There are a few things they, the very best, have in common. One is that they\u2019ve been visualizing long before things actually happen.<\/p>\n
Ingebrigt Steen-Jensen<\/a>, who\u2019s supposed to be worth every krone of the huge fee he takes for holding pep talks, speaks about \u201cbig hairy goals\u201d. It\u2019s just the same. He imagined Stab\u00e6k<\/a>, his dear soccer club winning the cup final in five years when they were in the fifth division. And they almost made it! They promoted division four years in a row, and a few years later they\u2019d actually won both the cup and the top league. This wouldn\u2019t have happened if the dream hadn\u2019t been visualized and verbalized long time in advance.<\/p>\n I used to daydream when I was little. About many things, but I remember I saw myself being one of the big chess guys having Anatolij Karpov and Victor Kortchnoj and Jan Timman as my big heroes. When I was 16 I beat Boris Spasskij and a few years later I was close enough to the top thinking \u201cif I only trained half as much as the others I could become the very best\u201d.<\/p>\n There was no limit in my mind and my confidence was endless, and the reason for that had nothing to do with realities. I had my weaknesses and so on, but who bothers about \u201crealistic speaking\u201d? I became number 16 in the world at my peak, which is probably higher than I would if I only had the ambition of being best in Norway or something.<\/p>\n No one disturbed my thinking. That\u2019s the good thing about being alone. It\u2019s easier to control your thoughts without having \u201cauthorities\u201d telling you things.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the challenge with soccer and other sports where the trainer actually is very powerful. I\u2019ve had some horrible ones, and some really destroyed a lot for me, but I\u2019ve also had a couple of fantastic coaches.<\/p>\n All Norwegians saw what Egil \u201cDrillo\u201d Olsen did with the National team in the early 90\u2019ies, but he also did more than he knows perhaps for me personally. He was my trainer for four years in my local club Lyn, and I remember very well one time he took me to a national match with Norway against someone and J\u00f8rn Andersen, the Norwegian striker, scored. I rose up like everyone else and cheered, but Drillo just sat there and said: \u201cYou could also have done that.\u201d<\/p>\n He just whispered it, but it made me think. I can also do that! It became like a mantra for me. I can also do that! Anything, actually!<\/p>\n Oh, how happy and na\u00efve I was, and the world was under my feet, but at least I did what J\u00f8rn Andersen did. I scored a goal for Norway<\/a>. It\u2019s actually there, some seconds out in the clip. J<\/p>\n Unfortunately realities caught up with me, but the value of daydreaming, visualizing, making big hairy goals, whatever you call it, is invaluable.<\/p>\n Some years later a little boy with an apparent chess talent appeared in our surroundings. It was very obvious that the ambition could be no less than mastering the game completely. All the achievements on the way, like taking part in the elite class in the Norwegian champions at 11, playing for the national Olympic team at 12 or becoming a GM at 13 and so on, weren\u2019t really goals. It was just steps on the way to something much bigger.<\/p>\n Therefore it doesn\u2019t surprise me when I hear Benjamin Ree<\/a>, who\u2019s made a documentary about Magnus\u2019 whole life that will soon be on cinemas all over the world, it seems, and being interviewed about this<\/a> on VGTV, saying that he noted that Magnus wasn\u2019t that joyful when he made the draw he needed against Vishy Anand in the 10th<\/sup> game of the match in Chennai in 2013. Magnus had become the 16th<\/sup> World Champion, but he was more thinking about a possible missed win in the final game.<\/p>\n Perhaps because the real goal was much higher?<\/p>\n PS! When I was little I remember my soccer trainer scared us with a horrible hill we were supposed to run up and down ten times after the training. We were dreading for this the whole session through, but when finally the moment came, he instead said: \u201cLie down in the grass and close your eyes\u201d and then we started thinking<\/em> we were running rather than actually doing<\/em> it. \u201cThe effect is just the same\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n I prefer things actually to happen though. Talking and just talking is not for me.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Simen Agdestein<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Words by Simen Agdestein Although I\u2019m not very religious I believe in many things. For instance I believe in the power of the word. I happened to be in Iceland some weeks ago, for the Reykjavik Open, and in the drawer at my nightstand at the hotel there happened to be a Bible. The rounds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":621,"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Simen_Agdestein_NM_Bergen_2009\"](\"https:\/\/norwaychess.no\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/Simen_Agdestein_NM_Bergen_2009-200x300.jpg\")