EPTA negative mindset can have a huge impact on your life. They can inspire laziness, avoidance of blame, obsession with what others think of you and lack of motivation to better yourself. That kind of mindset can come in so many different ways too. Jealousy of those you are competing with, feeling that the result of what you're striving for is out of your control, thinking you were robbed of an opportunity that you were entitled to. It's easier said than done to keep a positive mindset and avoid these pitfalls, even if you're well aware that they exist and that you're falling into one.
I consider myself a pretty positive person and I think many other people consider me to be one too. I won't pretend I had the hardest life, but I've never been someone who had success handed to me through natural talent at anything in life. A combination of that and other flaws in my personality means I've experienced a lot of failure in my life, but that in turn has caused me to develop an attitude that always moves forward. I think one of my best qualities is that I can almost always go through some terrible change and readily have my next thought be "let's do what I can do and go from there". In that way I'm a pretty resilient person to failure, and it also helps me avoid one of the biggest pitfalls of negative mentalities.
This way of thinking and my frequent experiences with failure have caused me to believe in two things. One, anything bad that happens to me is my own fault, and is something I can do to fix or alleviate in the future and right now. I think the second you start accepting your failures as belonging to anyone else, you fall into one of the pitfalls of a negative mentality. Even if it sucks and logic screams at you that it's not fair that you failed because of someone else's doing, obsessing over things outside of your control accomplishes nothing and will rarely help you strive to better yourself. Two, I assume I am owed nothing, because the moment you start assuming what you are owed is the moment you start blaming others when those things don't come through without using it as an opportunity for self-introspection.
Honestly, this mentality is taxing sometimes but I strongly believe in it. I think it makes me a better person both in terms of my own capabilities as well as a better human being in general.
But lately, I think I've been falling for pitfalls.
It hasn't been major things like enormous pangs of jealousy that make me resent someone or anything like that. But it's the small things that have, over time, started to wear me down. A small sense of narcissism I've begun developing where I will search for my name on reddit/teamliquid to see if someone is talking about me after a cast, an expectation that players won't no-show or cancel on me even though I know I'm not the big dog in the pen so players will of course choose bigger events over mine and even frustration I will sometimes feel wanting to blame others like organizers for not caring enough about small events to announce early enough or players for not keeping track of the events their in. I hate that I am starting to fall into some of these pitfalls and I think it's beginning to affect my own happiness and development as a person.
I know people talk about how easy commentating is. You just talk about the game. To me, it's an incredibly deep field with few right answers and a lot of subtly. Casting is something that is heavily affected by your mental state so keeping a good one is incredibly important if you want to do a good job. The stakes may not be that high if you don't care that much about always doing a good job, But if you always are trying to bring your best to the job every time, it's a high performance art akin to playing a sport, where you have to constantly find your balance and optimize your performance.
Having a negative mentality or thoughts that weigh you down and distract you from the broadcast have an enormous impact on your performance. You can't fake happiness or enthusiasm on a broadcast because people can tell and they will call you out for it. A lot of commentary isn't about "acting" like you're having fun, it's about "actually" having fun and being in control of yourself enough that it's not some front you're putting on, it's real. If you spent all day thinking about how everyone's been out to get you and how some opportunity got stolen from you by someone else and then go on to cast, what kind of broadcast will you be putting on? Will it be your best? Can you honestly say you'll be focused and not just bring the mood you want, but actually perform your best? At a very minimum, if you were feeling that down and frustrated would you even want to be there casting? I think you're a fool if you believe none of that makes a difference to your performance.
Some of these things have been bugging me and I have been letting them seep into my mindset more and more as time goes on. It's moments like this where I wish I didn't have to organize anything since that would alleviate so many of my problems, but I know I'm not in a position to get casting opportunities unless I'm creating them myself. But I do think I have to do something about this negative mentality that I'm gradually starting to build. I honestly considered if I just wanted to quit my involvement in eSports. I can handle failure, I can handle negative comments and shit being thrown at me, but I don't want to look back and find I became a worse person than I started as. I think it's probably way too early to start thinking seriously about quitting but I think it is important enough of a factor for me that I would force myself to if I needed to. I am fortunate enough that I am not dependent on eSports for any finances or anything else and I could walk away at any moment and not have a sudden financial struggle on my hands(if anything, I'd have more than a few thousand dollars more in my bank account).
But there is room for action.
First, I think being publicly down about so many things lately has only encouraged my behavior. Many wonderful people in my eSports social circles are kind enough to give me support when they see I am down but I believe it only reinforces the negative behavior within me by promoting narcissistic tendencies for attention.
Second, I think I need to start taking a more focused approach to problem solving issues that come up for me. If I have a problem getting players to show up for my events, then my events aren't enticing enough for them to show up. Once I've stated something like that, there are suddenly things I can do. I can try running an event that is more fun for players to play in, or I can run fewer events with larger overall prize pools that would be more enticing to players. Thinking along these lines will drive me to improve my events rather than blame others for something I felt I was entitled to.
Third, I think I need to take a step back from constantly trying to solve the social issues of Starcraft and just return to enjoying the game. Lately I've been getting too involved in arguments and discussions about things that are too draining on my mental state. I think there's a lot of value in just focusing on what I can and want to do and to stop trying to solve every problem I run into. As much as I would love to figure out and talk with people about why Dreamhack and ESL announce their qualifiers on such short notice, or discussing how to best bring new players into Starcraft, I don't think I have the mental capacity to get into those kinds of discussions anymore because they are rarely just "discussions" and are more often "arguments" that take a mental toll on my sanity.
At the end of the day, I just want to watch Starcraft and share my enjoyment of the game with other people. Everything else is icing on the cake and I think lately, I've been focusing too much on the icing and not enough on the cake. I always feel like I have a bit more direction and a clearer set of goals after I write one of these.
So let's get back to baking.
