I was excited when I saw this forum, but I don't see a single post that mentions Joshua Waitzkin, the chessmaster lectures, "maintaining the tension", "the downward spiral", or "the art of learning".

:(

I have to say that without a doubt Joshua Waitzkin's concepts that I mentioned above and the one you just mentioned muspelheim, along with many others have changed my entire outlook on life.  It started with games like chess and martial arts and other competetive video games and spread to everything. 

  The real beauty of it though is how he explains how its a process and can be developed as a skill.  For instance, when I first tried not giving up in my games psychologically when I was losing, I just tried it as a jest.  When I ended up winning some of those games, I started taking it more and more seriously until I became a very fierce defender of lost positions. 

  It is still very difficult to explain that these concepts can be learned incrementally like Josh explained in his book.  It seems that most of my friends act as if I am special for some reason, even when I tell them that each of these concepts started from ground zero in my mind and were expanded upon and developed as a skill.  I did not just magically become able to withstand mental pressure in games, it came from a long period of developing that skill and learning to enjoy being in the unknown as Josh described. 

Just out of curiosity though, what is the connection between this club and Joshua Waitzkin?  Like I mentioned, it seems to be a local club or something and I didn't see a single mention of Josh at all.

the club itself really has little initial connection to Waitzkin's concepts; it was started about a year ago by a high school senior who had developed a strong interest in chess and  was studying using the chessmaster series with of course the lessons taught by Josh.  Many of the early members of the club were just high school classmates that then formed a true club at that school and then competed in the state championships as a team, the online club here was active early but since many of the students have since graduated the local group has faded.  This online club is open to anyone and has grown in it size to be far larger than those who were actually among the group from the same area, and it is certainly open for any in depth discussion people want to bring in; providing enough people choose to be active enough to keep it alive.

"Cat and Mouse" :-)

"Transitional Moments"

to me Josh has been a great inspiration in my life, i have been learning chess from the chessmaster series, and is awesum what he talks about specially about maintaining presence, how one should meditate to settle the monkey jungle in the mind...

And the book is just amusing, full of teachings and wisdom, i think this time i'll buy the book :P