By Hillhome
So I had an idea the other day while reading a great book on failure and how to deal with it. All of us fail at some point in our lives, with greater or lesser consequences for ourselves and others. I've taken the book, John Maxwell's "Failing Forward" and tried to apply some of the principles to CoH. The principles in the book when applied to life are cause for much rumination. It is my hope that this article fits well with Sirlin's articles on playing to win and Sun Tzu's "The Art of War". The following is on mental toughness and success despite failure. I have done my best to take the principles as presented by John Maxwell and apply them where possible to CoH.
Proverbs 9:8: Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you.I put this passage in for this applicable reason: Only read what follows if you actually want to learn and grow as a player of CoH (perhaps you’ll even look into the book “Failing Forward” by Maxwell for a bit of self-improvement as well). If you can’t handle a bit of wisdom and it pisses you off because you want to sit in a corner and cry “IMBA” or “OP” this probably isn’t the article for you. If you want something to learn to apply to yourself for some added mental toughness this is for you. If you want to start to identify the things in your own thought patterns that could be contributing to your losses I hope this proves helpful.
”A man is not defeated by his opponents but by himself.” - Jan Christiaan Smuts
“No matter how daunting the circumstances of your life may be, the greatest battle you wage against failure occurs on the inside, not the outside. How do YOU fight that battle?” - Maxwell pg 64, “Failing Forward”.
So guys, how
DO YOU fight that battle? It’s a great question to go off and think about for a bit before you keep reading. When you are playing a game of CoH and you realize that you are failing, that you or your team is losing, what mental process occurs? What about when you sit in the lobby and you see someone join your game who just stomped your ass last game? How about when you get into auto-match and find out you are matched up against one of the top 100? One of the top 25? One of the top 10?
More than likely in the latter situations your thoughts would be something along these lines: “Oh shit, I’m screwed. Nystrom is WAY better than I am.” (Of course that’s different if you are one of the top ten yourself). So what are some of the things you can do to mitigate this?
To put in another perspective, and something else I see frequently, what do you do when you are obviously winning the match? Do you let down your aggression a bit? Do you ease up ever so slightly and your opponent uses this reprieve to get back into the match? Mental toughness is needed both when losing and when winning! I think we drop the ball as players on both ends of the spectrum.
According to Maxwell, “
HOW you see is WHAT you get”. Essentially Maxwell’s point in this section of the book can be summed up in these words:
Your attitude determines your outlook. If your outlook during a match is pessimistic going in it will often times be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you think to yourself “Man Suprise is going to OWN me” in all likelihood he will do so. Now, certainly Suprise is a great player and I am not trying to disparage his skill in the game at all. Thinking you will lose a game when it starts is a great way to assure that you lose the game.
Just like in all sports physical skill isn’t everything (It does play a major part of course! Bear with me). Mental toughness has a long way to go to support a win or help along a defeat. When I played football years ago the coaches consistently told that the game is 90% mental and 10% physical. That was in football!! So CoH has got to be at the very least even with this, if not 95% mentally based.
So the question in games where skill level difference is negligible is not, “Who will emerge victorious?” The question is, "Who will have the mental fortitude to handle whatever comes his way?" The answer is the person with the greater amount of mental stamina, focus, toughness, and according to Maxwell YOUR ATTITUDE.