Play Chess: Benjamin Franklin’s Lessons for Success in Life and Business

Born a candle-makers son in Boston, Benjamin Franklin was many things in his life. Inventor of the Franklin stove, bifocals, a flexible catheter, the lightning rod, a politician (though never President), ambassador to France, polyglot, one of the biggest figures of the American Revolution, philosopher, and notorious ladies’ man. That’s right, in particular he had a thing for French Women and older women to the point that he even had a list of reasons to explain it when questioned.

Among his language lessons, proclivities for french women while and before being ambassador, one of Franklin’s longest held passions was that of chess. It was such a large part of Franklin’s life that two of his favorite women he met and spent time with because and through the ease of a game of chess.

Chess, to Franklin, was for more than any other game. Though he was it’s most famous American fan, those who he found to have a game with noted that it was his passion for the game and not his skill that pushed Franklin to play.
Admitted by many, Franklin was not a particular master of the game of chess, but his appreciation for the lessons of chess were not without merit. Franklin himself laid out many ways that being successful in Chess mirrored being able to be successful in life and business.

One of the first lessons chess teaches is prudence. As Benjamin Franklin noted in The Morals of Chess chess teaches men to think ahead of themselves.

1st: Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action, for it is continually occurring to the player, “If I move this Piece, what will be the advantage or disadvantage of my new situation? What use can my adversary make of it to annoy me? What other moves can I make to support it, and to defend myself from his attacks?”

How often in life have you said something without thinking and inadvertently cost yourself the girl, the job, or anything in between? How often have you decided to lay around watching tv or playing games on a Saturday knowing you had a huge assignment due Monday that you figured you’d get finished on Sunday only to have yourself oversleep, get called away for an emergency, or just plain didn’t have as much time as you estimated it would take?

Foresight in life can not only prevent you from talking your way out of a woman’s panties, it can keep you from losing some big money. Planning ahead into the future, where you will be, and what you will likely need to do is not just the key to interpersonal issues, it’s also the very foundation of every To Do List or “How to Succeed” seminar. Plan ahead, then follow through.

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The second lesson is Circumspection. Or as I call it “Situational Awareness.”

2nd: Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action, the relation of the several Pieces, their situations, and the dangers they are repeatedly exposed to, the several possibilities of their aiding each other, the probabilities that the adversary may make this or that move, and attack this or that Piece, and what different means can be used to avoid his stroke, or turn its consequences against him.

I call this situational awareness because one of the clearest examples of circumspection is driving. How often in driving do you find yourself scanning ahead or to either side, watching for this and that. Making note of that truck merging lanes, or this pedestrian looking both ways before he’s about to sprint across before the light?

In chess, circumspection means being aware of where your pieces are in relation to where every other piece is. It’s not just about what you are or what you do, it’s about what others can or may do. We’ve all heard the story of the friend who was up for a promotion but talked to someone he considered a workfriend about it only to find himself looked over on the promotion because the workfriend used his knowledge to get the job instead? Maybe you’ve been that guy who lost the job, or maybe you were the one who used it to take the promotion from the other guy. Either way, circumspection is at the heart of it. The first guy wasn’t aware of who his opponent in the “game” for the promotion was. He didn’t know which pieces to avoid as he spilled his guts or bragged about it. He didn’t know where he stood with regards to what was going on. He wasn’t practicing circumspection of his board position and he lost because of it. Those who are interested in Machiavellian practices or study Dark Triad will note the importance of being situationally aware.

When it comes to women, work, life and business: if you don’t know where you stand, you’re losing.

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The third lesson is the lesson of being deliberate.

3rd: Caution, not to make our moves too hastily. This habit is best acquired by observing strictly the laws of the game, such as, if you touch a piece you must move it somewhere, and if you set it down, you must let it stand.

The purpose of being deliberate is not to delay movement, but to act cautiously. Too often in chess, as in life, people are hasty and abrupt. They get excited, or nervous, or worrisome and make a rash decision that comes back to haunt them. One of the rules of chess is that once you touch a piece, you must move it. It is thus to prevent those who would idly play with a piece, giving the impression they are about to move, but instead delay the game. While it is never a good thing to take more time than is necessary, it is far worse to take less time than you need.

The lesson of deliberation is that you should, using the first two lessons of prudence and circumspection, form the best possible plan to achieve the result that you wish. Then follow through with it. You must use the tools available to advance yourself with purpose, while also being aware of where you stand at each interval. Though you must be flexible in life, it is better to have a plan that you have to bend occasionally than it is to wander aimlessly with no foresight and no awareness just to prevent making the wrong move.

Can Insomnia Be Caused By Fear?

2:43 AM. You’re laying in bed tired, but tossing and turning. You wish for nothing more than to just be able to sleep but sleep won’t come. You need to sleep while you can. You have to be up early and no matter how many times you tell yourself that and look at the time, it just isn’t happening.

“Why can’t I sleep?”

It’s a simple question. On the surface, it seems straight forward. Why can’t I sleep? Well, what’s keeping me up? Well?

That’s the crux of it, isn’t it? What IS keeping you up?

I’ve had sleeping problems as long as I can remember. When I was younger, I was overweight and wasn’t taking the best care of myself. I wasn’t hitting the gym. I was eating badly and felt symptoms of what most would have called depression.

I wasn’t depressed. I miserable. And I was miserable because I was fat and going nowhere. I was stagnant, like my lifestyle.

As I got older, I went to work and eventually found myself in a similar situation. When you work a cubicle everyday for 5 years it’s easy to watch your waistline expand a few sizes and feel helpless to change it. Between work and going out for drinks with coworkers, or going home to your family and trying desperately to relax you just flatout didn’t have the time to be a “gym person.” You get fatter, you move less than you used to and less frequently, and you get miserable.

This gets compounded upon by work. Anyone who’s ever worked for someone else knows that feeling. That Monday Morning Dread. That feeling of when you wake up on in the morning, miserable and tired, and then you remember what day it is and you feel like running your head through a wall. Or disappearing.

Garfield comics aside, Monday morning isn’t just miserable because of some arbitary reason or because something something astrology, Monday Morning is the symbol of being a slave. Do not mistake me, there’s surely to be good money for some suit-and-tie types, but for those of us who aren’t regional managers know what it’s like to feel like you’re wasting the best years of your life for peanuts while your boss pockets the profits.

It’s not that you hate who your boss is, although you might eventually by proxy, it’s that you hate who your boss isn’t: yourself.

Monday reminds you of the chains of the life you live in the same way that Friday shows you a few fleeting moments of what it’s like to feel “free” again, if only for an afternoon or so.

What does this have to do with insomnia? Frankly, until earlier this week I had no idea. Then, my latest bout of insomnia hit and I realized something. I couldn’t sleep because I was terrified.

I’m not a small guy by any measure. When 200 pounds and over 6 feet tall is nothing to you, monsters under the bed don’t have the same spook factor they did when you were 5 years old. No, it wasn’t what was under my mattress that scared me, but what was on my pillow. My own head had me spooked.

Anyone who’s ever had insomnia knows the feeling. That lifeless tiredness. The way days blend together and blur and how time loses its meaning. 4am is the same as 4pm to you if you’re awake for both. And when you have insomnia, you can’t think. You’re thankful when you make it to and from work without dozing off on the bus, or worse, driving. I hate insomnia because it is a real threat to causing me to accidentally hurt someone. I’m very vocal against driving while intoxicated or on drugs, and being tired is one of the most debilitating things. And every day that being tired only makes my own life worse is its own bitter sweet gift.

The problem is, as the days begin to blur and you go through the motions, working your 9-5 for someone else’s money, just like AM and PM, your own life loses it’s meaning. You are what you are not. What I mean is that you are defined by everything you are not. And when you become the kind of person who is a tired, wageslave, a background character in somebody else’s rat race, you lose sense of self. You lose any semblance of purpose.

You lose reasons to live. And when your purpose leaves you, it leaves you hollow and feeling like it’ll never return. That’s what fear is. The belief that the situation you’re in is bad and it won’t get better. You don’t fear a bear attack just because the bear exists, you fear it because the bear has the power to make you not exist anymore. Your situation won’t get any better after that.

That’s why, as depressed or down as I’ve been, I’ve never wanted to kill myself. Suicide accomplishes only to prevent your situation from ever getting better.

So what am I afraid of? Being stagnant. My life not going anywhere. Never meaning anything to anybody. Never mattering. Really, no matter how you word it, I just don’t want to be wasted potential. All these years, all my ancestors lived and fought and died in a much rougher world than what we have, and that all made it and had children who lived to carry on their genes.

Life is a game and only the winners get to tag in new players. That’s the way it’s always been and it isn’t changing anytime soon. That’s what I’m afraid of. Never amounting to anything.

When you’re a man, you’re told from when you’re young that you have to be this, or you have to be that. Media, friends, family, books, movies, everybody has an idea of who you should or shouldn’t be. And as you get older, you start to get an idea of that for yourself too. Who you want to be. I’m not a big believer in predetermined destiny. I think life is 100% of what you make it with work. There is a bit of luck involved, but luck has a funny way of rewarding those who put in the hours.

That’s what was keeping me up at night. When I was at my most tired, when I could barely keep my eyes open or to form thoughts, when the haze of fatigue blurred reason and thoughts into near incoherence, there was one thing that was always present. The crippling, hopeless feeling of despair.

One question that kept repeating in my heart. “Is this all I’m ever going to be?”

Where I am. Who I am. I’m not happy with it. I grew up dirtfloor poor. I’ve struggled a lot. And through it all, I suppose, somehow I’ve kept a feeling that I was never worth the ridiculous dreams I had. I wanted to be this and I wanted to be that, but I felt like I couldn’t afford to take the risk. I can’t afford to move to New York and take up standup, or move to California and become an actor, or to move out and hop on an oil rig and have the kind of life I want.

I was afraid that I was never going to be anybody, and worse, that I was right where I deserved to be. I accepted somebody else’s reality. Working for somebody else just to make ends meet. Sacrificing my entire future and happiness for a ham sandwich for lunch.

I was afraid of being nobody my whole life and the worst part of it is that I knew I had no one else but myself to blame. I wasn’t sleeping in a one bedroom place because somebody else held a gun to my head and told me to settle. I wasn’t working instead of grinding toward a Doctorate because someone else told me I wasn’t allowed to go to college.

Everything in my life was on me and what I did and didn’t do. I made every single choice that made me miserable in life and all I could think was one thing.

Thank God.

It wasn’t because of spiritual reasons. I wasn’t praying, I was exhaulting. I was joyous. When I realized that every single thing wrong in my life was my own fault because of the choices I made, I realized something else.

My choices have power.

I am truly the master of my own destiny. Every single thing wrong with my life was nothing more than my defeated mindset telling me I didn’t deserve it, so I didn’t go after it. For as long as I can remember, the poem Invictus has been my personal motto. I suppose in some way, at my deepest core, I knew who was to blame. Perhaps that was the part of me that loved Invictus. The part of me that knew I could be more.

I was the Son of Winners. No matter who I am now, or who my father is or was, or his father before him, even if we were the blacksheep of our family, we still come from the same winner. The Patriarch of our family, the one from whom we all descended, and his ancestors before him all made it, for better or worse.

It’s as cheesy and cliche as it comes, but the simple understanding that I was a screwup because of myself was the most empowering thing you can feel. When you pull back the curtains and realize that the Wizard behind the curtain, pulling the levers and twisting the knobs was you all along.

Now, what to do with this information. Without a plan of action to change, this post would be as pointless as every other self-revelation in the world. Suddenly “understanding” your problems is a realization that is a dime a dozen. Doing something about it, on the other hand, is not. Lucky for you, that’s what we’re going to do. If you’re here, and you’ve made it this far, some part of you is either just looking for the point or you’re hoping that what I’ve figured out can help you too.

Maybe you’ve got dreams you’re not going after. Maybe you’ve got something you told yourself you couldn’t do. Maybe you’re stuck and not sure where you are. I’ve been there too and this is what I’m going to do.

I need to change. If you’re not growing, you’re dying. Being stagnant, simply not moving forward, will kill you. Not just physically, but inside as well. So I’m starting a plan of action. I’m already doing the #NoNothingNovember challenge so I’ve already got some momentum at my back.

So, starting today, I’m going to lay out my dreams. Don’t worry, it gets cheesier from here. I already know what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of success because I feel like it’s not for me. I’m not worth it. I don’t deserve it.

So I’m going to BE worth it. I’m going to figure out what I want to be and what I want to do, and whatever I feel like I need to be to be that, I will. Whatever I have to do to make that dream come true, I will.

I’m setting up obstacles in my own way because I’d rather climb and struggle than stagnate and die. When I found out why I wasn’t sleeping, because I was worried this was all I was ever going to be, I felt a sudden surreal peace.

I won’t promise that reading me talk about it will do it for you, because I had enough introspection to realize it. But if you feel like some days you just would rather not bother. If some days you’re angry or upset or tired or irritated or malaise for no reason, maybe there’s something missing.

In the movie Office Space they pose the question of “If you had a million dollars, what would you?” It’s introduced as a means to bring up the plot for the rest of the movie, but it brings up an interesting point.

If money didn’t matter, what would you be doing? If you could literally do or be anything, what would you want? What did you want to be before you “realized” that you needed a “realistic” dream?

If you haven’t watched the movie, I highly recommend it. It’s very similar to what a lot of men and women are going through these days. Office Space is essentially a more SFW version of Fight Club. Just don’t tell anyone I told you that.

So what does this mean for you? Well, perhaps you’re the type that likes to watch someone stumble and fail. Maybe you’re the type who needs to see someone else succeed to motivate yourself to make it happen. Or perhaps you’re the type who wants to believe that for once, the person on the other end of the screen isn’t just some idiot with a blog trying to sell you something.

Make no mistake, in the future I might try to sell you something, but it’s not today. I have nothing to sell you. If you’re reading this, my blog is just starting. I have no affiliate links. No ebooks for $2.99 for you to buy. Nothing.

All I have is my word, and I’m giving that to you for free. So, if that satisfies you, stay around awhile. Just like with this blog, as it grows and I move toward becoming bigger and better, perhaps you’ll find the resolve to move your life in it’s own direction too. And if that can inspire you to go after your own life, then I’ll be glad for it. I’d love nothing more than to help even one other person be willing to risk a little failure for a chance at big success. If you think what I’m saying sounds like the kind of plan that would work for you, do it.

Trust me, I’m not the kind of guy who works for get-rich-quick schemes. Doing this blog is going to take a long time before I ever earn a cent from it. It’s not monetized right now, and by the time I purchase my own .com address it’ll definitely be well after this goes up.

I’m in the “learning to crawl” steps. I have big dreams not just for this site but for my IRL life. Things I want to make happen and slowly but surely, I’m getting out of my own way so I can go after it.

So stay around awhile. See how I do, and if you like the cut of my jib, maybe you’ll let me show you the way.

Until then, I’m going to catch some sleep.

Old Man Success: How Henry Ford’s Greatest Success Came After Middle Age

Henry Ford was born on July 30, 1863 in Greenfield Township, Michigan. Though where he came from isn’t to be found on a map anymore, what he accomplished changed the way maps would be drawn forever. Born a farmer’s son, young Henry spent his days on his fathers farm building and running machinery to help on the farm. Ford had a predilection for tinkering learned from his mother that followed him throughout his life and career as an American businessman, entrepreneur and innovator. Though he was born as ordinary as any by middle age, when most men wish to buy their dream car, Henry Ford built his and ushered in the Age of the Automobile.

• The first lesson we can take from Ford is that success is often not a young man’s game.

At some point in his life, every man thinks of how fortunate he would be to be able to “hit his break” young and retire at the ripe old age of 30 to spend out his days enjoying his wealth and lifestyle. Henry Ford echoes that reality does not often grant genie’s wishes and that lasting success requires you to put in the hours.

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Though he is credited with many modern industrial conventions (some more contested than others) Ford’s most famous invention is the Ford Model T. It was not only the face of the brand of the Ford Motor Company, it was also the first production automobile made to be affordable enough that the workers who built them could afford them. Prior to the Model T, the personal automobile was considered a rich man’s luxury.

Henry Ford had a vision of his automobile as an everyman’s every day vehicle, imagining an unheard of world where every man took his own transport to work everyday instead of public transport, horse-drawn carriage, or simply walking. To accomplish this, rather than choosing to make his Model T of subpar parts Ford opted to more than double his workers’ pay. Raising their wage from $2.34 to $5 per day (more than $15-$20 per hour when adjusted for inflation), this allowed Ford to have a product that was made quickly but wasn’t made cheaply and a workforce who were better paid, felt more compensated, and able to have a Ford Model T of their own. This cemented to America at large that the Ford Automobile was to be a household name.

• The second lesson that we can take from Ford is that investing back in ourselves pays dividends forever.

Where as most modern CEOs would rather line their pockets with every single dime they can grab in the short term, to men like Ford who put all of themselves into their work, he understood that as much as the Ford Motor Company was himself, his workers were the Ford Motor company. Thus, investing in his workers was an investment in his company, his company’s future, and himself.

After an adulthood that was beset with professional failures such as being fired from his first job and the failure of two companies, the Ford Motor Company was an industry leader that was soon emulated by their peers but outpaced by none. Even Oldsmobile soon were falling behind in the industry to Ford and his automatic assembly line that could produce a new Model T in 93 minutes when the competition average was up to half a day for a single automotive to be complete. This led to more Model T’s on the road, being driven by Ford’s own workers. His wellpaid workforce was his advertisement.

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A tinkerer at heart, even the things he did not invent were ripe with an opportunity for Ford to take them apart, learn how they work, then figure out how to make them work better. Thus, even if he did not invent the assembly line, Ford was the first to take it and apply it and the moving conveyor belt to automotive assembly.

Henry Ford understood that innovation at its heart was the ability to think superlinearly and outside of the box. The ability to approach a problem from new angles. Innovation is necessity meets art. The difference between Ford and a your average Joe is that men like Ford understood not to dismiss things as silly outright and that all things could have worth if applied correctly. It is said that Ford himself once commented that his idea of use of the assembly line for automotive assembly came from the meat industry.

Imagine if someone told you they had this revolutionary idea to make tube socks using a sausage making machine. Now imagine if that seemingly ridiculous idea was your own and you were betting your company on it. At a time just a decade removed from the beginning of the Great Depression, Henry Ford was still innovating and looking for the way to take his automobiles to the next level. Drawing upon his background as a farmer, Ford began putting a car trunk onto his production cars that was made of a plant-base plastic. Here’s an image of a 77 year old Ford demonstrating the strength of his plastic car trunk by hitting it with an axe.

• The third lesson we can take from Ford is his ability to believe in himself and take risks.
  

In summation, Ford was born as cliché as it comes. Dirt poor, and pulled himself up by his bootstraps to become the wealthiest American of all time not named Carnegie or Rockefeller and whose influence on the automotive industry, roadways, and travel are still felt to this day. Though he is long dead and buried, the lessons in life and business he left us bring us one step closer to joining the ranks of Legends of Men.

Join me again when we discuss the paternalistic policy that treats a business and workers as a family with the CEO as the Head of Household.