Is there a deeper question than: “What do you really want?” When it is their turn to play, I often hear coaches say they do not have the faintest idea what to do. So, I ask them: “What would you enjoy?” Well, interestingly enough, the answer that comes up most often is: “I’d like to be lucky.”
When I ask these coaches a few more questions, once in a while one of them says something along the line of: “Well, I’d like to put down more opposing players.” When we finally get down to what a coach really wants, I say: “Well then, make it happen and let go of “Your” luck. If being lucky is very important to you, you’ll waste your time trying to be lucky. You’ll coach in a way that doesn’t suit you in order to win games and you’ll continue to feel miserable. This is stupid.”
“It’s better to have a short, enjoyable coaching career than a long, miserable one. After all, luck doesn’t matter if you really enjoy your play style and, who knows, you might even become a Blood Bowl legend. Being one with what you love is the only way to become truly competent at something, and that’s what will win you games. So, don’t worry too much about “Your” luck.”
You can’t learn from your luck. If you realize you made a mistake (and the outcome happens to be good), you should learn not to. If you realize you made the right call (even though the outcome was bad) you should learn to do it more.
The Sage, top blood bowl coach
What do you REALLY want?
Therefore, it is important to consider what we really want as a coach. Well, when we naively answer this question, we figure out that we desire complete control over our luck. For instance, to score touchdowns at will or to enjoy all-you-can-hit injuries. We seek the power to succeed on every roll of the dice. In short, we desire Nuffle-like omnipotence.
Now, ask coaches what they would do with this omnipotence. Well, their answers mix all sorts of largely conflicting intents because they’ve never really thought it through. Therein lies an excellent lesson. We are so hung-up on the idea of controlling our luck, of making everything go our way, that it prevents us from optimizing our coaching.
Being nuffle sUcks
If you take the time to really ponder it, leveraging the full force of your imagination, you will soon realize that you do not really want to be in Nuffle’s shoes.
It is that if you only coached games with completely predictable results, you would end up bored. With such perfect control over your luck, you could only get kicks out of failures – just like Nuffle … and that is a very dark place to be. You would soon long for a surprise. You could not ask for something specific, because obviously, it would ruin the surprise. But you would probably ask for unpredictable dice results, knowing they could either succeed or fail. In short, you would be asking for some good ol’ Blood Bowl again.
LETting GO OF “Your” LUCK
Let’s go back to our question: “What do you really want?” And after a bit of thought, your answer is now probably: “I don’t know.” And honestly, I do not know either.
What I do know is that when you are a rookie coach, you do not know what you really want … and when you are a legendary coach, you do not know either.
When you are a rookie, you do not know because you have not thought about it. Then, as you play games, you are forced to think about it and say: “Damn it! I want to be lucky!” Then, when you become a legend, you say to yourself: “No! That’s not it. Sure, luck can either piss you off or make you smile! But really, I don’t know what I want anymore and that’s why I don’t ask for anything. I prefer to let it go so that I can concentrate and optimize my game.”
Conclusion
It takes a ton of humility before Nuffle’ grandeur to let go of “Your” luck and accept the surprises how good or bad they may be. But, once you stop worrying, all that wasted brain power is freed and can be fruitfully invested elsewhere. In other words, the more you let go of “Your” luck, the more it comes back to you.