I love chess... when I win!

I love chess!  Three years back my eyes caught sight of a book in the library. “How to beat your dad at chess” the title read. At that point,  I enjoyed the game and often played against my dad losing all my games. Naturally the prospect of beating him compelled me to check it out, (no pun intended). That one book fueled what some might call obsession with chess. I read all the chess books I could find in the library- even ones about chess history. I was on lookout for a chess player wherever I went. Needless to say, I beat my dad!

Soon, I discovered that there were actually chess tournaments with trophies and prize money. “Time to show off my cool moves,” I thought. Little did I know that my passion would turn into an obsession for increasing my chess rating, winning trophies and collecting prize money. And I really, really wanted a high rating, shiny trophies, and a big bucket of cash.

This leads me to my primary concern: our time and lives are being governed by a pursuit of external rewards and material success. Let's be honest, most of us here at school are focused solely on the competitive race for college, whether it be through high academic scores, thrilling athletic performances, or amazing competitive success in extracurriculars. But this pursuit is just driving us away from what we should truly seek: happiness.

But first, how did my passion for the game of chess turn into an obsession for the rewards attached to it? Surprisingly, this boils down to the way our society is set up. As children and students, our grades are what drive and define us. In a study by the Princeton review, 90% of high school students stated that they don't care about learning as long as they got good grades.

Then, as adults, our success is measured by the amount of money we make. According to a Gallup study, 66 million Americans out of a 100 million are disengaged at work or resent their jobs. This rewards-mindset in us that extends far beyond my love for chess, the school campus, or our cubicle at work. The same way I learned and studied in school just for a grade, I learned, studied and played chess just to increase my rating or earn money. When rewards enter the equation, we can lose our intrinsic motivation for a subject or task.

But what exactly is the difference? Don’t external rewards still motivate us the same way intrinsic motivators do? Therein lies the problem: extrinsic motivators don’t motivate us the same way. I had to learn this the hard way. As rewards started becoming a bigger and bigger part of my motivation for playing, these negative impacts started to manifest themselves in my life. Like most players, my journey began with scholastic tournaments. I was doing well and pretty soon won my first tournament, receiving the oh-so-coveted trophy.

This was all I needed to keep me playing in scholastic tournaments for a long time, not venturing into the unrewarding open tourneys. This kept me from improving in the long term since I wasn't facing strong opposition. Incentives promote short sightedness and inhibit long term thinking and growth.

Furthermore, I didn't think creatively to find innovative moved to solve my problems but choose the simplest method and avoided complications. We see this effect most prominently in school or at our jobs where we simply follow the instructions for our task and don't harness our imaginations to improve our work beyond the requirement.

In the book “Drive”, author Daniel Pink talks about an experiment that had two groups of subjects complete a task, the first group wat told to finish the creative task as fast as possible for recording purposes. In the second group the top 25% would recieve $5 and the first one $20. Experts started that group two displayed much less creativity and Ron threw and a half minutes longer on average. An incentive designed to clarify thinking and sharpen creativity ended up clouding thinking and dulling creativity.

But the hardest hitting effect of these pervasive attitudes is my stress and anxiety I felt before tournaments. I remember not being able to sleep before many tournaments. This effect can be seen in students constantly stressed about their grades and employees taking and staying at unfulfilling and stressful jobs to earn money. This was the clearest change that took place: I was really anxious and stressed before tournaments where I looked forward to playing every game before rewards entered the equation.

Things clearly weren’t going  well for me, not only in chess but also school. So how did I turn my life around and stop chasing external rewards and validation? Well the short answer is… I  didn’t. I am still on that path and I invite you to join this quest to bring back vision, creativity and happiness in your life and eventually in the world. So whenever you notice that you are doing something only for a rewards, divert your attention back internally. So once our baseline rewards are met, then we need to start dedicating time to our happiness, creativity and feeding our internal motivations.

First, let's take time away from constantly doing, to just be. Blaise Pascal once said "all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” I recently started practicing being mindful with an app called Headspace which boosted my happiness and creativity. Secondly, make time for the things that you truly enjoy even if you don't see any practical value in them. I didn't start playing chess for a grade,money or for my college application. I only played it because it brought me immense joy and truly gave my life meaning. Lastly, weigh your happiness and interest when making decisions equally if not more than expectation of receiving or achieving a reward. I will always remember a quote by my role model and the world chess champion Magnus Carlsen, who said that “Chess shouldn't be all about winning or losing, it should be about the joy of the game. And if you find joy in it you are already winning.” This applies to everything we do.