[G] Positive Mindset: The Key to SC2 - Page 9

I like a lot of what's in the OP, but I'd say it's closer to a description of what it'll be like when you have a positive mindset than an instruction manual for getting there.

For me, the most useful tool for developing a positive mindset has been a basic understanding of how a brain works - not at the level of synapses, or any particularly deep psychological insight, but just in broad terms of what it's trying to do.

Brains devote themselves to rationalising how they feel, so that they can better pursue or avoid those sensations in future. The trouble is, the explanations and solutions your brain spits out first tend to be quick (and rather short-sighted) fixes that aren't aligned with the bigger picture of what you're trying to achieve. So when we talk about the process of developing a positive mindset, what we mean is that we want to stop our brains coming up with bad ways to avoid negative feelings.

Mostly, losing feels bad because what you wanted to happen - what you bent all your effort toward making happen - didn't happen. Publicly. It's not about rankings or points. That's why my first urge upon losing a frustrating match has often been to deliberately lose a string of games. Yes: my brain would rather I try to lose points and succeed than try to win them and risk failure. I can't blame it, either: the vague idea that maybe learning to play SC2 better or get into Platinum might be fun and make me happy is, in emotional terms, peanuts compared to having ten to thirty minutes of hard work pissed on by a complete stranger.

You might find your brain spits out ideas about imbalance instead. This is a slightly more sophisticated mental tactic aimed at insulating you from further feelings of failure, and is generally my brain's second port of call after a bad loss.

The problem with buying into such quick fixes is that it makes them the go-to solution next time. I actually did throw a string of games in a row once. It was briefly cathartic but now every time I lose there's that knee-jerk impulse to do it again.

I cannot over-stress the importance of remaining aware of these tricks your ever-helpful brain is trying to pull. It's just trying to make you feel better, bless it. Just don't adopt the ideas it comes up with, because if you do you'll set them in concrete and start embellishing them with confirmation bias.

So: what to do about it?

The first big win is to reduce the bad feelings you get when you lose. That means setting yourself goals that aren't 'Win the game.' For instance, you could join some games with the sole objective of figuring out what your opponent is doing. If you get it right, you 'win', regardless of the outcome of the game. Concentrate on that and you'll soon get a feel for when you need to scout on each map and how to read what you see. Or you could join some games with the sole objective of keeping your money below 500 until the X minute mark. As you start to nail these objectives, combine them and slowly add more. Winning is something that happens all by itself when you do enough things right.

Day9 and others sometimes talk about how they spent a week just concentrating on macro or some other facet of the game. This is what they mean; it goes beyond just focusing your attention, it extends to the criteria you have for winning and losing.

A second big win is the flipside of the first: take control of the GG. Very often the outcome of a game is decided several minutes before it ends, through macro failure, neglecting expansions or important upgrades, not teching or scouting properly. Taking control of the GG means setting your own boundaries for when you leave the game. You might say to yourself: "Ok, letting my minerals exceed 1000 before I'm on three bases is tantamount to suicide, so if it happens, I GG. If I suddenly happen upon a well-saturated expansion I had no idea existed, I GG."

This is not the same as rage-quitting. Quite the opposite. To emphasise that and leave yourself with a clear conscience, be sure to tell your opponent why you're leaving: "I promised myself I'd quit if I missed a hidden expansion, so GG "

Taking control of the GG in this way might sound bonkers, but give it a try: I found it extremely refreshing, relaxing, and it really helped me focus on the way I was playing and the mistakes I was making. After an hour or so it felt almost like playing the single player campaign or a challenge mode; far less stressful.

A third big win is to list to yourself all the things you did right in a game while you're waiting for the next to start. This can really take the sting out of a loss very quickly, and got me over a hump where I was beginning to scout what my opponent was up to more reliably, but failing to deal with it properly. So if you hold off two cheesy plays but die to a third, focus on the ones you handled correctly. Your brain learns skills best through positive reinforcement. If all you do is dwell on what got you killed, you can become paralyzed with "don'ts". You can even end up going backwards, neglecting the things you used to do well.

The good news is that, just as seizing upon the bad, short-term solutions to losing (tilting, blaming imbalance) feeds upon itself, so the process of developing a good mindset feeds upon itself. Accentuating the positive, setting goals and taking responsibility for the GG will become your brain's mechanism for coping with failure.