Basics of Mental Mastery

Every man should strive to become a master of both his body and mind. In this article, we are going to talk about the basics of mental mastery. It will overview some basic strategies that you can use to increase your mental capacities.

Meditation

Meditation clears your mind. There are endless mental benefits associated with starting to meditate. If you want to achieve flow state faster, clear mindless chatter from your brain, and increase focus, you should start meditating. This is the hardest task to master from the list, but if you stick to it you will notice clear mental benefits. You can read more about meditation in our previous article here.

Working Memory – Chess, Sports, Games

Benjamin Franklin has talked about the mental benefits of chess in his article The morals of chess:

"The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often point to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it. By playing at Chess then, we may learn:

• 1st, Foresight, which looks a little into futurity, and considers the consequences that may attend an action ...
• 2nd, Circumspection, which surveys the whole Chess-board, or scene of action: - the relation of the several Pieces, and their situations; ...
• 3rd, Caution, not to make our moves too hastily...."

You can read the full article here.

Alfred Binet, the French psychologist who invented the first practical IQ test, demonstrated that good chess players have superior memory and imagination.

If you plan to get into chess, it is recommended to start solving puzzles and tactics online. For puzzles, use websites such as chesstempo.com, chess.com, or lichess.org and do not worry about openings, endgame, theory, etc. until you reach about 1600s. Take your time with tactics and think about things like weak pieces, forks, checks, etc.

Spend an equal amount of time-solving tactics and playing games. You can sign up on any of the above websites and start there. If you want to train to get into the flow state, it is recommended to play bullet chess aside from classical/rapid. It will train you to calculate faster and will aid you in achieving the flow state faster.

Physical activities are very important for mental improvement. The mind is as important as the body. The mind is also a part of the body. When we train ourselves physically, we experience great mental benefits. If you want to read about the basics of Physical Mastery, you can do so here.

Starting a physical sport is a great way to train the same areas as chess while also applying it to the real world.

Video games have been shown to improve decision making speed. One of the best ways to train your mental abilities might be to play a challenging competitive game. Complicated fighting games such as Super Smash Brothers, Tekken, Mortal Kombat, or in depth competitive games such as CS;GO, Dota, League of Legends, Valorant will train your mental abilities, decision making, flow state, focus, and many other areas of the brain. It is no coincidence that the US Army decided to recruit drone pilots from competitive E-Sports games. In the future, VR training will provide amazing opportunities to train your mental abilities.

Science, Programming, Literature, and similar.

It is inefficient to focus on increasing your IQ. It is better to focus on learning skills, math, physics, programming, philosophy, etc. Choose any field and try to improve yourself in it constantly. You will soon find that improvement in these fields carry over into other activities that you do in your daily life. Math and mental arithmetic help you calculate faster and understand numbers deeper than before. Programming will open doors that were previously closed. Any significant improvement in a field will also likely land you a job.

Reading is a very important part of mental improvement. Reading nonfiction has clear benefits that all of us are aware of. Reading fiction is beneficial because it trains our social skills and puts us in situations that we might never experience in our life. This grants us an amazing experience that should not be ignored by people who wish to improve themselves mentally. Find time every day to read at least a couple of pages. It can be either fiction, nonfiction, or poetry. What you read does not matter, it matters that you read constantly.

Philosophy will develop you mentally like nothing else. Reading and meditating on the works of philosophers will change your worldview. Be it the ancient stoic or the modern absurdist, everybody has something of value that you can read about. You can check out the philosophy section in the Darkroom Archives to get you going.