World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov on How to Build Confidence

Trusting yourself means having faith in your strategy and in your instincts.

certain states of mind inspire you more than others. For some it may be happiness, for others it may be fear. To each his own. Petrosian was very flexible. Miller, Hernandez, and Robinson worked well with anger. Kasparov and Jordan were intimidators: they inspired themselves by wilting opponents. Once you understand where you lie on this spectrum,

As for internal factors, it is clear to me that I would not have achieved such success at anything other than chess. The game came to me naturally, its requirements fitting my talents like a glove. My talents for memorization and calculation were blended with an aggressive streak for an ideal chess combination.

Questioning yourself must become a habit, one strong enough to surmount the obstacles of overconfidence and dejection. It is a muscle that can be developed only with constant practice.

It can feel a bit paradoxical to muster up the confidence that we are the best but still compete as if we were outsiders and underdogs. But that’s what it takes.

There was an almost mystical correlation between work and achievement, with no direct tie between them. Perhaps I was benefiting from the chess equivalent of the placebo effect. Going into battle with what I believed were lethal weapons gave me confidence even though they went largely unused and wouldn’t in some cases have been effective.

A key to developing successful strategies is to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, to know what you do well. Two strong chess players can have very different strategies in the same position and they might be equally effective—leaving aside those positions in which a single forced winning line is available. Each player has his own style, his

Garry loves to talk about the decision process. He thinks that’s the key to everything—chess, puzzles, and life. A few years ago, he wrote a book called How Life Imitates Chess.