Knight Moves - A chess player's guide to succeeding in life - Jacques de Villiers

Knight Moves - A chess player's guide to succeeding in life - Jacques de Villiers

As a keen chess player it occurred to me that chess is a outstanding metaphor for the way we conduct our lives. Chess is a game of strategy. It is a game that requires some intellect, planning, tactics, opportunity, desire and action. Those that win in chess make the best moves because they know what they want the board to look like 15 moves into the future. Do you know what you want your chessboard to look like in the future? Do you have a vision of how your life is going to play out ? In chess you have 64 squares and 16 pieces. There are hundreds of thousands of permutations as to how the game

will be played.

The objective of the game is to checkmate your opponents King. There are only three outcomes in chess ... win, lose or draw. Sounds like a parallel for our lives, doesn't it? If we win, it means we've reached many of the goals we set out to achieve and we have left a legacy. Losing means that we didn't get what we wanted out of the more or less 2 billion seconds we've been allocated. And, a draw is just not satisfying ... it's potential wasted.

Each player has 16 pieces, comprising - eight Pawns which are each worth one point, the Knight and Bishop are each worth three points, the Castle is worth five points, the Queen is worth 9 points and of course, the King, which is not that powerful without a strong team behind him, but is priceless. If the King is checkmated it's game over.

Let's play.

Imagine that a chess game is like an old English village around 6 BC. You have a Castle. When danger is near, the villagers can take refuge in the Castle. The King and Queen rule the village. Every self-respecting English town had a Bishop. The Knight is the protector. The Pawn is the toiling villager tending to the King's business.

Chessboard

There are 64 squares on a chessboard which give you unlimited permutations. Imagine that the chessboard is the environment in which you'll succeed or not. I know that your life has unlimited opportunities. It is the choices you make in your life and how well you play the game that dictate whether you'll be successful or not. The board can open up endless opportunities for you. On the flip side, a couple of wrong turns could turn it into a prison. You've got to respect the board as it is all you have to play with. Respect your life and believe that you have been put on this earth to make a real difference. You've only got one shot at it, make it count.

The King

The King is an important figure in chess and in your life. He's your strategist, tactician, visualiser, dreamer and the goals setter. By now it should be apparent that you need to have some kind of vision for your life. What do you want your chessboard to look like when you sit in your rocking chair one day contemplating your achievements, or lack thereof? Have you worked out your strategy? If you don't have long range goals, if you don't have a vision of your future, the decisions you make will be reactive. You'll be playing other people's games and not your own. Others will dictate your destiny, not you. You want to be the master of your own destiny, don't you? Not only do you have to have a great life strategy, you need to be able to stick to it.

Of course you can't only have strategy, you need to become a master tactician too. The battlefield changes and you need to change your tactics to adapt or you'll die. Changing tactics could mean the difference between success and failure. However, ensure that your tactics fit in with your overall strategy. Sun Tzu summed it up, "Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat."

So, become clear what it is you want out of your life. Find your purpose by asking the right questions. Your destiny is dependent on the quality of your questions. Why am I here? Who am I really? What do I want to do with my life? How can I make a difference to my family, my friends, my colleagues and my country? Once you've found the answers to these questions always ask "why?". This will give you the reason why. The so that moment. Because if you don't have a big enough reason why you should do

something, you'll falter, give up and discard your dreams. Have you noticed in the movies that kings don't seem to be doing too much. They're typically sitting on their throne contemplating their navel. Well, this is not necessarily a bad thing. You need to learn to contemplate, to visualise and to dream. Dreams have a magic in them that can inspire you to achieve almost anything you want to. However, you can dream as much as you want, talk about your desires and visualise until the cows come home, unless you take some kind of action, nothing will happen. You'll miss the opportunity to fulfill

your destiny. As Thomas Edison said: "Opportunity is missed by most because it is

dressed in overalls and looks like work." And I suppose he's right. In comes our next piece, the Queen.

The Queen

The Queen is your self confidence. Your action hero. Action leads to confidence. She's the most powerful piece on the chessboard. She can move anywhere she wishes. She takes action, rolls up her sleeves and does what has to be done to achieve the goals and strategy set out by the King. . She knows that taking action, taking the first step has power and pays off in the long-term. In a chess game white is proactive and black is reactive (at the start of a game, white always gets to move first). In chess the value of

the first move is clear.

At Grandmaster level white wins 29 percent of the time, black 18 percent and 53 percent of games are drawn. She needs to pay attention. Because when you don't pay attention to your environment, your body and your relationships you could end up in pain. When the battle lines change we need to change tactics (note, not strategy), course correct, adapt and move forward. The Queen is the master of the

moment. When she sees an opportunity to take an action that will move the game forward, she does so. And she does it with confidence because she knows she is backed up by a superior strategy. That's why you should spend time on your life strategy. When you believe that your strategy is built on a solid foundation of intellect, research and sound life and spiritual principles, you feel more confident, don't you?

Sometimes when you go out on a limb and try something, you can feel afraid and timid. Chess player, Akiba Rubinstein became so timid that after making a move he'd hide in the corner of the playing hall awaiting his opponents reply. Sounds like someone that didn't believe in his strategy (or didn't have one). But, let's be honest, I'm sure that you've felt the same way as Akiba from time to time. Because whenever you try something new you risk opening yourself up to rejection and failure. Most of us don't try something new because we fear failure. Well failure is just another word for feedback, isn't it?

You need to have the perspective and wisdom to know that you've just been told how not to do something and that you need to come up with something else to move you forward. When you know your place in the world and trust the direction in which you're heading, it gives you extreme confidence. You become massively courageous.

But, as you already know, courage and confidence are an inside job. Whatever is going on in your head and your heart will reflect in the amount of confidence you have when it comes to fulfilling your life destiny. The Queen cannot function optimally without a Knight watching her back and protecting her. That's why whenever she leaves the castle, the King ensures that she is protected by a phalanx of Knights. Whilst every piece is important in chess and in life, the Knight in my opinion is the alpha piece.

The Knight

The Knight is your self esteem and self image. Show me someone whose life is out of whack and I'll show you someone whose self-esteem is low. Every day when you get up you don your armour to protect you against the negative forces that rail against you in your journey through life. In chess the Knight moves in an L-shape. Whilst this is a good thing in chess, it is not really a great thing in life. When you live life like an L, you miss out on opportunities that can move you forward? If your self esteem ensure that you live life in an L-shape, beware because you're short circuiting your success. Imagine that

you see someone that you like in a pub. You say to yourself, "I'm going to talk to introduce myself to that person". As you walk towards the person, your inner voice says, "You're too fat, too poor, too thin, too hideous ... why would that person want to meet you". Guess what you do? You veer left or right and miss the opportunity to connect.

Isn't this what we do sometimes when opportunities are presented to us? We veer left or right because we don't believe that we are worthy of accepting that opportunity. Your self esteem has to be in the centre of your life. What happens outside is dictated by what happens inside you. Your Knight has to be front and centre. In chess there's a saying that "a knight on the rim is dim". Knights have little power when they are on the sidelines of a chess board. Their true genius is revealed when they are in the centre of the board fighting for all they're worth. That's why you should have a strong Knight. Life

is throwing a lot at you every day, isn't it? Every day your self esteem is on the line, isn't it? Whenever you're criticised, sworn at, pushed down by life, you need the Knight's protection. The Knight ensures that life's travails don't grind you down but rather shine you up like a diamond. So, how do you get a great self-esteem? Get real and take time for introspection. Find out who you are? Why you behave the way you do? Once you've done that ... deal with the stuff that's not serving you. Get rid of it and move forward.

Use the tools available to you - counseling, meditation, exercise and hypnosis.

Whatever it takes. But don't hang onto the baggage that's holding you back. Once you've dealt with your self esteem issues, know your stuff. Become good at your job, marriage, relationships, health. Find out as much as you can about your area of speciality. As Francis Bacon said, "Knowledge is power." The more knowledge you have about your field of expertise, the more powerful you become and the more bullet proof your self esteem becomes. Of course, to have a great self esteem one needs to have a

healthy value system, doesn't one. In comes the Bishop.

The Bishop

The Bishop represents your character. Your moral code of conduct. Having an "I can make a difference" attitude really does make a difference. Your character is one of contribution and gratitude. You should know what you stand for, what you will and will not tolerate. The Bishop can only move diagonally, either on the black or white square.

There's no grey area. Everything is black or white. There can be no hypocrisy - you've got to be true to your values, beliefs and morals. Nobody trusts someone that chops and changes their character on a regular basis. "On the chess board lies and hypocrisy do not survive long. The creative combination lays bare the presumption of a lie; the merciless fact, culminating in a checkmate, contradicts the hypocrite," Emanuel Lasker, chess champion (1894 - 1921). When you've build the foundations of character, self esteem, self-confidence and a strategy, you're like a finely-honed racehorse. No point in wasting all that potential, is there? You now need something to aim for so that you can use the potential. How many people do you know that have all the potential in the world, but do nothing with it. You've got to set worthwhile goals to achieve your life's purpose. Moving on to the Castle.

The Castle

The Castle moves horizontally and vertically on the board. The Castle is your foundation, your protector. It is the repository where your hopes, dreams and goals are stored. You need to nurture and protect your goals, particularly from the naysayers who criticise any attempt for you to make your mark in this world. A well-balanced individual would typically set goals in the following six area: financial, relationship, mental, physical, community and spiritual. The trick to live a life of purpose (make a difference) and destiny is to get balance in the goals you set. If you focus too much on one area to the detriment of the others, then your life can become unbalanced and derail. For example, there's really no point in making more money than you know what to do with and then keeling over from a heart attack because you neglected your physical health, is there? Or you're alone in your mansion because you've neglected to build relationships with those you love. There's a two-fold strategy for successful goal-setting - set stretch goals which work on the SMART formula. Set one stretch goal in each of the six areas of your life (a stretch goal is a goal that would be quite difficult to achieve). I'm sure that if you're reading this book, it means that you're in the top one percent of the world that is interested in self development. And, if you're into self development, you must have come across the term SMART goals. So, I'm not going to labour the point except to remind you what the acronym stands for: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant (to your purpose and strategy) and time-based.

Of course, the only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary. Somebody has to do the slog work - administration, washing the dishes and digging trenches so that your life can run

smoothly. In comes the small but important Pawn.

The Pawn

The Pawn is your worker ... your perseverance and persistence. Although the Pawn is, on the face of it, the weakest piece on the chessboard, it is powerful when coupled with any of the other pieces or another pawn. It is not pretentious. It's just a hard worker and gets the job done. When you have a sound strategy in place, a vision and purpose, you'll have the faith to continue working even when it seems like you're not getting the results you want. If the Pawn has such a belief in the strategy presented by the others it will never falter. It never gives up. I know that you won't give up on your dreams if you really believe in them and the strategy you've devised to achieve them. Sadly, many of us give up on our hopes, dreams and goals too soon. Unfortunately, we don't have an almanac which let's us know when and if we succeeded in our endeavors. Thus, we need faith that we need to keep working our plan. Have you ever noticed that when you start a new project there is a lot of energy and enthusiasm initially. But it is in the middle of the project that energy, enthusiasm and determination flags, isn't it? And, when it is near the end of a project we pick up our pace because the home stretch is near.

Sometimes in the middle stages there seems like there's nothing to do and no end in sight. Having nothing to do does not mean that you do nothing. Sometimes in chess there is a period when it seems like it doesn't matter what you do, you can't seem to get ahead to best your opposition. This is the time when you have to be on your guard and start working on your positional play. Basically, get all your ducks in a row. For example, if you're a soldier and there's nothing to do. You can still do something proactive like clean and oil your rifle so that when it is time for action, your weapon will perform at it optimal and won't let you down. When there's down time, how many of us watch TV or just laze around instead of focusing on tasks (no matter how insignificant they may seem) that will help us move forward and achieve our goals. And, the bonus of hard work is that it actually makes you feel good. Don't you feel fantastic when you really done a hard day's work? I know I do because I feel satisfied, worthwhile and at ease with myself. I recall a French saying that goes something like this, "Nothing makes a pillow more comfortable than a hard day's work." I can own that feeling. I know that when my work ethic slips, I don't go to bed with a clear conscience and my sleep does invariably suffer.

You are the Grandmaster of your Life

I doubt I can change your life in 3000 words. But my hope for you is that the chess metaphor has resonated with you and that you'll realise that you are the Grandmaster in charge of your life. You were destined to be great and you deserve to be great. Develop a life strategy, work it and develop the strength of character, self esteem, confidence and work ethic to be the success you know you can be.

POST COMMENT

Methods coming from JVC Head Units Shaniwar Wada- the spectacular palace of a bygone era How to Survive a Strong Storm Neighboring Bhutan How To Deal With Subzero Temperatures Vintage modles might Bring magnificence to a region All About Havarti Cheese How to get a "sunless" tan Call of Duty Black Ops CheatBox What You Must Know About Vaginismus Benefit from LPG conversions How to make your system run fast? Methods to make your pc faster