Many players have requested more articles tackling the “mindset” aspects of smash. Fortunately, I’m very fascinated by how our minds affect our gameplay. I’m going to call an audible and, instead of doing a “5 ways to _____” buzzfeed style article, try to go a little deeper on mindsets while revealing a little bit of myself. You can withhold the tissues; sympathy and pity are not what I’m after today.

The Memory

We’re going to go back to roughly 7 years ago. I was a junior in High School at the time. Smart phones were virtually non-existent, R&B music was still quite popular, and Zhu was switching to a new main every week. My niche in high-school fit the stereotypical Asian nerd. I was rather quiet, smart, and socially awkward. However, I loved helping people. There was a secret joy in being able to help people out whether it be teaching somebody how to do a Chemistry problem or be the pair of attentive ears to a person’s problems.

Despite my awkwardness, I hit it off with many groups of people. I had a group of regular friends that I would hang out with during the breaks. Towards the end of the year, there are those dreaded AP college exams and we had one located at a nearby Church. I forgot the minor details of it, but I remember the test ending early for some reason. At the time, I still didn’t drive, so I had to wait for my mom to pick me up. Normally, I’d call her cell-phone, but, as usual, she didn’t have it on her and the test ended 2 hours earlier than what was scheduled. As everyone walked out of the parking lot, everyone else seemed to have made carpool plans for lunch. Much to my dismay, I saw my two group of friends leave in their cars without even talking to me. It came as a huge shock that I was excluded from everyone’s plans. Car after car left and I found myself alone waiting in the parking lot. Waiting for two hours, I had the harsh reality set: most people were my friends only to use me.  The thoughts began to pour in and I’m not sure if you’ve experienced that void-like feeling of emptiness in your chest before, but that’s what was setting in as I was beginning to put pieces together about my awful state. I went home that day, not wanting to eat. I felt numb and paralyzed. Once in a while I’d feel bouts of anger, followed by feelings of worthlessness. The thoughts came in.

“I was doing my best to be a great friend… I guess I’m not good enough to be more than a tool… for anyone”

“Maybe if I killed myself, no one would care. After all, I don’t matter to anyone”

Granted, I was probably in a stage of shock at the time and those thoughts were just my emotions speaking. I eventually did get over it (or so I thought). I think in that day, something was taken away from me. I felt any shred of dignity or self-worth taken away from me. I didn’t feel worth or valued at all, but I hid it as best I could.

Now moving forward. Why do I bring this up?

Mindset goes beyond a simple fix. Your mental health will determine how you function in times of pressure. Despite the fact that I hid my insecurities pretty well, it would ooze into every facet of my life. To the casual onlookers, they may not notice anything strange at all, but if you look deeper (hindsight is 20/20 by the way), you could see how these insecurities manifested in my tournament performances.

1. I was nervous when I played people who were worse than me that I felt could win.

This was a result of not wanting to lose because I felt that if I lost, then people wouldn’t value me as much

2. I would play try-hard in every friendly

The root cause of this was because I wanted to show people that I was good at the game. I never bothered to experiment

3. Playing in front of audiences daunted me

If I choked, what would people think of me?

4. I let people walk over me and could never say “no”

If I said no, would I lose them as a friend? I can’t let them hate me.

These were many of the manifestations that came out during what seems like something innocuous. Because I didn’t feel valued or loved, I tried to circumvent this by gaining approval by how well I performed or through my “niceness”. This is why I think it can be underselling the issue if I simply told you to don’t worry or ignore everyone. It would be almost disrespectful to say that to you, since the reality is that can be quite difficult sometimes!

So how did I get out of this?

I would say a mix of self-awareness and growth as a person helped me out in the long term. I truly believe that mental health, physical health, and performance in smash do come hand-in-hand. Through being able to talk about my issues and come to an understanding of how to deal with them, my play and mindset in Smash have improved dramatically. My religious faith helped me a lot in having confidence in myself as a human being. I also met many cool groups of friends who also helped and reassured me of who I am. I can’t say I’m necessarily perfect, but I’ve gone a long way back from 5 years ago.

When I observe other players such as M2K, I do believe much of his growth in mindset stemmed from growing as a person. Back in 2012,  M2K would struggle when he faced adversity, often forfeiting tournaments. People would often tell him cliches, but it wasn’t until he matured overall as a person, gaining life perspective, that he was able to get over much of the tournament mindset issues.

Moving forward

I’m not sure if everyone has to deal with large scale issues. Maybe your life is good, but I bring and share a little about myself in hopes that if you are dealing with mindset issues, that it may be an indicator of a deeper issue. If it is, I hope that you attempt to go deeper when the time is right and confront that nasty fear that may be paralyzing many aspects of your life. I do see a large array of talent in the community and a great potential for people to do great things. It would be saddening if fear was the root that prevented people from accomplishing their dreams.

MIOM | Tafokints