That’s a tricky one. And it is not one of those things you can hide behind a pillow in your living room and forget about. Or rather: the effect will be the same. What is hidden will eventually surface and possibly start smelling before you remember where you put it.
There was a time when I didn’t deal with failure, nor with success. Instead I swung from one to the other, forgetting what had passed, not worrying about what would come next. It worked for quite a while, but in the end it didn’t. It got harder and harder to get out of the periods when I expected to fail and the only antidote I could come up with was to let these periods “run their course”. In retrospect I have found this last idea to be especially destructive, because it places the solution in a place where you cannot reach it.
Today I have a system for dealing with feelings of failure and I am proud to say that it is quite efficient – for me (I will write a chapter or two about it in my next book). Still, it took me a few days to get over losing the last game in the Easter Tournament. I was half a point behind Normunds Miezies before the last round and got to play him with the white colours. It was up to me to do the best with the situation and it started out quite well…
What a horrible game (for me)! In retrospect I can see two patterns that I have since worked on: 1. I calculated too badly when I got a “second chance” (the same happened in my game in round 3) and 2. I was too tired during the second half of the games. The remedy – I realized – must surely be to work on my physique. And, so I have. Next week I’m playing Deltalift Open in Tylösand and I hope to have more energy for the latter part of the games.