What are genuine life lessons you've learned from chess and apply?

Thing is, I can do things in chess which I´d like to be able to do in real life but can´t ... careful planning, weighing of risks before acting, trying to develop long term strategies ... the result´s not always as planned (see rating!), but the will´s there. So why can´t I apply all that to my life? Maybe this is true of a hell of a lot of chess players, I don´t know - maybe we play chess because, while playing, we can temporarily compensate for failings in more important fields?

I honestly can´t say that chess has helped me one bit in real life; on the contrary, it robs me of much time which would be better spent on getting to grips with a few other things. But I just love playing it.

None. However it has allowed me to meet some very nice people which i would have never met otherwise.(ok and a few not so nice people as well)

 The skills I use in chess can be applied in my everyday living because we all have situations and probems that we should all first analyze before we react.

Lesson #4: Just when you think it's all going to come together and pay off, it becomes obvious that you forgot one crucial point and it all comes undone.

Just when you think things can't get any worse, they do.

In general, be wary of generalizations ;-)

Lesson #5: Then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

you totally stole that from pink floyd's time

Lesson #6: Time is of the essence!

Not to drop my queen.

I thought it was to immediately give up my queen(I specifically learned this one from tactics trainer) for mate.

I have learnt patience from chess.

And its corollary: When in doubt as to your plan, wait for your opponent to initiate something. It's sure to be a mistake!

Here's one for you, DrSpud: No battle plan of action survives first contact with the enemy (truer in life than in chess).

People can be sacrificed, they're all just pawns Lol

I learned that we're all pawns on God's huge chessboard. And every square is booby-trapped.

I've found every square is a portal to another dimension, and places where even non-squares play chess.

In life and in Chess play, I have learnt that progress can only be attained by the willingness to sacrifice the original position you were in to achieve the one you'll be stepping towards. 

In life and in chess play, there are 2 types of moves. Moves that can be made later on (long term) and Moves that have to be made immediately in response to a credible threat (short term)

Well a crazy thing has come to my life from playing chess. That is that I am able to spot patterns. This helped one day while I was playing online chess. There was this fly that kept buzzing by me and it was driving me nut's. That is when I noticed that it was following a pattern in it's flight. I saw that every time it flew past my monitor it would go to the same place and not land but just hover there. I had my flyswatter in hand and when the fly repeated the pattern. Bingo. Oh and for what it's worth, I won several games after that.

Dunno ... though it is rumored that a club  player was recently changing a flat tire and just as he reached out for the wrong tool,  pfren appeared out of nowhere and wittily mocked him for it. :)