One of my most successful coaching techniques is encouraging my chess students to set lofty goals for themselves. Together we break these goals into attainable steps and utilize achievement markers to show progress. Of course, certain levels of chess expertise are not achievable for everyone and if they were, chess would be obsolete. For instance, if everyone was a grandmaster at chess, no one would be a grandmaster at chess. That being said, there are goals which get incorrectly deemed unrealistic and are worthy of further pursuit.
An excavator operator has the lofty goal of freeing a large barge from the shore.
Regardless if a lofty chess goal can be achieved, the belief that it can be forces students to address their assumptions of what can’t be accomplished. This realization is where I believe the most valuable chess lessons are hidden. The lessons which teach us how to overcome adversity but also learn to accept our own limitations. In fact, a Harvard Business Study found that the 3% of their MBA graduates who wrote their goals down, went on to earn ten times as much as the other 97% combined!
So I ask the Daily Chess Musings Community, which lofty chess goal can you set right now? Write it in the comments. Just by posting your goal, you will be moving closer to success!
Chris Torres is a nationally renowned scholastic chess coach working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His classes have attracted players of strengths ranging from rank beginners to world champions. A chess professional since 1998, Chris is widely recognized as one of the main driving forces behind the explosion in popularity and sudden rise in quality of scholastic chess in California. Chris Torres served as the President of the Torres Chess and Music Academy from 2005-2020 and currently is recognized as a correspondence chess master with the United States Chess Federation. Since 1998 Chris Torres has taught 6 individual national champions as well as led multiple school teams to win national championship titles. In addition, Chris Torres has directed and taught at 10 different schools which have been California State Champions at chess. In 2011 and 2012, several former and current students of Chris Torres have been selected to represent the United States at the World Youth Chess Championships. Mr. Torres’ hobbies include playing classical guitar and getting his students to appear on the national top 100 chess rating lists.
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