The Golden Trident

By Olly Johnson

Photos from Flickr, PxHere, and PickPic

With the school year starting back up again, one common sentiment will poke its ugly head out once again. That is stress. And it is very common, with a study from the American Institute of Stress estimating that 77% of Americans have struggled with stress. This applies to students even more so, with a report from Transforming Education claiming that 60% of students suffered from stress, often at higher levels than most adults. 

Learning how to deal with stress is not just critical to success, but downright essential in everyday life.

However, it is deceptively difficult to manage stress well. Stress almost resembles a leopard or a cougar, hiding under the shadows as it creeps up and pounces on anyone at any time it pleases. However, there are many ways to cope and counter stress, from the mundane acts of breathing to a count of three, to the more complex actions like meditation. The common link between stress solutions (aside from most of them involving some form of advanced breathing) is that stress can play into any of these solutions and can often break through, regardless of how deep you breathe. Stress can only be defeated by having many options to solve it. To put it simply, imagine this.

You are playing a game of chess. On your side of the table, you have your white pieces, all of which being major parts of your life. On the other side of the table, the black pieces are all the things that will hold you down. As is standard with chess, both sides have the same pieces, from your past to your emotions to your goals. Behind the black armada on the other side of the board is stress. Stress is a very cunning player, and can often dominate games if you let it. However, there is always a way to prevail and beat stress in chess. Specifically, five main strategies can topple stress in the Game of Kings. 

Number 1: Predict your Opponent’s Prediction

As stated before, stress will always play black and will go after you move every time you play against them. This is on purpose. You see, stress has a reactionary strategy, playing the best moves to counter your moves. This might make it seem that stress is practically unbeatable. If it counters all your moves perfectly, then how do you compete? 

The answer is stress’s overconfidence. Stress loves to intimidate you and will often take pieces just because it can. However, stress doesn’t always think about the consequences of taking your piece, so you can always counter its capture by capturing yourself. This is often called trading. But trading has one important effect. It will result in a “richer gets richer” outcome, where the person who was ahead is even more successful. So it is essential to always stay above stress at all times.

Number 2: Stay Adaptable

Before any talk of strategy is discussed, it is important to remember that stress plays a perfect counter game to your own, and it pays very close attention to what you are doing. Specifically, stress loves to see your faults and your weaknesses and use them as tools against you. This is why you have to be on top of your game, both strategically and mentally. Staying on your toes is the best way to counter stress. If you overfocus on one strategy or move, stress will catch on to that quickly and will use it against you. To stop this, alternate between a few good strategies and swap between them freely. In short, make sure not to put all your eggs in one basket.

Number 3: Think Before You Act

This might sound obvious and, admittedly, redundant. Of course, you want to think out your moves; it’s chess. Chess is the primary strategy game, so thinking out your moves is the entire point of the game. However, this idea becomes very important when dealing with stress. This is because stress is trying to make you forget the basics. As stated before, stress is trying to intimidate and suppress you. The results that stress is aiming for are to make you look like a bumbling buffoon. Making rash decisions and poor moves just so stress can laugh straight to your face and handily capture your pieces. But this requires that you let stress do this to you, and you’re far better than that. Ignore stress’s constant berating and overconfidence, and you can make your moves with smarts and stride.

Number 4: Don’t let Stress get into your Head

On a similar note, stress’s strategy is built on one idea. As you’ve picked up on by now, stress plays more of a mind game than a physical one. Stress’s main goal is to get into your head. That is the main motive behind all of stress’s behaviors. Stress plays with so much overconfidence and ego, not because it has any of that, but because it wants you to think that stress is better than you. That you are barely worth the time and energy that stress is putting in. Stress wants you to feel stupid while playing against it. Stress wants to make you go home with a burning taste of bitter and salty tears. Stress wants to hear you complain and feel helpless as it takes your pieces in a never-ending combo of making you the punch line to your own life. But you can fight back by simply ignoring stress’s traps. Stress can only get away with this way of playing if you cooperate with them. Letting yourself get overwhelmed is exactly what stress is all about. You are better than that. Simply keeping a straight face and a level head will put stress’s strategy into retirement. Once stress runs out of tricks, you will come to find that stress is surprisingly abysmal at chess. The tactic of capturing as many pieces as possible, no matter what, results in stress being just as big a buffoon as they wanted you to be. Sure, dodging stress’s jeers and jabs to your psyche is not as easy as it sounds. No matter who you are, stress can easily get into your head in a span of a few turns. But you can always regain your bearings, whether it be through some stretches, a good drink of water, or by simply breathing. 

Number 5: Never Resign to Stress

However, stress has one major, gigantic flaw in its game plan. This flaw, if you know about it, makes stress a 100% victory every time, no matter how many pieces stress took. That flaw is that stress will never, ever, go for a checkmate. They will never try to stall the game to win a stalemate. Stress doesn’t even take the king when it has an opportunity to. Stress will only accept a victory if you resign yourself to it. Stress does this because it takes pleasure in watching you admit to failure, and refuses any other win condition that isn’t by your own terms. Your resignation is what all the bullying from stress was trying to accomplish. But this means that, unless you allow it, stress can never be beaten. Ever. Even if stress wants you to think that you are constantly losing, you are always in control of your fate. Even if stress manages to take all your pieces, stress will never take the king. Therefore, you can always come back and win the game, no matter how far stress kicked you down the road. 

Now, how you decide to play the game and what strategies you decide to go for is entirely up to you. Stress is so terrible at chess that an old computer from the 1980s could devastate it in record time. Stress is more of a skill check in this sense, that everyone will have to deal with. It tries to come off as a master of the game by making you feel like an udder moron. But at the end of the day, stress’s bullying and manipulation are easily countered by keeping cool under pressure. Sure, sometimes stress will overwhelm and leave you with only a few pieces, but stress will never capitalize on this. You can always beat stress in a game of chess by simply pushing forward, no matter how much stress pushes you back.