PNTV: How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov

Applying the wisdom from his chess career to our lives, remembering that life is a game, play to win. Now, talent matters, but effort matters more. Life, the ultimate game, is way more important. Win this game, you have a shot at winning all the other games you play. He told us your infinite potential exists, but it exists outside of your comfort zone. If you want to tap into that infinite potential, you have to leave your comfort zone. Try to be the best version of you. If you can do that, you have a shot at being the best at your position. Same with his coaches. Same with you. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes TV. Today we've got another great book, How Life Imitates Chess by Garry Kasparov, the legendary grandmaster and advisor to Netflix's The Queen's Gambit. Subtitle of the book is Life's a Game, Play to Win. If you follow chess, you know that Garry Kasparov is one of the all-time greats. He was the youngest, at the time, world champion in 1985, 22 years old. He literally taught the class on MasterClass on chess, and just phenomenal book, applying the wisdom from his chess career to our lives, remembering that life is a game, play to win. Now, as always, we've got the 7-page Philosopher's Notes PDF that you can get for free, along with the MP3 that goes with it. Check out the show notes, click on that link. Hope you enjoy.

Thank you.

Now, chess has become a big part of the Johnson family over the last 3 and a half years. My son, right around the time he turned 10, he's now 13 and a half, got really into chess. And when I say really into chess, I mean really into chess. He now wants to be a grandmaster. To put it in perspective, I'm decent at chess. I'm about a 1250, plus or minus 100, on Chess.com, which apparently is better than 90% or so people on chess. But I'm very, very, very, very middling compared to him.

Emerson's rating On Chess.com.

And if you follow, if you play on Chess.com, you know this is, um, kind of crazy. It's 2600 in bullet, 2500 in blitz. Um, he can beat me blindfolded, and my Admiral friends come over, he beats them blindfolded, etc. So he's really into chess. I read this book during one of his chess tournaments. I prepped for this last weekend at the national championships and, um, just absolutely love the game of chess, what it's done for our family. And I'm excited to share some of my favorite wisdom from this book with you. Now we've got other Philosopher's notes on great books on chess, including Josh Waitzkin. He was the kid featured in Searching for Bobby Fischer. Check out The Art of Learning, phenomenal book, and a bunch of other titles. With that, let's get to work. We've got five big ideas. We're going to start with overalls. Thomas Edison said that opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls and it looks like hard work. People look at chess grandmasters or elite chess players like my son and say, "Oh, they must be really smart." Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's got a fast brain. We like to say. We're going to talk about the science of this. Talent matters, but effort matters more. So you got to know the hard work that Garry put in, the hard work that anyone who excels in their domain is putting in. Second big idea we're going to talk about is the inner game, mental toughness. It's the speed with which we bounce back from life's challenges that dictates how well we're going to do. We'll talk about rule number 1 of excellence. We're going to talk about rating systems. One of the fascinating things about chess is there's a specific rating system. Whether it's chess.com or uschess.com or FIDE, everyone who plays chess competitively gets a rating. So Gary says you want to create a rating for your life. Hold yourself to high standards, push yourself. We'll talk about that. We're going to talk about the fastest way to improve. It's going to be different than you would probably guess. I'm going to tell you a story about a grandmaster with whom Emerson worked and their very, very, very first lesson. One of my favorite all-time stories. Then we're gonna talk about the ultimate game, chess is great, life, the ultimate game, is way more important. Win this game, you have a shot at winning all the other games you play. And then most importantly, as always, plus one, let's go. How do we move from theory to practice to mastery together today? Think about the wisdom that most resonates with you in our session and time together today and how you will apply it to your life today. That's why I do what I do, to help you show up as that best, most heroic version of yourself. Let's get to work.

Let's go.

Big idea number 1. Thomas Edison, as I said, Gary quotes him, opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls and looks a lot like hard work. We have this naive idea that the best among us are somehow just talented and that's what allows them to perform at the highest levels. Well, Gary talks about Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan was talented, no question about it, but he worked harder than anybody has ever worked. Maybe there's a couple guys tied for first. And that's what made him great. He would have been a very, very, very good player. But it's his effort that made him absolutely astonishing. Now Carol Dweck talks about this in her books, Mindset and Self-Theories. You got to have a growth mindset, you got to know that if you put in the effort, you can get better. Angela Duckworth wrote a book called Grit, in which she talks about this. And it's one of my favorite little equations here. She says, talent times Effort equals skill. Talent times effort equals skill. She says talent matters, right? So talent definitely matters. She defines talent as the speed with which you pick up a skill. So Emerson has a certain disposition. Eleanor, our 9-year-old, just started playing chess. She's really into it as well. They have a certain disposition, a talent for it, that definitely allows them to play, um, at a reasonably high level out the gate. But, it's the effort. And, others may have it in art, or in sports, or in different things. So, talent matters. No question about it. I'm not saying it doesn't matter. But, effort needs to be applied in order to bring out that talent to create skill. So, talent times effort equals skill. Then, Angela says, yeah, yeah, then you have skill, and you got to times it by more effort. Then, you get achievement. So, talent times effort equals skill. Skill times more effort equals achievement. Angela Duckworth, again the leading scientist on grit, says effort counts twice. I once quizzed Emerson on, hey, remember the equation from Angela Duckworth? And he said, yeah, yeah, talent times effort equals skill, skill times effort equals achievement. Then he extended and said achievement times even more effort equals mastery. So if we want to master anything, we have to be willing to put in the effort. Remember Opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls. Put on your overalls, get to work, squeeze out all the talent you have through the efforts. Second big idea, the inner game. Of course, if, you know, Garry's going to talk about how he excelled in chess, he's going to need to talk about his mental toughness. And my joke with Emerson is he used to be able to beat everybody but me. Then he got to a point after studying on chesskid.com— again, awesome website, check it out if you have kids or grandkids that are into chess— chesskid.com. Fun master Master Mike is one of the best teachers I've ever seen. Emerson fell in love with him. Eleanor loves him as well. So anyway, he got to a point where he could beat me after a few months on ChessKid.com, right? And then he got to a point where he's just so much better than me. He could give me a queen. He can play me blindfolded, and it's awesome. So the rule was, don't listen to anything I have to say about chess. But I know a few other things about mental toughness and forging antifragility and all that good stuff. And, uh, the way Gary talks about it is just phenomenal. So the number one thing here with mental toughness in the inner game is you got to remember rule number one of a good hero's life, good hero's journey, and a good heroic life. It's supposed to be challenging. Most people, when we face challenges, we think something's wrong with us because we're facing challenges. But we got to remember, you would never go see a hero film featuring your favorite hero, whether that's a Marvel superhero or whoever, You'd never watch that movie if they didn't face challenges. That's what makes them stronger. That's what makes them great. Yet, when we face challenges, we want to give up. We think something's wrong with us. Well, the hero wants to give up even in those movies as well. That's what makes it a heroic quest, a hero's journey. But, Gary tells us, you will get knocked down. Remember that. It's the speed with which you can recover that matters. So, when you get knocked down, remember, you're going to get knocked down, period. When you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, Remember, we talked about the fact that your infinite— oops— that your infinite potential— that is a heck of a stick figure. Check that guy out. All right, there we go. He's got like an interesting neck. Let's make him a smiley face. You got to remember from our first PNTV back, I talked about true and false magic. Phil Stutz, he told us your infinite potential exists, but it exists outside of your comfort zone. If you want to tap into that infinite potential, you have to leave your comfort zone. How, by definition, does that feel? It feels uncomfortable. You feel fear, you feel pain, you feel uncertainty. We need to get comfortable feeling that. You need to bounce back from those setbacks as fast as you can. Another PNTV we'll be doing soon is on George Leonard's great book, The Way of Aikido. The great Aikido master and founder of Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba, One of his students told him, Morhei, you never lose your center, which is a big part of Aikido, right? Staying centered and grounded. He said, you never lose your center. And the master, O Sensei, laughed and said, I lose my center all the time, but I regain it so quickly that you don't notice. Marcus Aurelius said, when the force of circumstance upsets your equanimity, see how fast you can return. To a balanced state. So when life knocks you down, you lose a chess game, you lose whatever the equivalent is in your life, see how fast you can bounce back, starting with the recollection, remembering the fact that it's supposed to be challenging. Don't beat yourself up, rebound as fast as you can. Third big idea, we can talk about that for a week. Third big idea, rating systems. Chess, as I mentioned, has a very specific rating system, whether it's Chess.com if you play there, right, or US Chess if you're a US chess player and you play competitively, or Or FIDE, which is the international rating system used to get— become a FIDE Master, an International Master, and a Grandmaster. So Emerson, as I mentioned, his rating on Chess.com is twice as high as mine. Chess fans, you know that his is 2500 in blitz and 2600 in bullet, which is crazy. And he's over 2000 in US Chess. So he's marching toward a National Master, wants to become a FIDE Master, International Master, and a Grandmaster. over the next 5 years. That's his, his big goal, right? So rating systems are unbelievably helpful to drive behavior. He knows when he's playing chess— and I forget what Garry's peak rating was, but it was crazy. Again, him and Magnus were the— are among the all-time greats, right? Rating systems are great because you know precisely how you're doing in chess. Garry's idea is apply that to your life. How do you set a, quote, rating system in the different aspects of your life you care about? For us, we always come back to the big 3: energy, work, and love, right? Who are you at your best in your energy, in your work and how you're showing up productively, and who are you in your relationships? What— how do you rate yourself there? We built an app to help you do that with virtues and with targets, and we give you a Soulforce score. But whatever you can do to create a system where you raise your standards and you push yourself and you hold yourself accountable to those standards and you're honest about reality And, when you're falling short, the more you're going to improve. They've done research on this. You can give people a pedometer to measure their number of steps, and people who have a pedometer versus those who don't in the study walk a mile more than the people without a pedometer. So, simply tracking your steps is a rating system. Let me say I'm going to get 10,000 steps. Okay, I'm going to keep track. I'm much more likely to get those steps than if I'm not. Create rating systems in your life. Hold yourself accountable. Push yourself if you want to get better. 4th big idea. Again, this is one of my all-time favorite experiences and stories. So, 2 parts of it that I love. One, Emerson, we homeschool him, so he spends a lot of time training, and he'll watch, you know, Hikaru is a really, really popular livestream chess guy, grandmaster, super entertaining and great, right? So, Emerson was watching a new Grandmaster who is streaming, or a grandmaster who has just recently started streaming. And this guy allowed people— one of the former top 100-ish players in the world. So these live streamers often let their viewers play them. So Emerson signs up to get in the queue to play this grandmaster, right? And I'm out of town, but his mom's paying attention. He's number 3, number 2, number 1. Oh, he's up, he's live, he's playing the grandmaster. So, Mommy films it and sends it to me afterwards, but films it on her iPhone. And Emerson is playing this grandmaster, and he's playing so well that the grandmaster thinks he's cheating. And he says, my God, is this guy cheating? He's playing like a god! Is literally what he said. So, I watched the video, and I'm like, that is awesome! How fun is that? And how cool is it that he said that? I go find this guy online. I send him an email, and I say, hey, that was my 12-year-old son you were playing when you said this. Do you do any coaching? Because we'd love to potentially work together. I think you guys would love one another. He certainly admires you. Maybe that'd be fun. He says, absolutely. We sign up. We have our first coaching session with this grandmaster. His name's Tamás, awesome human being from Hungary. And, the very, very first homework assignment he gives Emerson is the point of this idea. It is the thing that I think is one of the coolest things in the world. So, what do you think this grandmaster, One of the best, who's been a second to some of the best players in the world competing for world championships. If he wanted to improve your game in chess, what do you think he would have you do? What he had Emerson do was pull out— chess players, when they play chess games, they— when they want to get really, really good, they keep track of their games. They put them into something called ChessBase, a file where you can study it and you can review what you did in the game. That's how you— one of the ways you get better. Anyway, Tomasz has Emerson give him the 10 worst games he's ever played, the most painful losses he's ever had. That was his first homework assignment for Emerson. I get goosebumps saying that. I thought that was the coolest thing ever. And, why? Why would he do that? Why would he have Emerson share with him the 10 most painful losses he's ever had? As he said, when I asked him— I knew the answer, but I asked him— He said, because that's how you're going to stop making those mistakes. The fastest way to improve in chess is to stop making the mistakes you're consistently making. If you can remove those mistakes, you will accelerate your, your improvement. Now, of course, you do other things, improving calculations through puzzles and opening prep and stuff like that. But if you're consistently making the same mistakes and you don't fix those, you will have a very difficult time getting better. So, he started with the top 10 worst mistakes. Applying this wisdom to your life, my question for you is this: are you making mistakes in your life consistently? And let's focus on energy, work, and love. Simplify it. We all make mistakes all the time. There are no perfect human beings. But we want to identify— look at yesterday, or look at some of your worst days, or look at some of your worst periods in your life, right? The 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 worst days, or worst weeks, or worst months of your life. What were you doing? What mistakes? I want to look at those games and I want to study them with you. And if I could follow you around for the day and I can see what you're doing and what you're not doing, we can change those things. I get goosebumps saying that. And I want you to know that the fastest way to change your life is not to start doing new things. Sure, there's a lot of stuff you can start doing. It's to stop doing the things that don't work for you. The metaphor I love to use is Superman. If Superman has kryptonite in front of him, he loses all of his power. You know what's even more sneaky is if Lex Luthor ground the kryptonite into dust and just sprinkled it around Superman's house. Just had him do little things that didn't work for him, right? So I would want to look at your life and some of the most difficult times that you've faced, and I want to see what you're doing. I want to see how you're eating. I want to see how you're moving. I want to see how you're sleeping. I want to see how you're using technology. I want to see how you're breathing. I want to see how you're showing up at work. I want to see how you're showing up with your family, and I want to systematically identify the mistakes you're making so we can help you stop making those mistakes. And again, none of us are perfect. None of us will ever be perfect, period. Abraham Maslow's greatest insight: there are no perfect human beings. Great human beings, movers and shakers, but not one perfect person. And the sooner we realize that the sooner we quit getting disappointed by people who aren't perfect, and the sooner we stop holding ourselves to this idea of perfection. Because, when we do that, we ignore mistakes. We think that mistakes are a sign of things we should be ashamed of, rather than things we can learn from. We're going to talk about that in a future PNTV on Adam Grant and Hidden Potential, the cost of perfectionism. When you can't look at your mistakes, you can't improve. That's a very long exploration of this idea. Again, one of my all-time favorite heroes. Oh my gosh, is this kid cheating? Is this guy cheating? No, that's my son, dude. Let's go. One of the worst mistakes you've ever made. Let's vacuum up that kryptonite dust, help you improve. All of which leads us to the 5th and final big idea here, the ultimate game. As I talk a lot about, I talk about in the note, I talk about it in a lot of plus ones at Heroic. I come back to this all the time. One of my favorite rituals in my life is what I do with my son, Emerson, and now Eleanor, when we go out to a chess tournament. They're often— they're at least 1 day. They're often 2 or 3 days. Sometimes we fly several times a year. Maybe we drive for a few hours to Houston or Dallas. We live in Austin, right? But, the moment we drive out of our property, we got a little gate, we shut the gate, we turn on the little street, And, I ask Emerson, what do you want? What do you want? Tell me what you want in life. And, he gives me the same answer. We've done this dozens and dozens of times. He says, I want to be a good person, and I want to be a chess grandmaster. I want to be a grandmaster. I want to be a good person. I want to be a grandmaster. I say to him, good answer, good order. Then, I ask him, what do you need to do in order to be a good person? And, he gives me the same answer every time. He goes through the cardinal virtues that are on the back of my book, Arete, that are on our virtue compass in Heroic. I want to live with wisdom, discipline, love, courage. And then he gives me the scientific virtues most highly correlated with flourishing: gratitude, hope, curiosity, and zest. Then he tells me what each of those virtues mean. And why are we going through this? The ultimate game. We need to be the best version of ourselves in the ultimate game. Then we can show up and win all the other little games we play. Whether that's in chess or football, worked with Notre Dame football. Marcus Freeman was asked about some of the work we did together, and he said, hey, what did, what did you and Brian do? Well, how did he support your team when I supported him a couple years ago? His answer is one of my favorite answers ever. He said, well, you know, basically told me that we need to— he didn't say win the ultimate game, but basically win the ultimate game. I need to be the best version of myself. If I'm the best version of myself, I have a chance at being the best head coach I can be. All my players, don't try to be the best player in that position. Try to be the best version of you. If you can do that, you have a shot at being the best at your position. Same with his coaches, same with you. Each of us need to figure out how we can win the ultimate game. If we can do that, we have a better shot at winning all the other games we want to play, and that's ultimately what Heroic is all about. How do we close that gap moment to moment to moment by systematically implementing all these different big ideas? Over an extended period of time, we can make a big difference in our lives. We can talk about that longer. I'll leave it at that. Then he talks about, all right, cool, great answer. We go through all the virtues. He tells me what it means to live with wisdom, discipline, love, courage, gratitude, hope, curiosity, and zest. Then he gives me the one-word summation of that, which is arete. He tells me that when you live with arete or virtue, you have a chance to be heroic, etc., etc. Good answer, buddy. What else? I want to be a grandmaster. We set a timeline for that. All right, within the next 4 to 5 years. Cool, let's go. Then what are you going to do? We set a near-term goal: national master. Okay, what do you need to do to have a shot at doing that? He's got his systematic way of getting to that point. So what do you need to do if you want to close the gap, be your best self, win the ultimate game? Think about that. Remember, opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls and looks a lot like hard work. Thomas Edison, Michael Jordan, Angela Duckworth: talent times effort equals skill, skill times effort equals achievement. Achievement times effort equals mastery. Effort counts twice or thrice, depending on how you're doing the math. The inner game is where it's at. How fast can you bounce back from a setback? The fastest way to bounce back is to know that they're going to happen. Don't beat yourself up. Have that level of wisdom and heroic self-compassion. See what's working, what needs work, bounce back. Rating systems are fascinating. How do you implement a rating system in your life such that you can hold yourself accountable, Push yourself and get better. Remember, the fastest way to improve— not to add things, but to remove the kryptonites you have in your life. Again, no shame. We all have the habits that don't serve us, from little things that aren't that big of a deal to big things. If you can remove systematically those big things, you free up so much energy. Think about that. Make those mistakes a thing of the past. Win the ultimate game. Be your best self in service to something bigger than yourself. I'll tell you what, my kids are my biggest motivation. You want to find the strength to do the hard work to forge that best version of yourself? Remember, the hero has strength for 2. Our secret weapon is love. So think about the people for whom you will do the hard work in order to be your best self. My kids are my deepest inspiration, most humbling opportunity to be my best. How about you? What was the idea that most jumped out and landed for you today? I had fun sharing some of my family chess journey, and I hope that you had at least one idea that jumped out and landed for you. How can you implement that wisdom today? Move from theory to practice to mastery. Let's do it together. Let's do it today. It's an honor to spend time with you. I hope you enjoyed. Again, you can get the note, um, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon. All right, have a great day. See ya.

Hey, this is Brian. Thanks for spending a few minutes with me today. If you enjoyed it, please hit subscribe so that the best of the show keeps landing in your feed. Then head over to heroic.us. That's heroic.us, where you'll find the full library of wisdom I've created over the last 20 years, as well as the app, advanced training programs, coaching, and everything else we've built to help you optimize your life, actualize your potential, and live heroically.

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