Joining the dots

Perhaps one of the most difficult thing in our lives is to continuously join the dots. Why? Every dot joined is an invitation to change. And so we see many stuck people.

But the ability to embrace change is the essence of chess.

Look at it this way. Debono talked about lateral thinking. To stop digging a hole a few miles deep but to move laterally and dig a hole a short distance away for that is where the oil is. What he didnt explain was the psychological problems associated with that manoeuvre.

Let me use a few examples here.

Have you ever seen a Sunday Christian who is so pious in church and then go out and be a totally ruthless businessman?

I once had a conversation with a civil servant on why he appointed a foreign consultant when the locals had better knowledge of the conditions surrounding the job? His answer was that they can now shift the responsibility. If he had joined the dot of the cost to our Nation, he would not have been able to justify that decision in his head. So he compartmentalised.

If you are able to embrace the other 3 components of chess, join the dots, then you will need to change your approach. Can you now see the fierce struggle to defend technical? But is the answer there?

So it is not easy to move laterally. Thinking is not only technical. Thinking is much much bigger than that.

And so resistance is the instinctive response. It signals danger. Here.

The typical response, unless trained otherwise, is to deny, obfuscate etc. What the mind will do is to find one aspect that they do not agree with and attack it, thinking and deluding the self into believing that if that point is won, they can then discard everything else.

Now lets look at chess again. It's a discourse between 2 minds. I give an argument and then you give yours. At a high level the ideas become more and more sophisticated. And so the untrained mind either disassembles or it goes into denial to cope. And they then cannot see the obvious.

And remember this also. Join this dot. If you are operating on instinct ie fight or flight, your mind is closed down or its on narrow focus mode. Look carefully. Both fight and flight are fear responses. (It could be that seeing the big picture is the appropriate response at the time.)

But there is no "danger". The "danger" only exists in your mind. And the defender of those fears is the ego. The ego. I repeat, the ego. Think on this.

And so there is no learning. You cant see. To learn you have to join the dots. And in chess, the faster you can do this; as the argument heats up, and the less resistance you have in your mind, the better a player you will be. And the less tired you become during play.

This phenomenon was first noticed by me in negotiations especially when the numbers became larger and larger. I then formulated a body of work called "The Sentic Negotiator" and gave talks on it. I later expanded on it in my inner child work. Here. So you see, chess is a good training tool. If taught properly you learn to think. So join the dots. It's not easy but it works. An aside: That is actually what thinking with integrity really means. Integrated.

The consequence of not joining the dots is to condemn ourselves to making the same mistakes over and over again. And that is not chess.