Fear cripples your creativity.

This is a truism demonstrated in every chess game. Fear cripples your creativity. In fact fear can even totally shut down your mind no matter how much knowledge you may have ie technical.

Now if we hold that statement to be true then it logically follows that those that use the back doors instead of competing for their place also comes from fear. And so they cannot be strong. They may steal other's places and get more exposure but eventually they will crash. The only way out for them would be to somehow manage to fix the whole world so that players from other Countries will also let them win without competing. Apart from a few flukes of course. But your journey cannot be based on flukes and hope. "I hope the other player crashes and I win".

The true journey can only begin when you have measured the gap, train to narrow it and then come up with good strategies to increase your percentage chances.

And you need the winning mindset too, you need to know how to win and you also need to learn things like stress management etc. But while you compete. Not instead of competing.

That is quite apparent if we can see clearly without fear.

So lets us also try to see why we have not been able to see that healthy competition and clean selection is the only way to raise the Malaysian game. Some have said greed from some officials and I have talked about the false self esteem that they get from the parents grovelling for a place for their children because that is the only way available to get into the squad or they set Jimmy, Peter and Eddy on you.

Ok. The officials first. Isn't it also fear that stops them from improving? There are decent and legal ways to earn a living if they have good skills that the market place wants. But they are afraid that if they lose the back doors then they will also lose the "easy" money. For do they not risk going to jail? Isn't that also fear of learning? Fear of change.

And of course Jimmy, Peter and Eddy rely on fear to keep you from seeing clearly what is happening. So many many years of examples and yet no one dares to stand up to them. Why? They are exploiting the parents fears for their children. Actually we know what they are doing but we are afraid of what they will do to our children if we dare to object.

So this is my reasoning. If they manage to frighten Mark out of trying his best to achieve his goals, from fulfilling his hopes and dream without cheating then they would have succeeded. If that happens then no amount of education ie technical will help him succeed later in life.

It is that simple. And I didn't bring Mark into chess to learn how to fail. You see, in life, if our children ever strive for big things, for ambitious things, there will always be obstacles. So what we need to teach them is how to overcome those obstacles. And the answer can never be by giving up. By allowing small people to steal their hopes and dreams.

You need to learn the proper way to fight back against unfair practices. To develop your character you must also not join them and learn how to steal from other people too.

Are you getting me now? What FGM is all about? So really people like Jimmy, Peter and Eddy are not really relevant. They are mere representation of the people that your children will meet later in life. They are only there to show us the tricks that can be used to keep you down, to keep your children down. So practice how to overcome those things here in chess.

Learn how to see clearly without fear, teach the children how to overcome obstacles without lies, cheating. threats and intimidation while they are still young. And we show them by example. I guarantee you that the lessons of life as an adult will be much tougher. If you want to amount to anything I mean.

All that including overcoming your fears actually comes before creativity. Without that, your creativity would have been crushed out of you before you even had a chance to start out on your journey of life.

Thank you for your time.