Playing to Learn Despite the hopeless situation of my chess playing last night, it didn’t cause me distress because I knew I was playing to learn. So in that sense I was guaranteed victory simply by doing my best, regardless of how badly outmatched I was. The only way to win consistently at life is to regard every situation as a learning experience. That’s the only outcome you can really guarantee. If you make that your primary aim, losing becomes impossible. Even though a game of chess might seem an unfair comparison to a foreclosure, it’s the same principle at work. A bigger sting just delivers a more valuable lesson. Not every piece you lose will be a mere pawn. Where Did I Go Wrong? In chess I learned that a bad move made early in the game can spell doom for me later. Once a certain threshold of error is crossed, my fate is sealed. To prevent a loss, I must avoid making such mistakes, but due to my limited experience, I don’t often realize a mistake was made until it’s much too late to do anything about it. At the time mistakes are made, they often look like halfway decent (maybe even good) ideas. People going through foreclosures are in the same boat. Their bad move may have been made years earlier, such as when they first bought their home. Back then they might have been unable to foresee their current no-win situation. Doing their best today may not be enough to compensate for the fatal error made long ago. Pawn x house becomes inevitable. Perhaps a highly skilled player could manage to turn things around, but often you just can’t prevent such captures from occurring. Even expert players eventually succumb
Posted on: Tue, 02 Jul 2013 09:57:31 +0000