HOW CHESS CRAFTED WILL SMITH’S ENTIRE CAREER

A lesson that hit harder than the slap upon Chris Rock’s surprised face.

The Achievements

Will Smith has achieved a lot in his 54 years of life so far.

Starring in some of the biggest films and shows on TV, producing movies, successful rap career, multi-platinum albums, award nominations, and of course beating Chris Rock in a fight Chris wasn’t aware they were going to have (not fair game, but it made the list)

He has done a lot. But something people have not heard too much about is his interest in chess. How could chess possibly have a lasting effect on Will, or anyone else? Well, we’re about to find out together.

The Grandmaster

Will learned chess from his dad. He beat him once, and his dad never played him again. A bit of a sore loser mentality, which is why I would’ve said to quit from day 1. You can never lose if you quit the game before it starts. Kidding of course.

Jada, Will Smith’s wife that potentially maybe sorta played a part in “The Slapping”, got the first black grandmaster in chess to train Will. His name was Maurice Ashley.

3 days of training from one of the best. And he learned a lesson that goes much beyond the chessboard.

Where Do The Pieces Go?

“When you look at a chessboard, here’s what I want you to do. In your mind when you look at a position, put the pieces wherever you want them. Pick ‘em up, in your mind, and put ‘em where you want ‘em. Where do you wish they were?”

Losing happens before the game. It is a mentality. Will references Mike Tyson, and how people in the ring already lost to him before Mike even threw a punch. That is a new level of winning.

How many times in your life have you not put the pieces where you want them? Whether you realize it or not, you are visualizing all day. You are daydreaming about getting out of your job, or imagining what would happen if you approached a person, and the list goes on and on. Our brains are trying to predict what will happen based on our understanding of ourselves and our past experiences.

The funniest part is, we may not be doing ourselves any service. You would think we’d want ourselves to win, but sometimes we envision a “realistic” outcome. We see ourselves going for that business opportunity, then stop ourselves. We imagine all the risk and all the stress and we can see the business failing, and because of that we never start it.

Definitely tricky to start something when all you envision is the failure. But why not entertain the other side? If it could go wrong, that means there is a chance it could also go right. Why is the business failing more “realistic” than its success?

The Craziest Place You’ve Ever Been

The mind. That is the craziest place you could ever be, as far as we know. Anything can happen in it. You could be sitting in class, bored out of your mind, envisioning yourself flying on a dragon while drinking some made-up concoction that makes you grow wings. No real need for the dragon anymore.

Of course, that is not really something worth imagining (maybe you disagree). But you get the idea. Anything can happen there. So this means you can see your success before it even happens, which inspires you to take the first leap.

Will Smith:

“If you say in your mind, I want the but oh no it can’t, you’re done. You’re dead. You’re training yourself to not even be able to imagine what you want. How are you gonna stop it in your mind? Your mind has to be the wildest, freest place where you have everything you’ve ever dreamed.”

Let me repeat that because of how vital that is. Your mind should be the wildest, freest place where you have everything you have ever dreamed. Do you think that is what most people’s minds look like? You can look around and see. Most people don’t do many exceptional things. But it’s not their fault.

It’s the fault of the belief. The fact that every time they even consider going down the path of their dream life, they tell themselves they could never do that. It is too risky, it may not work out, and a thousand voices of friends and family swarm their heads.

“Your own mind stops in places that the world is gonna move outta your way.”

The Reverse Engineer

“Don’t start by telling yourself what it can be, what it can’t be…let your mind go fully to the impossible dream of where they could be. Put ‘em where you want ‘em. Then one move at a time you work backwards to figure out how to get there and it’s way easier.

You don’t need permission from Will. Or me, the writer of this newsletter. You can imagine anything. Any dream you want, imagine it working out. Really think about what it would feel like. There will be voices from you, and from other people. Voices shouting how expensive it is, or how you are making stupid choices, and a lot more.

But you need to stop listening to them. The pieces could technically go there, right? If you have a dream, is it possible that it could work out for you? It is right. So let the mind go there. Start training it to go the crazy sh*t.

When you’re first told to “put the pieces where you want them” you will fight the idea. Will did too. Maurice told him that was a trick of the mind. Your mind tells you that cannot happen. After all, how could it be that easy? But it’s not about that. It’s about allowing yourself to have a chance at achieving what you want to achieve. You will never act if your mind tells you not to and backs it with logic and emotion.

So you have to start seeing the impossible. Go to the opposite end of the scale. This is how you start winning. This is how Will won and continues to win. By entertaining “the silly reality” of making music of being an actor. And because he was silly enough to believe he could do that, he did it.

If this does sound like woo-woo BS though, feel free to go back to envisioning a perfectly realistic life, and never playing with the idea that you could do a lot bigger things (this is complete sarcasm if it’s not coming across through the text.

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