Most people live life reacting to whatever happens next.
They wake up, answer emails, put out fires, and wonder why they feel stuck.
But what if you could see the future before it happens?
What if you could plan your life like a master strategist, always ten steps ahead?
To do this, you need a mindset called Shogi Thinking.
What is Shogi Thinking?
Shogi is traditional Japanese chess.
It looks like standard Western chess, but it has one massive twist that changes everything.
In regular chess, when you capture an opponent’s piece, it leaves the board forever.
In Shogi, when you capture a piece, it becomes yours.
This single rule changes how you play.
And it gives us a powerful way to think about life.
It means no resource is ever wasted, and any loss can become a future strength.
Every decision you make opens some doors and closes others. Most people only see the door in front of them. Shogi thinking sees the hallway beyond it.
Shogi Thinking means looking at your life board and calculating multiple moves in advance while turning every setup into a win.
Your highest self is not built with one perfect move.
It is built by learning how one move prepares the next.
See the Whole Board
Imagine your life as a shogi board.
You have pieces: your skills, relationships, finances, health, time.
Each piece can move in certain ways.
- Your career piece can move forward, sideways, or even backwards temporarily.
- Your health piece requires consistent maintenance.
- Your relationships piece needs nurturing.
Here’s what shogi masters know that most people don’t: the most powerful move isn’t always moving forward.
Sometimes you need to move a piece backwards to set up a bigger attack.
Or sometimes you need to sacrifice a piece to capture something more valuable.
Sometimes you need to wait and do nothing while your opponent makes a mistake.
To use Shogi Thinking, you must stop staring at your feet.
Instead, look at the entire board of your life.
Think in Sequences, Not Single Moves
Most bad decisions don’t look bad on the first move.
The problem appears later.
Imagine you are hungry and decide to eat fast food.
This single-move decision ignores future consequences.
A Shogi thinker looks at the chain reaction.
- Move 1: Eat fast food now.
- Move 2: Feel tired in an hour.
- Move 3: Skip the evening workout.
- Move 4: Wake up low on energy tomorrow.
When you map out the chain reaction, you make better decisions today.
You stop reacting to life and start designing it intentionally.
Create More Moves for Your Future Self
Thinking ahead does not mean predicting the future perfectly.
You cannot control everything.
People change. Markets change. Opportunities disappear. New problems arrive.
So, the goal of thinking ahead is not to predict the future perfectly.
The goal is to create options.
Strong shogi players rarely depend on one possible path.
They develop positions that give them several useful moves.
You should do the same.
Learn skills that can work across many industries.
Build savings so you can walk away from bad situations.
Develop relationships before you urgently need help.
Build an audience before you have something to sell.
Create a second source of income before your first one disappears.
Take care of your health before your body forces you to.
These moves create optionality.
Your life becomes much stronger when one unexpected event cannot destroy your entire direction.
Do not try to build a future where everything goes according to plan.
Build yourself into someone who has good moves available even when you don’t.
The people who seem to have life figured out usually aren’t smarter than you. Like Shogi players, they just started thinking two, three, five moves ahead, long before anyone realized the game had already begun.
In the popular anime Naruto, there is a brilliant ninja named Shikamaru Nara.
He loves playing Shogi and is famous for outsmarting enemies who are much stronger than him.
Shikamaru wins because he thinks.
While his enemy is shouting and swinging weapons, Shikamaru closes his eyes, forms a hand sign, and calculates over two hundred possible battle paths in seconds.
He wins because he sees where his opponent will stand ten moves from now.
He sets traps today for moments that will happen ten minutes later.
You can do the same thing in your career, health, and personal goals.
Build a life with moves available.
Turn Captured Pieces Back Into Weapons
This is where Shogi becomes different from almost every other strategy game.
A captured piece can return.
Something that looked lost can become useful again.
Life works this way too.
In life, you will experience failures, rejections, and bad days.
The average person treats a failed project as a total loss and quits.
A Shogi thinker captures the lesson from that failure and puts it back into play.
Failed business ideas become useful market research.
A bad break-up becomes self-knowledge about your boundaries.
Sacrifice One Position to Gain Another
You cannot keep every piece.
You cannot choose every opportunity.
And you cannot become everything at once.
Strategy requires sacrifice.
In Shogi, a player may intentionally give up one piece because losing it creates a stronger position somewhere else.
Life constantly asks you to make similar trades.
- You sacrifice a Friday night to finish something important.
- You sacrifice some comfort to save money.
- You sacrifice easy work to learn harder skills.
- You sacrifice being liked by everyone to protect your priorities.
- You sacrifice short-term entertainment to build long-term freedom.
This does not mean you should suffer for no reason.
Sacrifice without purpose is simply loss.
Strategic sacrifice means giving up something of lower value to protect or gain something of greater value.
This idea appears across anime because good battles are rarely won through strength alone.
Every yes costs something.
If you say yes to one career, you are saying no to thousands of others.
If you say yes to two hours of social media, you are saying no to two hours that could have gone somewhere else.
The question is not whether you are sacrificing.
You already are.
The question is:
Are your sacrifices buying the future you actually want?
Think Backwards From the King
In Shogi, every piece has a different movement pattern.
Pawns can only move forward one square at a time.
The King is the most important piece, and you must protect it.
In your daily life, small daily tasks are your pawns.
Sending an email or washing the dishes is a pawn move. They are necessary, but they will not win the match on their own.
Your “King moves” are big strategic decisions.
These include learning a high-income skill, investing in your health, or leaving a toxic environment.
Never let small pawn tasks distract you from protecting your King moves.
Keep Recalculating the Board
One danger of strategic thinking is this:
You can become too attached to your plan.
You calculate ten moves, life changes on move two, and you keep following the old map.
This becomes stubbornness, not strategy.
The board is always changing.
This lesson appears clearly in Hunter x Hunter through Meruem and Komugi.
Meruem is an extremely powerful king who begins playing a fictional board game called Gungi against a blind young girl named Komugi.
At first, he believes he should easily defeat her.
He cannot.
Komugi keeps creating moves he does not expect.
Every time Meruem thinks he understands her strategy, she develops something new.
He is forced to keep learning.
The lesson is simple: Your opponent gets a move too.
In life, the “opponent” might be the market, circumstances, other people, technology or simply new information.
- Your five-year plan should change when you learn something important.
- Your career plan should change when an unexpected opportunity appears.
- Your business strategy should change when customers tell you something different.
Think ahead.
But keep looking at the board.
Practice Three-Move Thinking
You do not need to calculate twenty moves every morning.
Start with three.
Before an important decision, ask yourself three simple questions:
- Move 1 (Immediate): What action am I taking right now?
- Move 2 (Secondary): What is the direct reaction or outcome of this choice?
- Move 3 (Future ripple): How will this outcome affect my position tomorrow or next week?
This simple habit takes two minutes, but it completely cures impulsive decision-making. (btw, I have written a comprehensive article on making better decisions. Read it Here)
Becoming Your Highest Self
Your highest self is you, but operating with full clarity and strategic awareness.
It is you at your absolute peak performance.
When you practice Shogi Thinking, you stop living in fear of surprises.
You realise that even when you cannot control what enters the board, you can control how you play from that position.
You stop asking “Why is this happening to me?” and start asking “How does this piece help me checkmate my goals?”
This mindset shift changes everything.
Make Your Move
Become the kind of person who can look at whatever position life gives you and still see three good moves ahead.
See the board.
Know your King.
Create options.
Reuse your losses.
Sacrifice wisely.
Keep recalculating.
Then make the best move available.
Your highest self is not waiting for one lucky breakthrough.
You are positioning the pieces for that breakthrough every single day.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:
- Subscribe to Your Highest Self Newsletter: Every Sunday, I share actionable tips from successful people on mastering money, mindset, and meaning.
- Buy and read the Fast Track Book: Stay relevant, master new skills, and be ready for whatever life throws at you. This is the complete roadmap to accelerate your learning and expand the opportunities available to you. Available on Amazon.
- Purchase the Personal Wealth Maximiser Course: Take control of your finances and build financial freedom. The Personal Wealth Maximiser gives you the exact knowledge and tools to break free from money struggles and build financial confidence.
