{"id":907,"date":"2022-05-01T23:55:47","date_gmt":"2022-05-01T22:55:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/binarywords.com\/?p=907"},"modified":"2022-05-02T08:16:34","modified_gmt":"2022-05-02T07:16:34","slug":"jugando-a-las-damas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/binarywords.com\/en\/2022\/05\/01\/jugando-a-las-damas\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing draughts"},"content":{"rendered":"

My daughter Eva, who\u00b4s seven years old, is learning how to play draughts. Well, in fairness, I think I recall playing with her a bit some time ago, but for some reason, we had not played again in a long while, so she had forgotten the rules of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Playing with Eva brought me many memories from when I was a child and played draughts with my sister Cristina, who was the one who taught me. And she would always beat me up! I don\u00b4t remember ever winning a game\u2026 In my defense, I\u00b4ll say that she\u00b4s six years older than me, and in children, such an age gap makes a big difference. Now she looks younger than me, but that\u00b4s a topic for a different post \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is, one of my strongest memories is how stunned I was when all of a sudden she would take two or three of my pieces in a row, and I totally didn\u00b4t see it coming. It wasn\u00b4t because of losing that I felt so bad (I never really minded too much if I lost at games), it was the feeling of impotence, of not knowing how to play well, and being unable to catch up or get ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And sure enough, now the one getting that feeling of impotence, game after game, is Eva. She doesn\u00b4t know how well I understand her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all have gone through similar experiences when we start learning something for the first time, and we\u00b4re awful at it, or so we think; in reality, it\u00b4s just that we still don\u00b4t know how to do it, it\u00b4s that phase of learning that we call conscious incompetence<\/em>. It\u00b4s unavoidable. And it can be really, really frustrating, especially when we haven\u00b4t been outside our comfort zone in a very long time, and we\u00b4re used to things always going well for us. Nobody wants to feel clumsy and useless, like a fish out of the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we keep forgetting that every new learning needs to follow its process, and naturally, that takes time. What\u00b4s important is persevering, keeping up the practice, and making the most of our \"mistakes\", so that we can improve our technique, strategy, or whatever it is that we need to improve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u00b4ve always considered board games to be a good rehearsal for life, a good way to learn skills that we can apply later on to any other situation. Thiking about this week\u00b4s example with the game of draugths, a few things come to mind: <\/p>\n\n\n\n