If you think reading more or taking additional courses will give you all the answers, this story will change your mind.
In 2020, Netflix dropped a brilliant mini-series called The Queen’s Gambit, centred around a quiet but formidable orphan named Beth Harmon who rises through the male-dominated world of competitive chess.
An encyclopaedic knowledge of chess fuels Beth’s rise, yet she repeatedly faces moments where raw intellect isn’t enough.
In those moments, she doesn’t play the game by convention. Beth plays it by instinct.
And as she climbs the ladder, beating seasoned grandmasters in smoke-filled rooms with nothing but her calm glare and lightning mind, you realize something:
Beth isn’t just memorizing chess patterns. She’s seeing them.
In The Queen’s Gambit, Beth Harmon’s chess mastery did not come from memorization alone, but from moments where she closes her eyes and feels the board.
But there’s a painful story before she fully mastered chess.
The Short Story of Beth Harmon
You see, Beth was orphaned at a young age, after which she was placed in an institution where she first discovered chess.
Later, she was adopted by Alma Wheatley, a kind woman who recognized Beth’s extraordinary talent and supported her chess career despite knowing little about the game herself.
As Beth plays more professional chess, she begins to rely heavily on study and technical preparation, developing an obsessive relationship with perfection and channelling it to her games.
While Beth rises to the top of the chess world and reaps the financial benefits of her success, her performance worsens because of her increased dependency on drugs and alcohol.
However, Alma had been watching Beth’s journey and understood that true mastery required more than just technical knowledge. Or reliance on substances and alcohol abuse.
Alma had also learned something that all the chess books and training couldn’t teach and tried to pass this wisdom to Beth throughout their time together and this fell to deaf ears.
You see, Beth disregarded Alma because she didn’t really know much about chess.
But as Beth grew older and faced increasingly difficult opponents, she began to understand what Alma had been trying to tell her. A full mastery of chess will only come from the source of technical superiority.
I will come back to technical superiority in a bit.
Eventually, as Beth faced increasingly sophisticated opponents, she discovered there was something missing from all her preparation. In her final breakthrough moment, Beth recalls Alma’s words which makes her rethink everything she thought she knew about mastery.
Her adoptive mother Alma, watching her obsess over strategy books, once told her: “Intuition can’t be found in books.”
Pause and let that sink in.
When its meaning dawns on you, keep reading.
Now let’s talk about technical superiority.
Technical Superiority
In football, technical superiority is what happens when a player has mastered the basics to such an elite level that they can create space and time out of thin air.
Regardless of pressure, system, or opponent, these football players execute the fundamental techniques of the game with precision, control, and consistency.
Technical superiority means having better ball mastery, allowing for more creative, efficient, and confident play than opponents.
The best football players in the world have this trait.
It’s why Messi can weave through defenders not just with speed but with minimal touches.
Technical superiority is why Iniesta always had three passing options even in a 2-square-meter box and dictated the pace of their football games.
It’s how Cristiano Ronaldo had a consistent ability to strike from distance or volley with both feet.
Technical superiority is not just about skill.
It means doing the basics so well that they become weapons.
It’s about that rare combination of feel, timing, and instinct that can’t be drilled into you.
You either sense the opening, or you don’t.
Now apply this to your life.
Think of the moments you got stuck in analysis paralysis because you didn’t trust your instincts.
The relationship you stayed too long in because the logic made sense… but your heart felt trapped.
The job offer you took because the pay was good… but your chest tightened every morning you had to show up.
How many times have you ignored the quiet whisper inside you because you couldn’t explain it yet?
How many times have you delayed the right move because you couldn’t find it in a manual, a course, or a quote from a Harvard business review article?
Don’t confuse knowledge with knowing
We’ve been raised to believe that mastery is only acquired through accumulation.
Read more books.
Watch more tutorials.
Take one more course.
But the truth is… There comes a point when more information blinds you.
Where you’ve read so much theory you can’t hear your own thoughts.
You’re academically sound, yes… but spiritually deaf.
What Alma, Beth’s adoptive mother said wasn’t just a warning.
It was an alarm.
A code-red for the overeducated, overinformed generation who confuse knowledge with knowing.
Intuition can’t be found in books.
You can’t Google it.
You must live it.
You must sit with yourself in silence.
Feel your own patterns.
Watch your own mind.
And eventually, you’ll start to see the board.
Not the one they taught you in class.
The one that only your eyes can see.
And when you do…
You’ll stop playing by memory.
You’ll start playing by mastery.
This life is not a textbook.
It’s a chessboard. It’s a football game.
And no two games are ever the same.
Stop trying to memorize every outcome.
Instead, trust that feeling.
That strange but familiar sense that something is either deeply right or unmistakably off.
Train and hone this feeling by practicing what you have learned and consistently execution
The algorithm can’t teach you that.
Only you can.
So please, whatever story you’re living through right now…
Don’t search for all the answers on someone else’s page.
This is your move.
And now, once and for all, let the books serve their purpose and trust what they cannot teach.
Remember Alma’s words: “Intuition can’t be found in books.”
Now go show the world how your game is played.
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