go away and to avoid the pain in the first place, right? This hurts, okay, let's not do it anymore. Like the kid that put the hand, you know, on a hot stove is like, "Okay, let's not do this anymore." But in our case, with chess and with so many other things in life, that trying to push the pain away, trying to eliminate it from our lives only leads to more pain, anxiety, and much less fun

So I recently made an episode about, how growth happens through discomfort, right? So this is super important, but [00:02:00] even I myself, when I improve at something, and many students I'm sure have this thought of like, "Well, but is then growth even worth the pain? Should I just, you know, refuse to grow, and then I don't have pain anymore?"

And that question really has a false assumption that somehow we can avoid pain if we just refuse to grow. Because even if you stay at home and refuse to do anything that might be pain-inducing, you will feel pain. For example, the pain of feeling lonely and wasting your life A much better way to think about it is to choose the type of pain you want to feel.

If you really wanna improve at chess, not acting on it creates the pain of feeling less of yourself, remorse to not have tried it, and the pain of playing badly whenever you do play chess. Compared to that, showing up, choosing the pain of doing hard things, and occasionally making blunders and not [00:03:00] really, maybe fully achieving the goals you set yourself is already better.

It's a better part of pain, or a better type of pain

What really helped me a lot recently is not only choosing my type of pain, that's kind of step two, let's say, , but then deeply accepting it

Haruki Murakami put this perfectly in his book that is called What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. By the way, it's a very interesting read, but Murakami is a very interesting author as well, very abstract writing, just putting it like that. So he writes there, quote, "Pain is inevitable.

Suffering is optional." End of quote When something painful happens, I just try to remind myself that pain can't be avoided, and this really helps a ton if I manage to remember it in this moment, and that it is okay to [00:04:00] sometimes feel frustrated, sad, or angry What I can then focus on is not trying to avoid that pain, but how I react to the pain and the feelings that come up.

That is fully in my control

And Alessia recently shared a fun insight with me. If we fast-forward being 80 years old, we'd take even our worst days in our 20s. Just thinking of that helps me make the best out of what can be done, even on a painful and annoying day That's just how life is

There's an old story that names exactly this idea. It's the two arrows attributed to Buddha There is a translation by Thanissaro Bhikkhu, I hope I didn't butcher the name, that I put in the description of this podcast. You can check it out. The idea is that the first arrow stands for physical pain. We all have [00:05:00] this and can't escape it.

But then there is a second arrow, and this one stands for the mental pain. All the self-pity, worrying, resistance often create a much stronger self-inflicting pain. We can avoid this. So you can't avoid to be hit by an arrow from time to time, but you can avoid the second arrow that is causing so much more pain for many of us

And what struck me most is the realization that my mental pain is the cause for so much of my anxiety. So if you suffer from, you know, being anxious when playing chess, super nervous about it, you know, maybe you go to a tournament and you're like, "Oh my God, I don't know if I can do it," this is really for you.

The worse I make the pain, the more I start fearing it, right? The worse this whole moment is after having lost a game, the more it's like, "Oh my God, this is so bad. I felt so terrible. I need to [00:06:00] avoid this at all costs." Now, we know that this doesn't work, and so this makes it even worse. We kind of hated the moment so much, we try to avoid it.

Somewhere in our subconscious, we realize, well, we can't fully avoid it, and that's where anxiety grows and grows and grows because kind of we're running into this catastrophic moment, right? But we wanna stop it, but we can't

And so that kind of that idea that I can somehow stop the pain is really what creates more pain and more anxiety

But once I fully accept that pain is part of the process and life, and I don't need to inflict that second arrow of pain on myself, I can relax at least a little bit more. I can enjoy the process, play the game, knowing and accepting I very well might lose

And it sounds so simple, but a reminder for myself recently has really been like, [00:07:00] just face the pain. Because a lot of the mental gymnastics we do every day in the Western world is about trying to avoid pain from appearing

When listeners ask me, "How can I be sure my training pays off?" They basically just want an insurance that they won't feel pain. That's impossible. The harsh truth is we all feel pain, no matter if you choose to play chess, improve at it, or never touch a piece again

So there are two questions I want to leave you with. First of all, what type of pain are you choosing? And then second, are you willing to improve your chess despite the pain you'll inevitably feel?

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

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