Interacting in a society where self-admiration grows by the frag and benevolence needs to be accompanied by Wikipedia links can be a smidge overwhelming at times. A culture such as ours, as unfortunate as it may be, has always manifested a few lackluster qualities. For many, the need to shelter something as paltry as an ego has become so oppressive that their own in-game ability is essentially as stagnant as the monitor before them. Stagnant, now there's an interesting word - Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines it as “not advancing or developing,” further realized as a lack of progression. Though that's exactly the position aspiring players are unknowingly thrusting themselves into.
Everyone has had one of those moments: He wasn't supposed to be there, you had just looked away, he came from behind or they peeked from opposite angles at the same time. Sometimes it just seems as if the gaming gods are out to get you and every move you make results in one seemingly random situation after another. This is also about the time where you begin to fall to pieces and spit out words both exaggerated and foul in any half-assed attempt to rationalize the events at hand. And it's all too common.
Phrases like “He's lucky he's so dumb” are formulated to help protect the fragile psyche, and at first glance it seems like the logical thing to do. After all, for years qualities such as confidence have been preached as the marquee trait of competitive stars across the world. And what better way to justify your latest failures than by suggesting uncontrollable intervention – as if that's the only way you can lose? Such a thought process is almost always unconscious, even bordering that of the instinctive. But there is a dangerous fallacy in its logic, one that if is not tended to properly could very likely hold you back from everything you know you're capable of accomplishing.
Confidence is a big part of gaming, obviously because nearly all of it is mental. There is however such a thing as cancerous confidence. Cancerous confidence is more commonly known as an ego trip, which is basically what players put themselves through every single time they explain their latest discomforts with screams of “random” or “lucky.” The issue with over confidence however is actually a very minute part of the real problem. The only thing over confidence does is play host to the actual performance menace. If this is starting to sound like a game of connect the dots, well, it is. You see the menace is much less apparent without its host to foster it and make it feel like a safe, somewhat instinctive response. But, what is this so called menace?
The menace is loss of control. To reiterate, players commonly invoke excuses whenever they can in what they unconsciously assume keeps their confidence up, sort of like a defense mechanism for the ego. By doing so however, a new beast is unleashed that is much nastier and immediately damaging than a mere decline in confidence. That beast is a loss of grip on the situation. You see, when you start to call things “random” you're conceding that what happened was out of your control. You set yourself up in a position that is impossible to overcome. Continually, frag after frag you tell yourself it couldn't be helped and you wonder why you can't turn things around. It's simple though, you can't turn things around because you're not putting anything in your hands. You end up relying on the other player or team to do all of the playing for you. And thinking logically, it's much easier to control something with your hands than with hope now isn't it? But how can we take control of the situation?
There are various different techniques one can align oneself with to cleanse the plague of uncontrollability, so I will stick with my own personal favorites here. First of all, you need to get it in your head that there is nothing to take back; in fact, you never lost control in the first place. Instead of complaining about the poor registry on the three dollar server and that shot that clearly hit, sit back and ask yourself if you did the absolute most to increase your chances in the situation. Now when I say absolute most I don't necessarily mean how good was your aim, I mean was there anything you did before the confrontation that lead to your arrival at that specific time? Unless you're Mr. Perfect, there is likely a whole series of events prior to the event at hand, which, if optimized slightly could have altered or even won you the battle before it even began. This sort of approach has always worked for me, as I have yet to play a perfect game and find nothing wrong with the way I performed.
There are cases however where you do your job pre-confrontation very well and yet someone “lucks out” to take you down. You know what I like to do in these situations? Demand more of myself. If I took five shots on my opponent and got him down to one hit point and he knocks me out with his last bullet, which also happens to be the only one he connects with, instead of complaining about luck I'll sit back for a second and speak critically of myself “I should have got him with my first two [bullets].” This is another way to take a seemingly out of control event and put it solely at your discretion. Becoming more demanding of your own actions is a great start, but some may have difficulty knowing what to demand, so I'll share another little trick I utilize from time to time called reverse role playing.
For those that don't know, role playing in such a context is when you put yourself in someone else's shoes and imagine what it's like to be them for a moment. One of my favorite things to do when I start to feel as if the game is out of reach and hopelessly out of my control is to do the reverse and ask myself if there would be a chance at success if my most admired player was in my position. No matter how hopeless the situation seems, something about envisioning one of the best players in the world taking charge of the very same hopeless situation that I have gotten myself into inspires and motivates me to play better. I think this is because I become one hundred percent unflinchingly convinced that one player can have enough impact on a game to make anything happen.
If instead of listening to all that was just said you are trying to come up with ways in which to break these methods, then you're already on the wrong path. Nothing works unless you believe it, so you have to push aside your ego in situations and honestly recognize that the outcome of the game is up to you. Without mistakes there would be little to improve upon, so the next time someone takes you down in a critical situation don't reach for excuses, look for reasons. It's ok to feed your ego from time to time though, as there is such thing as being overly critical of oneself. When you're feeling such self-induced pressure and another lame scenario passes you by, try to smirk at what happened. Go ahead, laugh just a tiny bit and bask in the realization that little does he know, there's no way you're going to let it happen again. Because unlike him, you never say "random."
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