The Art of Learning: An Inner Journey to Optimal Performance

particularly painful about being beaten in a chess game. In the course of a

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battle, each player puts every ounce of his or her tactical, strategical, emotional,
physical, and spiritual being into the struggle. The brain is pushed through
terrible trials; we stretch every fiber of our mental capacity; the whole body
aches from exhaustion after hours of rapt concentration. In the course of a
dynamic chess fight, there will be shifts in momentum, near misses, narrow
escapes, innovative creations, and precise refutations. When your position
teeters on the brink of disaster, it feels like your life is on the line. When you
win, you survive another day. When you lose, it is as if someone has torn out
your heart and stepped on it. No exaggeration. Losing is brutal.
This brings up an incipient danger in what may appear to be an incremental
approach. I have seen many people in diverse fields take some version of the
process-first philosophy and transform it into an excuse for never putting
themselves on the line or pretending not to care about results. They claim to be
egoless, to care only about learning, but really this is an excuse to avoid
confronting themselves. This issue of process vs. goal is very delicate, and I
want to carefully define how I feel the question should be navigated.
It would be easy to read about the studies on entity vs. incremental theories
of intelligence and come to the conclusion that a child should never win or
lose. I don’t believe this is the case. If that child discovers any ambition to
pursue excellence in a given field later in life, he or she may lack the toughness
to handle inevitable obstacles. While a fixation on results is certainly
unhealthy, short-term goals can be useful developmental tools if they are
balanced within a nurturing long-term philosophy. Too much sheltering from
results can be stunting. The road to success is not easy or else everyone would
be the greatest at what they do—we need to be psychologically prepared to face
the unavoidable challenges along our way, and when it comes down to it, the
only way to learn how to swim is by getting in the water.
Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of the mother of a talented young chess
player I know named Danny. This seven-year-old boy just loves chess. He can’t
get enough. He studies chess for a half hour every day, plays on the Internet,
and takes a lesson from an expert once a week. He has recently started
competing in scholastic chess tournaments, and the mother finds herself swept
away by the exciting atmosphere. She finds her own sense of well-being
fluctuating with Danny’s wins and losses. This woman is a substantial,
sensitive, intelligent person and she doesn’t want to put an extra burden on her
son’s shoulders. She is aware of the entity/incremental dynamic and so when

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Danny loses, she wants to tell him it doesn’t matter. But obviously it does
matter. He lost and is sad. To tell him it doesn’t matter is almost to insult his
intelligence. What should she do?
This real-life dynamic has parallels in virtually every field, although we are
often our own parent in the moment. How can we balance long-term process
with short-term goals and inevitable setbacks? Let’s dive in. Danny is an
intelligent boy who has decided to dedicate himself for the time being to chess.
He loves the challenge of facing off with other young minds and stretching
himself to think a little further and more accurately than he could the day
before. There is nothing like a worthy opponent to show us our weaknesses and
push us to our limit. It is good for Danny to compete, but it is essential that he
do so in a healthy manner.
First of all, in the spirit of the previous chapter, Danny’s mom can help him
internalize a process-first approach by making her everyday feedback respond to
effort over results. She should praise good concentration, a good day’s work, a
lesson learned. When he wins a tournament game, the spotlight should be on
the road to that moment and beyond as opposed to the glory. On the other
hand, it is okay for a child (or an adult for that matter) to enjoy a win. A parent
shouldn’t be an automaton, denying the obvious emotional moment to spout
platitudes about the long-term learning process when her child is jumping up
and down with excitement. When we have worked hard and succeed at
something, we should be allowed to smell the roses. The key, in my opinion, is
to recognize that the beauty of those roses lies in their transience. It is drifting
away even as we inhale. We enjoy the win fully while taking a deep breath,
then we exhale, note the lesson learned, and move on to the next adventure.
When Danny loses, the stakes will feel a bit higher. Now he comes out of
the tournament room a little teary. He put his heart on the line and lost. How
should his mom handle this moment? First of all, she shouldn’t say that it
doesn’t matter, because Danny knows better than that and lying about the
situation isolates Danny in his pain. If it didn’t matter, then why should he try
to win? Why should he study chess and waste their weekends at tournaments?
It matters and Danny knows that. So empathy is a good place to start.
I think this mother should give her son a hug. If he is crying, let him cry on
her shoulder. She should tell him how proud of him she is. She can tell Danny
that it is okay to be sad, that she understands and that she loves him.
Disappointment is a part of the road to greatness. When a few moments pass,

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in a quiet voice, she can ask Danny if he knows what happened in the game.
Hopefully the language between parent and child will already be established so
Danny knows his mom is asking about psychology, not chess moves (almost all
mistakes have both technical and mental components—the chess lessons should
be left for after the tournament, when Danny and his teacher study the games).
Did he lose his concentration? Did he fall into a downward spiral and make a
bunch of mistakes in a row? Was he overconfident? Impatient? Did he get
psyched out by a trash talker? Was he tired? Danny will have an idea about his
psychological slip, and taking on that issue will be a short-term goal in the
continuing process—introspective thinking of this nature can be a very healthy
coping mechanism. Through these dialogues, Danny will learn that every loss
is an opportunity for growth. He will become increasingly astute
psychologically and sensitive to bad habits.
A heartfelt, empathetically present, incrementally inspiring mom or dad or
coach can liberate an ambitious child to take the world by the horns. As adults,
we have to take responsibility for ourselves and nurture a healthy, liberated
mind-set. We need to put ourselves out there, give it our all, and reap the
lesson, win or lose. The fact of the matter is that there will be nothing learned
from any challenge in which we don’t try our hardest. Growth comes at the
point of resistance. We learn by pushing ourselves and finding what really lies
at the outer reaches of our abilities.
* * *
As I matured as a chess player, there were constantly leaps into the unknown.
Because of my growth curve, my life was like that hermit crab who never fits
into the same shell for more than a few days. I would have to learn esoteric,
initially uncomfortable types of chess positions. I would take on dangerous new
rivals who recently emigrated from Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union. I’d
travel to distant countries to compete and need to adapt to the alien cultural
and chessic customs on the spur of the moment.
I remember when I was eleven years old I went to Timisoara, Romania to
represent America in the World Championship for everyone under the age of
twelve. Each country sends their champion, and we go to battle. My dad and I
had trouble finding the competition site on the opening day and I arrived late
to the first round. When I finally got to my seat across from the National

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Champion of Qatar, there were thirty minutes already off my clock—a large
disadvantage. To make matters worse, I didn’t recognize any pieces on the
chessboard. The untraditional chess set the Romanians had chosen for the
tournament was completely bizarre to me. I was sitting in front of a game I had
never seen before—like one of my childhood nightmares where I couldn’t
remember how to move the pieces and cameras were flashing in my face. The
moment was quite alarming.
It turns out that I handled the situation pretty well. I took a few deep
breaths, made my opening move, and played somewhere between blindfold and
looking at the board. Chess was in my blood even if that set was not. I moved
quickly to catch up on the clock, calculated in my head as I had done so often
in training, and won that first round without much trouble. Then I spent much
of the evening getting used to the chess pieces and had an excellent tournament
over the next two weeks.
One of the more emotional movements in my young life came as I was
turning eleven years old and had to make the painful transition away from my
first teacher, Bruce Pandolfini. I loved Bruce, he was part of my family, but I
was improving quickly and he just wasn’t a strong enough player to keep on
coaching me. Bruce was a National Master who hadn’t been active in
tournaments in years, and I was already approaching his level. We found a
wonderful new coach, Chilean International Master Victor Frias, who in time
would become a very dear friend of my family. Breaking from Bruce felt like
losing a part of myself.
That same year, my father’s brutally honest book Searching for Bobby Fischer
was released around the world. It was a beautifully written account of our
journey together during my rise to winning my first national title and years
later it would inspire the Paramount film of the same name. I was already well-
known in the chess world, but now I was really out there, which put some extra
pressure on my shoulders. I went on all the television shows with my awkward
adolescent afro and goofy smile. Jane Pauley on The Today Show asked me
whether I wanted to be like Bobby Fischer. Just then the music started playing,
which meant I had five seconds to answer, and I knew Bobby Fischer was crazy
so I came out with the brilliant closer: “No, I never want to be like Bobby
Fischer, again.” Again? What is this kid talking about?
I was having a great time and was just innocent enough to avoid being
messed up by the spotlight. I dove deeper and deeper into chess. Of course

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there were plateaus, periods when my results leveled off while I internalized the
information necessary for my next growth spurt, but I didn’t mind. I had a
burning love for chess and so I pushed through the rocky periods with a can-do
attitude. I became a Chess Master a few days after turning thirteen, beating
Fischer’s mark of thirteen years five months. People were saying that I was a
future World Champion, but I didn’t hear them. I was a competitor who knew
winning and losing and the hair’s breadth between. My rivals didn’t care about
reputation—they just wanted to crush me and I had to keep it real.
There were a few powerful moments that reinforced my young notion that
glory had little to do with happiness or long-term success. I’ll never forget
walking out of the playing hall of the 1990 Elementary School National
Championships after winning the title game. There were over 1,500
competitors at the event, all the strongest young players from around the
country. I had just won the whole thing . . . and everything felt normal. I stood
in the convention hall looking around. There was no euphoria, no opening of
the heavens. The world was the same as it had been a few days before. I was
Josh. I had a great mom and dad and a cute little sister Katya who was fun to
play with. I loved chess and sports and girls and fishing. When I would go
back to school on Monday, my friends would say “Awright!” like they did after
hitting a jump shot, and then it would be in the past and we would go play
football.

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CHAPTER 5
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