How to Use Failure For Change & Growth | Josh Waitzkin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

00:00:00.000 | - What do you think it is about failure

00:00:05.040 | or missing the mark in some way that catalyzes change?

00:00:09.680 | I mean, I always say that, you know,

00:00:10.880 | your brain has no reason to change

00:00:12.660 | if you're just in trying to learn something

00:00:15.900 | and you're in flow, you're getting, you know,

00:00:17.680 | most people associate being quote unquote in flow

00:00:19.720 | with getting everything correct, doing everything correctly.

00:00:22.900 | I don't think that was the original definition

00:00:25.460 | that Sheikh Zumahai intended,

00:00:26.640 | but the neuroscience of brain plasticity tells us

00:00:30.920 | that it's only under conditions

00:00:32.220 | in which there's some mismatch

00:00:34.240 | between what you're trying to do,

00:00:35.320 | like even, you know, like this has been studied

00:00:37.080 | in terms of reaching for an object

00:00:38.480 | and there's a mirror displacement

00:00:39.880 | or a prism displacement or something,

00:00:41.740 | you eventually can learn to error correct

00:00:44.000 | because the cup is actually over there

00:00:46.820 | as opposed to where you see it,

00:00:48.360 | but it is the deployment of these chemicals inside of us,

00:00:52.520 | adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine,

00:00:55.280 | in particular, those three, their cousins,

00:00:57.280 | the catecholamines that tells the,

00:01:00.920 | at a neurochemical level, tells the synapses,

00:01:02.800 | wait, something needs to change.

00:01:04.080 | I mean, the brain doesn't have any reason to change

00:01:06.240 | unless there's frustration, agitation,

00:01:07.960 | or at least some neurochemical change

00:01:09.720 | associated with those things

00:01:10.840 | that we call frustration and agitation.

00:01:12.760 | So do you think these big,

00:01:14.200 | what feel like cataclysmic fails

00:01:16.760 | set like a sort of window of plasticity

00:01:20.560 | in which we can change?

00:01:21.520 | I often didn't think that,

00:01:23.240 | that it's only through like the devastation

00:01:25.120 | of a huge loss that the brain is now set up

00:01:28.320 | for a bunch of new learning.

00:01:29.720 | Certainly we wouldn't want to design the system that way,

00:01:33.020 | but as I always joke, you know,

00:01:34.520 | I wasn't consulted at the design phase

00:01:36.640 | and you weren't either.

00:01:37.920 | We just had to work with what's there.

00:01:40.400 | Like big failure.

00:01:41.320 | Why do you think that sets a wave front of change?

00:01:44.320 | - I think the way that I,

00:01:46.640 | like if I think about the most painful losses of my life,

00:01:51.060 | the most devastating injuries of my life,

00:01:52.680 | I think about dying, drowning.

00:01:53.840 | I drowned in the bottom of,

00:01:55.360 | doing hypoxic breathwork in a pool.

00:01:57.920 | So on the bottom of the pool four and a half minutes after,

00:01:59.840 | it led to the arguably the best decision of my life

00:02:04.000 | to move into the jungle.

00:02:05.200 | I think about the losing the last round

00:02:08.200 | of the under 18 World Chess Championship on the first board.

00:02:11.200 | That's a very interesting story

00:02:14.760 | I could describe a little bit.

00:02:16.700 | Or I think about like my first national championship I lost

00:02:19.840 | when I was seven, eight,

00:02:23.640 | first board, last round,

00:02:25.440 | just unobstructed learning until then.

00:02:27.900 | And then I lost the last round on the,

00:02:29.560 | for the title, fell into an opening trap.

00:02:33.460 | Like that's the loss that was the greatest thing

00:02:35.080 | that ever happened to me.

00:02:36.200 | - You were how old?

00:02:37.040 | - I think I'd just turned eight or I was late seven.

00:02:39.400 | And like that was, it was,

00:02:41.480 | 'cause if I had won that game,

00:02:43.040 | I easily could have associated winning with just no pain,

00:02:47.520 | no heart, just cruising up to the end.

00:02:49.880 | That was the moment that like I got my ass kicked.

00:02:52.420 | I had to go back, deal with these demons,

00:02:55.200 | come back, train for the next year,

00:02:56.560 | and then I won the next year.

00:02:57.480 | And then it was off to the races.

00:02:59.860 | My life might look very different if I'd won that game.

00:03:02.040 | And actually the kid who beat me in that game,

00:03:03.960 | David Arnett, became, two years later,

00:03:07.360 | we became best friends.

00:03:08.600 | For all of our childhood,

00:03:09.800 | we were on the same chess team and best friends.

00:03:11.900 | And I think he gave me the greatest gift

00:03:13.960 | of my competitive life by kicking my ass that game.

00:03:17.960 | The most devastating loss of my chess life

00:03:22.040 | was, so I was 17 years old.

00:03:25.320 | I was competing in the World Under 18 Chess Championship

00:03:28.840 | in Szeged, Hungary.

00:03:29.880 | Every, so every year there's an Under 12, 14, 16, 18,

00:03:34.560 | and 21 World Championship.

00:03:36.120 | And I was always representing the US

00:03:37.320 | in those tournaments around the world.

00:03:38.480 | And I traveled to India or Brazil or Hungary or Germany

00:03:43.480 | or somewhere and compete in the World Championship.

00:03:46.240 | And Under 18 Worlds, I played the tournament.

00:03:51.720 | I just was playing very inspired chess.

00:03:53.400 | I had just picked up On the Road

00:03:55.360 | three weeks before Jack Kerouac.

00:03:56.760 | I had become, I was just on fire with Kerouac's vision.

00:04:00.320 | And I was just so appreciating life

00:04:03.320 | with a freshness and intensity than I'd ever had,

00:04:05.720 | more than I'd ever had.

00:04:06.600 | I was totally on fire, in chess, in life,

00:04:09.640 | in love, in everything.

00:04:11.680 | And I was paired against Peter Svidler, who was the Russian.

00:04:16.680 | We were on the first board last round.

00:04:20.240 | We were playing for the World Championship.

00:04:23.400 | Every country sends their national champion,

00:04:24.880 | so it's a long tournament to get there.

00:04:26.800 | Early in the game, I think it was move 12,

00:04:30.320 | he offered me a draw.

00:04:31.360 | So if I'd accepted the draw offer,

00:04:35.220 | it would have gone to tie breaks.

00:04:36.400 | I didn't know exactly what was happening,

00:04:37.920 | but I thought that he was slightly favored in tie breaks.

00:04:40.200 | I wasn't sure, but basically the World Championship

00:04:42.520 | would be determined, or the gold medal would be determined

00:04:44.760 | by how our opponents in previous rounds did

00:04:47.400 | in the last round.

00:04:48.840 | But I hadn't calculated it out before,

00:04:50.920 | but I had a feeling it was like,

00:04:53.720 | maybe it was like 40-60 or 30-70 against me.

00:04:57.180 | But it was my style.

00:04:58.120 | I never accepted a draw first.

00:04:59.240 | That wasn't my style.

00:05:00.080 | I always wanted to fight.

00:05:01.200 | So I declined, pushed for a win.

00:05:03.780 | Now, the beauty of his decision was also

00:05:05.800 | he offered me a draw in the critical position

00:05:07.840 | where I had to make a very specific decision,

00:05:10.160 | which is a trick that chess players play on one another,

00:05:12.040 | which is that if you're,

00:05:13.880 | we should talk about tension at one point.

00:05:15.880 | It's a really beautiful theme to explore

00:05:17.680 | in different sports.

00:05:18.940 | So one thing that happens in chess games

00:05:20.520 | is that you have this building tension between minds,

00:05:23.560 | and often the tension on the chess board

00:05:25.440 | and the tension on the minds are mounting together.

00:05:28.880 | And the urge, the need to release psychological tension

00:05:32.100 | often leads to the decision to release chess tension

00:05:35.600 | in the chess pieces.

00:05:37.720 | And when you release chess tension,

00:05:39.640 | usually the person who releases the tension

00:05:42.280 | will be on the wrong side of tactics.

00:05:44.420 | So a lot of chess game is about putting mental pressure

00:05:47.960 | on the opponent to force them to break the tension

00:05:49.640 | on the chess board.

00:05:50.920 | So in that game, he offered me a draw.

00:05:52.280 | So you think about it, we're 17 years old.

00:05:54.520 | We're 10 days into a world championship battle.

00:05:58.140 | We, even no matter how much we love the battle,

00:06:00.980 | some piece of ourselves wants a way out.

00:06:03.060 | Like we want to release the tension, right?

00:06:04.940 | It's just elemental to who we are

00:06:06.480 | when we're living with that much pressure.

00:06:08.240 | So all I have to do then is like accept the draw,

00:06:10.280 | shake hands, and the tournament's over,

00:06:12.840 | and then it's out of our hands what happens.

00:06:14.980 | So in that moment,

00:06:15.820 | I have to also make a critical chess position.

00:06:17.540 | So the urge to release the tension

00:06:20.700 | is subtly entering into my chess decision.

00:06:23.900 | And in that move, I declined the draw,

00:06:26.340 | and I made a slightly overaggressive move,

00:06:28.540 | which turned, and he ended up playing a beautiful game,

00:06:34.420 | big attack, beating me.

00:06:36.420 | I lose the world championship.

00:06:38.260 | Just this close to like your dream.

00:06:41.120 | You're shattered, right?

00:06:43.520 | I then went and hitchhiked across Eastern Europe

00:06:47.760 | to meet my girlfriend at the time

00:06:49.360 | in a little town in Slovenia,

00:06:50.720 | and then we broke up and all that.

00:06:52.360 | Then I ended up meeting again in a street corner in Brazil,

00:06:54.920 | the World Under 21 Championship three weeks later.

00:06:57.520 | Lots of drama, you know, being a 17-year-old kid.

00:07:00.880 | I didn't study that chess loss for two and a half months.

00:07:05.880 | It was so painful to me.

00:07:07.320 | I always studied games immediately afterwards,

00:07:09.100 | and you might study a chess game

00:07:11.420 | for anywhere between three and 15 hours,

00:07:14.580 | studying one chess game.

00:07:15.780 | And that, say, 10 hours is focused

00:07:18.420 | on the two or three critical positions of the game.

00:07:21.100 | And this was before chess computers were rampant,

00:07:22.780 | and you had chess engines

00:07:23.620 | that could always just tell you the answer to the move.

00:07:26.740 | That's also something we should talk about later,

00:07:28.460 | how chess engines and AI chess engines

00:07:31.380 | change the nature of who chess players are

00:07:33.240 | because you can have the answer right away

00:07:34.700 | versus having to sit in cognitive

00:07:36.500 | and emotional dissonance for sometimes weeks

00:07:38.260 | or months at a time without knowing the answer.

00:07:40.620 | But we'll come back to that maybe.

00:07:43.020 | So I didn't study that loss for two and a half months

00:07:47.660 | 'cause it was so painful to me.

00:07:48.940 | Then I was, my family spent a lot of time at sea,

00:07:52.540 | which was an interesting part of my life and my chess life,

00:07:55.300 | living on a little boat, catching our own food,

00:07:57.220 | doing our own engine work.

00:07:58.540 | And I was at sea after competing

00:08:01.540 | in both of those world championships and some other things.

00:08:04.640 | And I sat down to study that game.

00:08:07.120 | And I spent a dozen plus hours

00:08:11.160 | studying that one critical position of the game.

00:08:14.120 | And then I realized what the,

00:08:16.140 | like the move I should have made

00:08:18.460 | was outside of my conceptual scheme

00:08:20.080 | in that critical position.

00:08:21.000 | I wasn't ready to make the move I had to make.

00:08:23.560 | And he was also, I think,

00:08:24.400 | a slightly stronger chess player than me.

00:08:26.000 | I was a great fighter.

00:08:27.040 | I loved the battle.

00:08:28.120 | But I think, objectively, he was a better,

00:08:30.160 | his name is Peter Svidler.

00:08:31.120 | He ended up becoming a world-class grandmaster

00:08:32.760 | and is just an incredible chess player today.

00:08:35.240 | At the time, he was just amazingly brilliant,

00:08:38.300 | beautiful, fluid mind.

00:08:40.620 | But I was confident going into the game.

00:08:42.620 | So I had to make this move that would essentially be,

00:08:48.800 | his attack was on the king's side,

00:08:51.020 | my expansion was on the queen's side.

00:08:52.600 | I had to remove my final defensive piece

00:08:54.800 | from in front of my king, away from my king's side,

00:08:57.440 | which is super counterintuitive

00:08:58.560 | 'cause you think you want it to defend your king.

00:09:00.720 | What I didn't realize is,

00:09:01.680 | it was like harnessing the power of empty space

00:09:03.200 | against aggression.

00:09:04.720 | His attack needed my defense,

00:09:06.660 | like fire needs fuel to burn.

00:09:08.760 | Moving my last defensive piece,

00:09:10.160 | his attack couldn't break through.

00:09:12.160 | But that principle was something

00:09:13.120 | I didn't understand at all.

00:09:15.320 | And so, it's not like I would have found that move.

00:09:18.780 | But it was a real pop in my mind, right?

00:09:23.840 | So then, I was 17, 18 years old,

00:09:27.440 | and then a year later, I started studying Tai Chi.

00:09:30.160 | So I was studying Taoist meditation,

00:09:31.800 | Taoist philosophy, the Tao Te Ching,

00:09:34.000 | Chuang Tsa, Lao Tsa, the inner chapters.

00:09:36.120 | And then I get into Tai Chi,

00:09:40.160 | I started moving meditation,

00:09:41.160 | and I started in Tai Chi Chuan, push hands.

00:09:43.320 | Without making the connection,

00:09:46.360 | push hands is the martial art,

00:09:47.920 | which is like, the essence of push hands

00:09:51.380 | is learning to utilize empty space against aggression.

00:09:54.000 | But I hadn't connected it to that moment.

00:09:55.800 | And you fast forward to 2004 World Championship,

00:09:58.120 | which is what the art of learning ended with,

00:09:59.800 | the final chapter of that

00:10:00.760 | is the World Championship finals.

00:10:02.480 | I'm fighting this guy bigger than me,

00:10:04.040 | stronger than me, he's been training since childhood.

00:10:06.640 | Final fight in a big stadium,

00:10:09.420 | everyone wanting me to be destroyed

00:10:10.600 | in the biggest fight of my life.

00:10:12.760 | And I won that fight by harnessing the power of empty space,

00:10:17.200 | by letting him feel my weakness,

00:10:18.620 | by leaning on him,

00:10:19.460 | by letting it, and then I just, and then disappearing.

00:10:23.000 | So it's very interesting how there was no mental process,

00:10:26.200 | there's no conscious processing of that connection.

00:10:29.560 | But the biggest loss of my chess life,

00:10:32.280 | and then the principle,

00:10:33.160 | which I wasn't ready to understand yet,

00:10:35.160 | was how I won the World Championship in the martial arts

00:10:39.000 | so many years later.

00:10:40.280 | And it's a completely different discipline, right?

00:10:42.120 | So it's an example of like,

00:10:44.360 | and of course that principle is manifested

00:10:45.920 | in every part of my life today.

00:10:47.400 | But that's one of many stories in my life

00:10:49.400 | where like, a loss spurs an insight

00:10:51.560 | which might consciously or often unconsciously

00:10:53.600 | lead to something incredible down the road.

00:10:56.560 | And I think that one of the biggest challenges

00:10:58.840 | that we have,

00:10:59.680 | but it's so interesting that the loss

00:11:00.840 | of a World Chess Championship final leads to the win.

00:11:04.840 | The rec lesson was the win of a World Championship

00:11:07.080 | in a fighting realm.

00:11:08.680 | And how common that is.

00:11:12.440 | And one of the things that I think about,

00:11:14.520 | like when you sit down with great competitors,

00:11:17.280 | again and again, when you hear their inner journey,

00:11:21.360 | the most heartbreaking losses

00:11:24.620 | lead to the transformational change,

00:11:26.200 | which leads to the biggest wins of their life.

00:11:28.720 | Whether it's in basketball,

00:11:32.120 | whether it's in fighting,

00:11:34.040 | whether it's in business, it's in finance,

00:11:36.000 | it's in writing.

00:11:39.080 | - Love.

00:11:39.920 | - Oh, in love, oh my God, in love, yeah.

00:11:42.520 | - I mean, breakups are devastating.

00:11:43.920 | They're a death of sorts.

00:11:45.960 | - Yeah.

00:11:47.320 | (upbeat music)

00:11:49.900 | (upbeat music)

00:11:52.480 | (upbeat music)

How to Use Failure For Change & Growth | Josh Waitzkin & Dr. Andrew Huberman

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