You're Playing An Old Chess Game

Some players were lost. Some gained. Some queened. Positions are all different. Advantages asunder. You are still playing a game that was over a long time ago.

Yesterday I posted about how as some people continue to move forward with the timeline of the universe, most reject the changes, living in a bygone era that probably never was anyway.

You know it well: family members who still somehow see you as the child you once were eons ago; friends who see you as the momentary snapshot of when you first interacted. The ironic thing is I see it in exact opposition among people I know. That is, some people who got to know me around the age of 17 will hear a very moderate thing I say as extraordinarily hawkish, right leaning, even fascistic. Some people who’ve met me in recent years hear my SAME moderate sentiment as super liberal, over progressive, left leaning, even naively pacifistic/misguided. Lol. It’s helped me to realize that the vast majority of people are wholly incapable of evaluating anything. They bring so much baggage to the table from an old chess game that they can’t even play the current one. We all do it.

The remedy? Search your heart. You’ll find that in all kinds of domains you get triggered based not on the game afoot but some old chess game that no one else is or has been playing for a very long time.

Where I see it regularly is in health behaviors, obviously, as I deal with thousands of coaching hours. People carry a guilt from a prior day as their lack of motivation for today. They carry a slight at work from last year as their chip on their shoulder for the present business quarter. They carry the shame of a non compliant healthy lifestyle moment from last week as the pretext for active self-sabotage this week.
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The game has moved on. You must as well.