- What do you think it is about failure or missing the mark in some way that catalyzes change? I mean, I always say that, you know, your brain has no reason to change if you're just in trying to learn something and you're in flow, you're getting, you know, most people associate being quote unquote in flow with getting everything correct, doing everything correctly.

I don't think that was the original definition that Sheikh Zumahai intended, but the neuroscience of brain plasticity tells us that it's only under conditions in which there's some mismatch between what you're trying to do, like even, you know, like this has been studied in terms of reaching for an object and there's a mirror displacement or a prism displacement or something, you eventually can learn to error correct because the cup is actually over there as opposed to where you see it, but it is the deployment of these chemicals inside of us, adrenaline, noradrenaline, and dopamine, in particular, those three, their cousins, the catecholamines that tells the, at a neurochemical level, tells the synapses, wait, something needs to change.

I mean, the brain doesn't have any reason to change unless there's frustration, agitation, or at least some neurochemical change associated with those things that we call frustration and agitation. So do you think these big, what feel like cataclysmic fails set like a sort of window of plasticity in which we can change?

I often didn't think that, that it's only through like the devastation of a huge loss that the brain is now set up for a bunch of new learning. Certainly we wouldn't want to design the system that way, but as I always joke, you know, I wasn't consulted at the design phase and you weren't either.

We just had to work with what's there. Like big failure. Why do you think that sets a wave front of change? - I think the way that I, like if I think about the most painful losses of my life, the most devastating injuries of my life, I think about dying, drowning.

I drowned in the bottom of, doing hypoxic breathwork in a pool. So on the bottom of the pool four and a half minutes after, it led to the arguably the best decision of my life to move into the jungle. I think about the losing the last round of the under 18 World Chess Championship on the first board.

That's a very interesting story I could describe a little bit. Or I think about like my first national championship I lost when I was seven, eight, first board, last round, just unobstructed learning until then. And then I lost the last round on the, for the title, fell into an opening trap.

Like that's the loss that was the greatest thing that ever happened to me. - You were how old? - I think I'd just turned eight or I was late seven. And like that was, it was, 'cause if I had won that game, I easily could have associated winning with just no pain, no heart, just cruising up to the end.

That was the moment that like I got my ass kicked. I had to go back, deal with these demons, come back, train for the next year, and then I won the next year. And then it was off to the races. My life might look very different if I'd won that game.

And actually the kid who beat me in that game, David Arnett, became, two years later, we became best friends. For all of our childhood, we were on the same chess team and best friends. And I think he gave me the greatest gift of my competitive life by kicking my ass that game.

The most devastating loss of my chess life was, so I was 17 years old. I was competing in the World Under 18 Chess Championship in Szeged, Hungary. Every, so every year there's an Under 12, 14, 16, 18, and 21 World Championship. And I was always representing the US in those tournaments around the world.

And I traveled to India or Brazil or Hungary or Germany or somewhere and compete in the World Championship. And Under 18 Worlds, I played the tournament. I just was playing very inspired chess. I had just picked up On the Road three weeks before Jack Kerouac. I had become, I was just on fire with Kerouac's vision.

And I was just so appreciating life with a freshness and intensity than I'd ever had, more than I'd ever had. I was totally on fire, in chess, in life, in love, in everything. And I was paired against Peter Svidler, who was the Russian. We were on the first board last round.

We were playing for the World Championship. Every country sends their national champion, so it's a long tournament to get there. Early in the game, I think it was move 12, he offered me a draw. So if I'd accepted the draw offer, it would have gone to tie breaks. I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I thought that he was slightly favored in tie breaks.

I wasn't sure, but basically the World Championship would be determined, or the gold medal would be determined by how our opponents in previous rounds did in the last round. But I hadn't calculated it out before, but I had a feeling it was like, maybe it was like 40-60 or 30-70 against me.

But it was my style. I never accepted a draw first. That wasn't my style. I always wanted to fight. So I declined, pushed for a win. Now, the beauty of his decision was also he offered me a draw in the critical position where I had to make a very specific decision, which is a trick that chess players play on one another, which is that if you're, we should talk about tension at one point.

It's a really beautiful theme to explore in different sports. So one thing that happens in chess games is that you have this building tension between minds, and often the tension on the chess board and the tension on the minds are mounting together. And the urge, the need to release psychological tension often leads to the decision to release chess tension in the chess pieces.

And when you release chess tension, usually the person who releases the tension will be on the wrong side of tactics. So a lot of chess game is about putting mental pressure on the opponent to force them to break the tension on the chess board. So in that game, he offered me a draw.

So you think about it, we're 17 years old. We're 10 days into a world championship battle. We, even no matter how much we love the battle, some piece of ourselves wants a way out. Like we want to release the tension, right? It's just elemental to who we are when we're living with that much pressure.

So all I have to do then is like accept the draw, shake hands, and the tournament's over, and then it's out of our hands what happens. So in that moment, I have to also make a critical chess position. So the urge to release the tension is subtly entering into my chess decision.

And in that move, I declined the draw, and I made a slightly overaggressive move, which turned, and he ended up playing a beautiful game, big attack, beating me. I lose the world championship. Just this close to like your dream. You're shattered, right? I then went and hitchhiked across Eastern Europe to meet my girlfriend at the time in a little town in Slovenia, and then we broke up and all that.

Then I ended up meeting again in a street corner in Brazil, the World Under 21 Championship three weeks later. Lots of drama, you know, being a 17-year-old kid. I didn't study that chess loss for two and a half months. It was so painful to me. I always studied games immediately afterwards, and you might study a chess game for anywhere between three and 15 hours, studying one chess game.

And that, say, 10 hours is focused on the two or three critical positions of the game. And this was before chess computers were rampant, and you had chess engines that could always just tell you the answer to the move. That's also something we should talk about later, how chess engines and AI chess engines change the nature of who chess players are because you can have the answer right away versus having to sit in cognitive and emotional dissonance for sometimes weeks or months at a time without knowing the answer.

But we'll come back to that maybe. So I didn't study that loss for two and a half months 'cause it was so painful to me. Then I was, my family spent a lot of time at sea, which was an interesting part of my life and my chess life, living on a little boat, catching our own food, doing our own engine work.

And I was at sea after competing in both of those world championships and some other things. And I sat down to study that game. And I spent a dozen plus hours studying that one critical position of the game. And then I realized what the, like the move I should have made was outside of my conceptual scheme in that critical position.

I wasn't ready to make the move I had to make. And he was also, I think, a slightly stronger chess player than me. I was a great fighter. I loved the battle. But I think, objectively, he was a better, his name is Peter Svidler. He ended up becoming a world-class grandmaster and is just an incredible chess player today.

At the time, he was just amazingly brilliant, beautiful, fluid mind. But I was confident going into the game. So I had to make this move that would essentially be, his attack was on the king's side, my expansion was on the queen's side. I had to remove my final defensive piece from in front of my king, away from my king's side, which is super counterintuitive 'cause you think you want it to defend your king.

What I didn't realize is, it was like harnessing the power of empty space against aggression. His attack needed my defense, like fire needs fuel to burn. Moving my last defensive piece, his attack couldn't break through. But that principle was something I didn't understand at all. And so, it's not like I would have found that move.

But it was a real pop in my mind, right? So then, I was 17, 18 years old, and then a year later, I started studying Tai Chi. So I was studying Taoist meditation, Taoist philosophy, the Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tsa, Lao Tsa, the inner chapters. And then I get into Tai Chi, I started moving meditation, and I started in Tai Chi Chuan, push hands.

Without making the connection, push hands is the martial art, which is like, the essence of push hands is learning to utilize empty space against aggression. But I hadn't connected it to that moment. And you fast forward to 2004 World Championship, which is what the art of learning ended with, the final chapter of that is the World Championship finals.

I'm fighting this guy bigger than me, stronger than me, he's been training since childhood. Final fight in a big stadium, everyone wanting me to be destroyed in the biggest fight of my life. And I won that fight by harnessing the power of empty space, by letting him feel my weakness, by leaning on him, by letting it, and then I just, and then disappearing.

So it's very interesting how there was no mental process, there's no conscious processing of that connection. But the biggest loss of my chess life, and then the principle, which I wasn't ready to understand yet, was how I won the World Championship in the martial arts so many years later.

And it's a completely different discipline, right? So it's an example of like, and of course that principle is manifested in every part of my life today. But that's one of many stories in my life where like, a loss spurs an insight which might consciously or often unconsciously lead to something incredible down the road.

And I think that one of the biggest challenges that we have, but it's so interesting that the loss of a World Chess Championship final leads to the win. The rec lesson was the win of a World Championship in a fighting realm. And how common that is. And one of the things that I think about, like when you sit down with great competitors, again and again, when you hear their inner journey, the most heartbreaking losses lead to the transformational change, which leads to the biggest wins of their life.

Whether it's in basketball, whether it's in fighting, whether it's in business, it's in finance, it's in writing. - Love. - Oh, in love, oh my God, in love, yeah. - I mean, breakups are devastating. They're a death of sorts. - Yeah. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)