Dr. Benjamin Portheault on Chess Psychology: Overcoming Mental Blocks, Pressure & Self-Doubt

role of identity in chess.

And yeah, this I want to cover because it's slightly different.

It's because here often what's arising is a story.

Right.

And then we all have stories about ourselves.

I'm not a good chess player.

I always collapse in time trouble.

For example, stories I would have, unhelpful thought patterns.

Often we are so critical of ourselves.

I would never, ever dream of... you know, speaking to someone else the way I sometimes speak to myself, you know.

But so I think we all have sometimes extremely toxic stories, for lack of a better word, that we will tell ourselves that are just unhelpful.

And I think it's important to recognize this story arising, again, Your meditations, like the key leverage point, it's a leverage.

It's not like, you know, oh, yeah, meditation will fix everything.

It's just like the highest leverage point for you to have like a handle on the way the thoughts arise, right? But so when you recognize this story, what I love is to give them a name.

Okay.

Okay.

right so you know for example if you think you collapse in time trouble it's the too weak too slow story just give them a really ridiculous name that you know yes the snail story because you're too slow right just give them a ridiculous name and it's like So you catch the story arising and you're like, ah, there's that story again, you know, you give it the ridiculous name, instantly like diffuse it, you know, instantly diffuses it.

So I quite like, you know, this tip and that's something that people can...

I'm sure a lot of the listeners, they could, you know, grab a notebook and I...

I think I would encourage everyone to, when they go to a tournament, to have a small notebook to journal their mental state and things that happen so that they can take action.

And clearly, you can have a page for your stories and you write them down.

And then, you know, you name them and then you're like, you know, next time they show up, just give them a name.

Catch

them at that moment.

Yes.