One big one I have been thinking about is negative feedback. Losing is negative feedback. A big part of improvement seems to be finding a way to handle that negative feedback both emotionally and intellectually. This is something I struggle with. To be honest, I don't think I am the worst at handling this aspect of games but I am also not the best. There are a lot of ways of handling that negative feedback. For instance a big one for chess players can be changing your openings. Basically this is a way of shifting the negative feedback from yourself to something else. The world of gaming is full of dodges like this. But if you want to improve you have to handle negative feedback in a mature and responsible way. I am generally pretty mature about losing in some ways. I can say "Good game" after a loss even if I feel upset about losing. I feel like that is a good thing. But in a way it still misses the point. The point is that you have to accept that you are getting negative feedback and you have to take it as showing a weakness that you can improve on. It is easy to blame the game and say it is unfair or something like that. But you also have to avoid beating yourself up. I guess probably my worst fault is just that a lot of times I get disheartened by losses. I start to lose faith in progress and start to feel I would rather be doing something else. So that is something I want to work on. I just feel like somehow I have to work at accepting losses as part of the game. There is part of me that dreams that I can just win the vast majority of the time. So, I want to work on improving in terms of accepting losses as indicating points where I can improve. This is not easy. I feel it is important to kind of give myself credit that to some extent I do take losses as having to do with my skill. But I feel like I lack some kind of fortitude in terms of like processing that in a way that is productive. I feel like to be fair to myself, this is really not easy and a lot of people never get there. So just recognizing that this is what needs to happen in my own gaming is a good step. So that is a big one. I also think that I have to recognize that this is a process and be patient with myself. A lot of times in the past I would have the mistaken belief that recognizing a problem was all that it took to correct it. As soon as I recognized the problem I expected that I should immediately correct course. But this is not at all how it works. Working on your game is a tough process. Recognizing that there is a problem is just the first step. You have to be patient and work at it bit by bit.
Another one that I have kind of recognized is that there are two parts of me. One part is competitive and one part just wants to have fun. The competitive part wants to improve and get better. The part that just wants to have fun wants to avoid discomfort. The problem is that in the past I would go all one way or the other. I would get really intense about improvement and feel like that is what I really want and that is really who I am. Then I would burn out. So then I would swing in the opposite kind of direction and would start to think I just want to have fun and do whatever I feel like in the moment. So I would just follow my nose for awhile. Eventually though I would feel like I was in a dead end and I didn't really have any direction. So the breakthrough I had the other night is just to recognize that I really am both of these things. I really am competitive in some ways. I do care about the results. I want to have some direction and purpose in my gaming. But at the same time, there is part of me that is just curious and kind of wants to investigate random stuff without any practical value. Just create cool magic decks or look at random openings in chess. So really both of these are part of the picture. It is not satisfying to say "games should just be for fun" and like think I should not care about winning or losing. But at the same time, a big part of the reason I am interested in games is just for curiosity and finding cool stuff. So the way forward has to be a mix where I have room for both. I am not really sure exactly how to manage that but I feel a lot better for having escaped that false dilemma.
Being practical is another one I was thinking about today. I feel sometimes I kind of get caught up in pipe dreams of wanting to be a pro at whatever game I happened to be hipped on. I also like to learn about the history of the games I play. So those things are not all bad. I just think I need to have a clearer idea of when I am learning something just for curiosity's sake and when I am doing something practical. In some ways I can be practical but I just feel like I kind of spend too much time kind of chasing will o the wisps. Basically, a prime example is playing over commented historical games of chess. This is something I like to do and have spent quite a bit of time doing. But basically it is not really a practical thing to do. Of course it is not a total waste of time but basically the concerns of top flight grandmasters are very different from my concerns when I play. I am not saying I should never play over commented master games. But I think I need to have a clearer idea that it is mostly just for fun and is not really a practical way of getting stronger. A more practical activity would be reviewing my own games and looking for lessons. Of course tactics training is very practical and I have done a lot of that also. So I am not all daydreams and no action. I think it is just sort of a question of being honest about my motive. It is kind of easy to fool myself and say that I am working on my chess when I am kind of just wanting something relatively easy to do. It is the same thing with magic. It is fun to watch gameplay videos where someone explains how their deck works and then shows themselves playing it online while explaining to viewers about their thought process. But a much more practical activity is brewing my own deck and testing it out. Both have their place. I am not saying it is bad to watch those videos. But I think I have to have a clearer idea of what is kind of a cop out sometimes instead of doing real work.
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