Absum Author

Inspirational

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Absum Author

Inspirational

Aryan's Unique Inspiration

Aryan's Unique Inspiration

7 mins
544


People get inspired by books, talks, biographies, movies and what not, but Aryan was different, and his inspiration was unique. This is story of Aryan and his unique inspiration.


Aryan was once a star performer at his organization. He badly demotivated by the experience he went through during the recession that saw many people losing their job to infamous layoffs. While he survived the financial crises, what he experienced thereafter was shocking, he never expected educated population to be so mean, but then it was matter of survival. During this tough time, he often used to feel depressed and lonely. Two things saved him and helped him to rise again, one, self-belief and two, chess. Yes, Aryan and I were chess buddies and he always believed that playing chess helps him.


Chess taught him a lot. He often used to tell me, “Chess Board speaks with me, shares with me the wealth of this timeless game”. Aryan had personified chess, as a mentor, as an inspiration. It may sound insane but learning from this game commissioned a new powerhouse in otherwise my exhausted and frustrated friend, Aryan.


So, what did you learn from Chess today Aryan? I often used to taunt him till one day he revealed few very good insights. I here share few of them, as narrated by Aryan to me.


Aryan -

I learned a lot from chess, but to begin with, chess taught me to value people with different skills, opinions and weakness. Look at your pieces, you have powerful Queen, tricky knights, bishops, rooks and an army of pawns. They all have their unique strengths and weakness. There is no single piece that can win a game on its own, they need skills and strengths of others to overcome their own weakness. A chess player wins only when he/ she exploits strengths of each piece, or in other words, only the player who understands strengths of these pieces win. Just imagine a chess game where both the players have only Queen! No challenge isn’t it. Similarly, what if a player gets all pieces as knights or Bishops? Taste of life is in variety, enjoy flavors and see what best you can get from what you have.


I was once struggling to manage his team which had members with different working style and behaviors. Chess helped me to overcome the multi-character team by helping me in refining this thinking.


Life is full of challenges, when in doubt play chess. I believe in this, look at your personality when you play chess and otherwise. Chess makes me calm and composed human. I start valuing silence and smoothness of life. Beyond inner-peace, I believe chess helped me in improving concentration, calculation and patience, three most valued traits of being good at what I do (or that matter, for anything you do). I take time to make decisions, evaluate all possibilities and focus on my agenda, be it love, war or business. It helps in being effective.


Next of my list is resource management. We often come across situations when have less resources and more commitment. Be it work, or at home or on road. How often you get stuck in traffic when it is important to reach office and attain an important customer meeting? Do you wake-up to realize that you slept little extra, maybe 15 mins or so and your kids could be late to catch the school bus? Do you often see your bank balance after 25th of the month and wonder how are you going to get away with last week of the month? Think more and you will get more such examples where you are running out of resources and there is lot more to accomplish. Make this easier for yourself, play chess often and soon you will learn to achieve more in less. It is difficult, it takes time but trust me it happens. In life, talking about resources as money, friends or time, it is always sufficient, but never enough.


Life is all about timing, have you heard about the phrase, it is never too late to begin. Please do not take it on face value. Everything in life is about timing and chess teaches this best. When you open a game, you know the type and situations, you play fast, in the middle game, you do most of the thinking. Each move is worth 20 mins thinking. It is very important to not to make mistakes in haste. One wrong move and you lose strength of 40 good moves. Spent time and make slow but certain progress. There is so much to achieve and you have limited time, so keep thinking and keep moving. The end game depends upon how well you have played middle game, so you may either have luxury of time or position but yes work needs to be done, and it must be done in the limited time. Four hours is what you get to play a professional game of chess, plan your start, middle and end game well. So is the life, you have limited time, while your early days are well planned, you truly start facing challenges only after you are out of college, that’s where for me middle game of life starts. You want to spend time thinking but you cannot just do thinking. You give your best to have a wonderful end game of your life and you do this before end game starts. Time and timing are of paramount importance and the individual who understands this will have game in their favor.


Last one for today is the ultimate truth of life. You may be a white piece or a black piece. A feeble little cute pawn, or a powerful Queen. Once the game is over, they all go back to the same box. Irrespective of their size, color and power, they will be in the same box until the next game starts. This truth teaches us few good things, be humble, a phase or project of life is just another game. It will be over soon, and you will be back in the box, and irrespective of the outcome of the game, all pieces will be treated equally. Life is precious, be humble it is greatest strength. No game or no work in life is worth being serious, but each of the work deserves sincerity. Be sincere not serious, after-all it is just another game.

Learning are countless and precious. I believe that I am a far better human and much more successful professional when I play chess regularly. When one plays chess, chess helps in nurturing qualities that I mentioned in this inspiration. Chess helps in building a stronger character.


Me ---------

I always doubted Aryan’s story till I had my own experience of chessboard. Believe it or not, but the learning of chess is truly marvelous. Chessboard tells this categorically, like chess in life, tackle one problem at a time and you will succeed for sure. Complexity is not in the situation, but it is in the mind.


Aryan was once exhausted and frustrated; it was this tough time when he looked up to the board with black-and-white squares. Aryan started playing chess and that improved his thoughts and way of thinking. He sharpened his analytical skills, problem solving skills and people management by playing chess regularly. More than ever he stared believing in himself. His confidence was soaring high and he was now looking for greater purpose and plan for his life. Moving away from a high paying corporate job is tough, but then just like a true chess player he believed in taking challenges head-on, perhaps that is the only way to win.


Chess inspires and it helps us in maturing our thought process. Inspiration to fight with meticulous planning and execution helps in winning. So is in life. Play chess to build a strong character that will survive through the toughest challenge of time. A strong character is best ornament that you can have, chess helps in building this ornament like no other game.


Back to Aryan. His critics were surprised and shocked as their criticism would now not impact Aryan adversely. Aryan knew what to ignore and more importantly where to focus. His ability to focus on right areas helped him rebuild is reputation at work. He shined again, much brighter than earlier. This time he had his education, experience and wealth of chess.


When in doubt play chess. It helps in refining your thinking, a game like no other, a game that is so close to nature. There is meaning to everything that you see in chess. Why 8 squares in a file? What started as a war planning tool, soon became a tool to master the strategy and now a game. But if you play chess thinking about it more as a Guru than just a game, life will become much better for you.


I have put down story of Aryan and chessboard in my book “It happened in Bengaluru”, a fable like no other. This book talks about learning from the game of chess in detail, and about various aspects of life. Chess, a wonderful game and true inspiration of my life.


Yes, you will win.



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