In essence, attaching your identity/worth to anything can have drawbacks and make you feel euphoric when things are going your way and terrible when things are going poor. Chess just has an added uniqueness of being presented as prestigious and that only highly intelligent people play it. There's also something to be said about the 1 on 1 aspect of it. Just you verses someone else, where the loser feels inferior even though it shouldn't be that way. Like you said, if you dedicate enough time and energy to actively learning a specific thing, you will eventually become an expert at it. Chess is no different. We ought to be careful when attaching our worth to numbers on a screen.
Read this if you are just a chess hobbyist
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Hello there. I will start by stating upfront that I am pretty terrible at chess as can be seen from my ratings. Its been only a few months since I have started playing chess more seriously. I decided to write a post specifically aimed for chess hobbyists. If you are someone whose life revolves around chess you may ignore this post or read on and pass whatever judgement you feel fit to pass which will make zero difference to my stance unless its something convincing.
I will start by giving some idea about who I am and what I do in life. I am am musician and more specifically a music teacher by profession. If I take into account all the efforts I've given into music throughout my life, the same would have probably earned me atleast some chess title by now. Maybe not GM but I would have atleast been a lot better at chess than I am now. I do not say this to brag to feel good about myself in a place where there are clearly a lot of better chess players than me. I say this to make a very specific point to people who are merely chess hobbyists and for whom chess is NOT a main priority in life.
I say this because I have been increasingly seeing the effects that losing in chess has on me. I am sure a lot of people have childhood memories connected to chess where there is a clear subconscious relation of chess being connected to being smart and not being good at chess being interpreted as not being smart enough. This site is addicting enough to make you come back for more especially when you perceive rewards like wins or a boost in rating. However it also has the potential to make you feel terrible about yourself as a chess hobbyist when you absolutely don't deserve it. And to set things straight I will say this.
Chess doesn't have a place to cause you a loss of self esteem or confidence, especially when you are already very good at other areas. Stand clear of the egotistic chess players who will take efforts to make you suffer more mentally about chess than you deserve to ( I'm not saying all players are like this). I would invite any of these players to enter a completely new field (like playing guitar for instance ) and accept the same level of brain churning in ADDITION to playing chess as a primary focus.
If it helps. just get on this site, play your game for fun and leave without paying much attention to your league or trophies. Because lets face it, this is just like any video game. It may ruin you if you aren't careful. No disrespect to chess intended.