Mind Master Quotes

“In any situation in life, being adaptable is the only way to grow and succeed. You may have skills that you’ve perfected, a certain worldview that worked for you at a particular stage – but the reality is that circumstances change, and you can’t be prepared for everything. Lowering your resistance to change, removing bias and being willing to adapt will help you tackle whatever comes your way. Once you’ve assessed the resources at your disposal and weighed what is feasible against what is risky you will see the path.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Emotions tend to get in the way of clear thinking. Whether it’s impatience, frustration, fury, self-loathing or even premature elation – allowing these to consume the mind results in a loss of focus and distraction from learning, and keeps you from taking the right decisions and achieving your goal. Training your mind to take a step back at the crucial moment and developing cues to organize your thoughts is more advantageous than making a move while your mind is in turmoil.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“I hate to undermine the worth of talent. Unquestionably, talent exists. It’s no myth or hokum. Your talent tells you that you’re cut out for something. It points you towards what you can do effortlessly and what your potential career could be. However, talent isn’t everything. Knowledge and growth don’t come easily. You have to be willing to put in the hours and the effort, sometimes even without visible progress, because one day, unexpectedly, the results will flower. But without that work, it’s unlikely to happen. Eventually, hard work is not just about plugging away at something. It’s thinking intelligently about what you want to achieve, the goals you’re setting yourself, how you’re improving and how you can incorporate all of this into the list of things that will help you scale that peak.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“talent is a lot like a plant. When it’s watered with hard work, it grows, branches out and blooms. Deprived of nourishment, the plant simply withers away. With hard work, talent gains in depth and scope, and uncovers abilities that were earlier unexplored. Talent and hard work, therefore, aren’t conflicting forces orbiting in separate galaxies; they are complementary to each other and provide one another with sustenance.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Chess is 99 per cent tactics. If you don’t pay attention to the tactics, no strategy you devise will fetch you rewards. Strategy can’t compensate for mistakes in execution. If you persist with neat execution, it will keep you in the game even if you’re not able to follow a broader strategy. Strategy without tactics, though, falls at the first hurdle. For me, strategizing for a game isn’t about putting together a specific manoeuvre of pieces. It’s about thinking what my opponent could be aiming for, knowing what my objectives are and then preparing to get what I want out of the game.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“My hand was unwilling to move until my mind found a path.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Onnum pannamudiyathu, ma… Poi velaiyadu. There’s nothing that can be done now… Go, play.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“The only guarantee to remembering is periodic revision. The intervals can be lengthened, but at the end of each break there should be a refresher course waiting.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master:Winning Lessons from a Champion's Life

“In life, as in chess, learning must be constant - both new things and fresh ways of learning them. The process will invariably involve a certain degree of unlearning, and possessing the readiness to that is utterly important. If your way of doing things isn't working, clinging to your conclusions is only going to hold you back. You have to get to the root of a snag in order to make a breakthrough, because it's possible that what you thought you knew isn't actually the way it is. Unlearning is perhaps the hardest thing to do, but it is a necessity if growth and success are your goals.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master:Winning Lessons from a Champion's Life

“Sometimes when your hand wants to make the move and you can’t take the tension any more, you end up playing the move even if your brain is trying to stop you.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“A spirit of inquiry also comes in handy when studying positions you dislike playing – the ones that don’t suit your style, for instance. In my own case, dry positions, or the ones in which the tension in the position has disappeared, turning them lifeless, vex me.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“In most sports, coaches can be seen pacing the sidelines, cheering, hooting and hollering at their players. By contrast, chess players have an invisible army at work, tucked away from public view, putting their sleep and often their own careers on hold, and grinding in bottomless hours of preparatory work.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Often, in trying to look for beauty, I find I’ve missed something elementary.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Routine is another crucial aspect of preparation. It may appear to be the not-so-flashy facet, but following a routine is really about discipline and focus. If you stick to a routine, you can save a lot of energy on a whole host of things and you are able to think when you’re at the board.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master:Winning Lessons from a Champion's Life

“Here’s a lesson in serendipity and limitless learning. Nothing you do, however unconnected it is to your livelihood or your life’s goal, goes waste. You never know when an idea that you’ve read about or heard of, or an activity you’ve dabbled in, will pay off. It’s wise, then, to keep your interests and your learning as varied and broad as you can.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master:Winning Lessons from a Champion's Life

“The time after I won the title of Grandmaster brought with it my first experience of the aftermath of obsessively chasing a goal. I was suddenly left without a purpose. I felt empty and bored, almost listless. All this while, I had been solely fixated on a singular pursuit. But once I got to my destination I kept looking back rather than at fresh peaks. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Tournaments and scores didn’t excite me any more, and my results took a beating. For six months I was caught on a conveyor belt of despair. It was through my interactions with other Grandmasters on my travels for overseas tournaments that I realized this was a normal phase and one that almost all players experienced. Sometimes, a goal can be such a big deal, such an all-consuming theme in our lives, that we just don’t know what to look forward to any more after we’ve achieved it. Gradually, I managed to pull myself back together, just in time for the next phase of my life as a chess player to begin.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master:Winning Lessons from a Champion's Life

“The essence of chess is identifying which approach works best against an opponent because what people hate doing is what they’ll eventually do badly.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons from a Champion’s Life

“I was so thoroughly invested in training for the World Championship matches that it was hard to summon up the mental energy to dwell on what to do differently, much less execute it.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“What I was going through was essentially learned helplessness. It’s the passive rut we find ourselves in, so that even when an opportunity presents itself that could change an adverse scenario, we simply cannot take it because we lack the motivation and belief in ourselves.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“In my enthusiasm to give Akhil company at the play gym, I’d tried to balance myself on a bike meant for children below three years, fallen off and hurt my back quite badly.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“There was also an innate reluctance to work right after a World Championship, because the continuous play and tension makes you sick of work, sick of chess.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Topalov announced that he would play by ‘Sofia rules’, or in complete silence.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“He really enjoyed confronting this line, which was lucky for us because we had done a lot of specific work on it and were happy to accept the risks it held for the rewards it promised. Besides, it’s always pleasing to have your opponent bite the bait. This is perhaps the greatest beauty of risk-taking. You never know the mistakes your opponent may be capable of unless you put yourself out there and take a chance. In”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Access via computers took the rarity and exclusivity out of essential information, which now trickled down to all those seeking it.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“The way I see it, talent is a lot like a plant. When it’s watered with hard work, it grows and blooms. Deprived of nourishment, the plant simply withers away. With hard work, talent gains in depth and scope, and uncovers newer abilities that were earlier unexplored. And hard work is not just about plugging away at something. It involves thinking intelligently about what you want to achieve, the goals you’re setting, how you’re improving on your innate skills or talents, and how you can incorporate all of this into the list of things that will help you scale that peak.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“Whenever I’ve felt satiated and sick of chess, my natural response has been to switch off and leave the game alone for a while, but my love for the game has never soured enough for me to walk away.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“There are players across different sports who are marked out early as being talented, but who don’t progress far over the years. It’s perhaps because they haven’t built on their innate abilities or what was initially on display was, in fact, the fullest extent of their limited talent.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“But can his success be ascribed to talent alone? I don’t think so. He worked incredibly hard at driving his love for chess to achieve results. Fischer took time off from playing in competitions to study games of the nineteenth-century greats and to learn Russian, an ability he then employed to read innumerable Russian chess magazines and books.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“If you look at a sample group of precocious youth who have been exposed to a sport around the same time and have worked equally hard, there is no cogent explanation for the difference in their results other than the superior competence of a few in a certain domain or skill set, or what we call ‘aptitude’. Talent makes itself seen – you can tell from the feverish pace at which some pick up a certain subject, while others take much longer to wrap their heads around it – before hard work takes over. Quite often, we come across two players who’ve spent their entire lives playing a sport and have risen through the ranks. For one of them success flows easily, almost effortlessly, while the other may have a more laboured progress. But when the latter hits a bend and begins to play well, I don’t ascribe the turnaround to discipline alone – I believe they are actually tapping into a pre-existing resource. In general, though, a person who’s working hard and doing all the right things will invariably pull ahead of someone who may be talented but is not putting in as much effort.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life

“It’s at this point that I discovered that ‘talent’ is a word people use to describe you when they want to express good-hearted empathy. It merely reflects that you’re not yet a threat to their dominance or their prize fund flow. It’s when they trash-talk you – like they did after my surprise coup in Italy – that you know you’re respected, maybe even feared.”
― Viswanathan Anand, Mind Master: Winning Lessons From A Champion's Life