The Secret to Improving in Brawlhalla

maybe you've played for a couple months and you can't seem to hit that first big breakthrough or maybe you've been stuck in gold or platt or unable to get through that 2100 barrier for the past who knows 500 600 some hours every time you try and improve it seems like nothing sticks and you really just don't know what to do playing ranked or even just the thought of playing ranked it gives you anxiety it makes the experience stressful and unenjoyable and yet for some reason you still just keep going back you keep playing ranked again and again and again and it kind of feels like you're just slamming your head against the wall and the wall will never come down if any of that resonates with you then i'm happy to hear it because okay well i'm not happy because that sucks i i've been there i'm still there at times but happy in the sense that it means i'm on the right track with something for the past two months i've been working to hopefully show you that you don't need to keep slamming your head against a wall because there's actually a doorway there's a doorway just out of sight if you give yourself the chance to look for it i think ranked brawlhalla can draw out a lot of negative emotions and feelings despite video games potential for being an immersive fulfilling experience or a fun temporary distraction from the outside world and i want to help with amending that as best as i can in the brahola community and while i think it'll take multiple videos to address everything that our community is struggling with because there are a lot of things i mean i've got plenty of time to try right so let's start with the things that are most pressing on my mind right now being stuck being hopeless and ranked anxiety one thing i want to say before we fully jump in is that if you do get ranked anxiety or if you get tournament anxiety or anything like that try not to just push it down try not to just ignore it try not to just pretend it doesn't bother you because that actually makes it stronger it does exist it does bother you that's a real feeling the anxiety itself may not be realistic but the feelings are very real so don't lie to yourself don't pretend they're not there's there's nothing to be ashamed of if you get ranked anxiety i get ranked anxiety all the time it's okay you know and in fact it's normal it's completely normal and once you recognize it and you acknowledge it for what it is then you can actually work on it but if you deny that it's there you can't really do anything so hopefully i can give you some direction and tools to work on it in this video but remember to try not to push it away and pretend it's not real that's really important all right i've organized this video into five sections i mean you can see it's a it's a long one it's a bit of a long boy so hopefully that makes it easier to follow let's jump right into the first one which is focusing on small actionable steps that you can take rather than just trying to improve all at once so that means shifting your focus it means reframing your goals instead of having the goal be rank up or improve uh instead shift it to be okay what can i work on right now what is this small actionable gameplay step that i can take and i know it might be a little confusing or misleading that the video is about you know this is the secret to improving this is the secret to ranking up and i'm telling you don't focus on ranking up but that's actually really the key you know if you try to be the best player that you can be the rank will come by itself the rank it should be a side effect it should not be the goal itself so what does that look like well for some of you i think the answer may be a little obvious it's that one thing that you know you know in the back of your mind you've just been putting it off and it's that one thing that's really holding you back and you just have not been putting in time to work on it so that's where you start but i imagine for many of you the answer is not obvious and you don't know where to start in which case i have some good news for you so not only do i have an entire dedicated video with the sole topic of how to figure out what your shortcomings as a player are but i've also got some tips to hopefully give you some direction right here so a great thing to try if you don't do it already is watching your replays at the end of the day general advice you find in guides tips and tricks they won't be able to push you that extra mile you know and i recognize that right now making this guide myself but it kind of makes perfect sense right they're general tips for a reason and what you need is something specific but what's great is that replays are the number one source of pure footage of you and luckily brawlhalla auto saves every single game you play with super small file sizes so you can just check back watch it whenever you want super easily what do you look for well it could be a lot of things specific situations where you felt uncomfortable and you want to think about what you could have done better or your opponent's dodge habits and what you could have done to adapt to them or if that string you tried was actually escapable or if you just didn't do it fast enough the list could honestly be endless and if you don't exactly know where to start looking for why you're getting hit that is always solid what are the factors leading up to you getting hit you know was your movement imprecise do you always react the same way after you miss an attack did your opponent force you into a situation you don't like did your dodge get red did you just simply get outplayed you know take note of those kinds of things and pick one to focus on let's say every time you try to approach your opponent you jumped twice beforehand that's something that i see a lot and i think it's something that people don't really think about they kind of do it automatically so okay you got that information from the replay so what do you do now well the next session or however many sessions you decide just focus on that don't focus on anything else just focus on holding yourself back from automatically jumping twice every time you approach and it's gonna suck you know you're probably gonna play worse you're probably gonna lose a bunch of games other things about your gameplay is gonna suffer and you're gonna slip up and jump twice anyway but that's okay keep it at the forefront of your mind anyway and be forgiving with yourself when you slip up because forging new habits is really difficult it is and i know it's a lot to jump into a game and to think okay i need to improve like i need to get better and the reason why i'm stressing this so much is because i know how overwhelming it is to try and improve like what does that even mean i'm trying to improve like what do you do then like you can't do anything there's no next step but if you have a small step you can take those small steps add up and what i'm describing right now that is a small step going into a game just trying not to jump twice every single time you approach that's a clear goal that's a clear directive that you can follow and once you feel good about it then you can focus on the next thing and the next one after that and the next one after that and those add up that's how you improve if you put your entire focus on a small goal and you actually start seeing progress oh it feels amazing like even if you lose the game but you successfully hold yourself back from doing that bad habit or you incorporate something new that you've like been wanting to try for a little while it's almost like losing didn't even matter it feels amazing because like remember your goal in that moment isn't to win the match it's to improve on that one small thing and it's okay to lose in fact losing is one of the most important parts of learning they are a window straight into your bad habits or what you do when you're nervous or the factors that lead up to losing other matches you know i i know it's very very hard i'm not going to pretend like it's easy to look back at your losses especially the ones that have significant emotional investment but it is part of the process because being able to acknowledge the fact that yeah you you did lose and these are the reasons why that's how you're able to identify okay well how can i work on them it's the same thing that i mentioned with rank anxiety earlier if you deny the fact that you have it then you can't work on it at all and we tend to not like looking back at our losses because of our egos and that's a huge part of the next section so i'll go into that in more detail but just keep in mind that i think that's the number one thing the most common thing that i see holding players back from truly improving is their egos and i know replay analysis it seems difficult it seems boring but once you start doing it it actually becomes much less intimidating and i honestly kind of think that you can even start to appreciate or enjoy the analysis it's the kind of thing that you just gotta kick yourself into doing once and then it gets easier and easier after that part of growing is being able to recognize your flaws for what they are and in terms of brawlhalla replays are a fantastic resource to see those flaws directly and once you see the problem then you can start to work on it and it becomes much less scary so that's my piece on replays obviously if you're able to do that in real time it's also a valuable skill i just think replays are a great resource to kickstart you into thinking about those kinds of things and get into that mindset but to close off this first section i want to talk about how reframing your goals like i've been describing can also help with ranked anxiety so to understand a little bit about anxiety anxiety as a function is greatly influenced by uncertainty and by consequence so generally speaking the higher the uncertainty paired with a greater consequence the stronger the anxiety can become so if we take that and analyze it in brawlhalla terms that uncertainty can be the uncertainty of whether or not you're going to play well enough to rank up and then the consequence is losing those precious elo points and losing means you're straying further and further and further from gold or silver or plait or diamond or whatever your goal is that makes perfect sense right if you aren't sure if you're going to win you're probably going to be more anxious and if the drawbacks from losing are more significant you'd probably want to avoid losing even more what's great about reframing your goals is that this stressful knot of playing well enough to rank up it starts to unwind as your goals shift and you detach from the result because remember when you're focusing on improving piece by piece you're not actually trying to rank up the rank up will naturally happen when the puzzle is completed and i know saying that is easy and disconnecting from the result is really hard but it's also important to try to spend your efforts focusing on the process the work you can do in the present rather than some unknown future goal because that goal is uncertain and again uncertainty adds to a lot of anxiety oftentimes when we're so focused on this future result we can get caught up in things that ultimately prevent us from improving in the present we do things like i can only play ranked when i'm already playing hot you know i can only play if i prep for 30 minutes first and experimental and then i can only play if it's not against spammers or not against bad matchups or not against passive players and if it's any of those then i'm not gonna play ranked whatever what that is is us trying to control our situation as much as we possibly can to best set ourselves up for success and on paper that sounds fine set yourself up for success great but in many ways you're spending a ton of mental and emotional resources trying to control things you actually have no control over that's when it starts being detrimental that's when it starts manifesting in feelings of anxiety you can't actually control if you're going to be playing hot in the next game you can't control if you're going to win the next one to make it a win streak you can't control what legend your opponent plays and you can't control how they play them the only thing you can actually control is whatever action you're doing right now and that's pretty much it you know you might be thinking like oh if i do this movement and i do this attack the opponent dodges because they're forced to dodge i control them to dodge or you know if i just played better then i would have won you know but those actually are not things you can control you can't go back in time and play better yes influencing your opponent's habits is very important it's a huge part of fighting games and so is building your own consistency to raise your skill floor and play better more often which i talk about in another section but this is an important distinction those are actions you take in the present the anxiety builds up when it's hyper focused on the future you know it's one thing to have your goal be i'm going into this match with the goal of forcing my opponent into the corner and then make them uncomfortable and they will possibly dodge in that's one thing it's another thing to be like i hope my opponent dodges in because then i can win this match and then i can rank up you know you can see how the second example relies on a lot more uncertainty than the first right the first still does have some you know end of the day whether your opponent dodges or not that's up to them that's not up to you but it's also focusing on what you can do in the present moment the second example is explicitly concerned with the uncontrollable it's focused not on the things that you can do but the things that may happen to you and that's what a lot of us trying to set up the perfect conditions to rank up is it's trying to control if you're going to get a win streak or not queuing because of the chance there might be a scarlet or orion or a player that can drop you down 17 elo it's it's trying to control the future and i know it kind of sounds ridiculous when i put it like that but that's what it is and that's what can bubble up into a lot of anxiety although it sounds paradoxical accepting that you actually can't control some of those things reduces that anxiety or at least it can if you think about it we're spending all that mental energy and going down all those what-if thought trains because we're trying to 100 ensure the result but if we accept that the result isn't certain which it isn't then we don't need to do that anymore we don't need to spend all those mental resources producing all those anxious thoughts and those mental resources can then be redirected to whatever your small goal is again like i mentioned before none of this is easy accepting that things are uncontrollable is scary it's harrowing to face if that's even the right word i don't know to pronounce that word but it can be helpful it really can i mean it's helped me a lot i hope it's helpful for you um but i i should quickly mention that the term anxiety we tend to think of it as just a purely negative thing which it isn't english is not the best language when it comes to talking about this stuff and i'll get into this in a later section so keep that in the back of your head for now but uh anxiety is not inherently a bad thing okay so i touch briefly upon how uncertainty of the outcome can lead to anxiety and reframing your goals can help reduce that uncertainty which in turn reduces the anxiety so now let's talk about the other thing consequence the consequence of losing losing sucks it sucks really badly especially if you're pouring your heart and your soul into something what's nice is that reframing your goals can also help with the added consequence of losing there will always be a consequence of losing but sometimes we create more of a consequence than there actually is this is part of why i like reframing your goals because it's like a huge buff you can try to give to yourself you know it can help you as a player and it can help your anxiety in game and maybe if you apply the skills you learn in brawlhalla to other things in your life it can help your anxiety out again but that's beside the point in many ways your efforts to control are manifestations of the fear of losing the reason you want to eliminate the uncertainty of the outcome at all is because you want to avoid losing because losing means ranking down maybe getting flamed in post game chat and by your friends which means all that effort was gone to waste and then you're left with dready suckiness that comes with a rough loss plus all of this other stuff and that's why reframing your goals can help because all of this other stuff isn't necessarily needed yes the loss will always be dready and sucky but it doesn't have to be that bad the higher the consequence of losing the greater the fear of losing becomes but what if the consequence of losing is not all of those things well then the need to control the uncontrollable goes down if your goal is not to avoid a loss but instead to improve on one thing in the moment then it's easier to see the match as a stepping stone for your own personal growth that is a much lower consequence than the definitive marker of your skill and your value because you're this rank at this moment your anxiety won't need to creep up if the source of the anxiety is no longer your primary focus and again i'm gonna say it's very difficult it's difficult to detach from the results but it is something to focus on anxiety is a symptom of our body actually trying to help us but if it feels like it doesn't need to help us then it won't need to start and you know that's very simplified but it's the general idea so to wrap this section up remember ranking up isn't the goal improving isn't the goal the goal is doing that one thing that you decided to do for yourself today ranking up or improving that might be a possible side effect of it and so is ranking down or feeling less skilled you know that's kind of what happens when you learn new things but that's okay it's part of the process don't practice with the intent of ranking up practice with the intent of practicing all right let's move on if you're like the average person who's very drawn to games you likely tend to pick things up pretty quickly and learn pretty fast because single player games especially are always ready to serve you another challenge you know the next level the next boss so naturally it serves you that craving to overcome an obstacle without really needing you to think critically about your skills but in multiplayer games and fighting games especially because you don't have any teammates to blame for your losses like the next level is that someone else is better than you and you aren't good enough to beat them yet we kind of think of learning quickly as simply a good thing but there are pros and cons to everything and a possible drawback to learning things quickly usually is that when you're met with a challenge where you notice things aren't coming as easily it can be even more frustrating than usual to hit that wall that's why it's important to learn how to learn and the biggest roadblock that i think stops people from doing that is that their ego stunts their own progress ego is a protective shield to make yourself feel better when you lose you know you start telling yourself oh you know they weren't that good they were just a spammer they were just passive instead of they outplayed me and i'm not good enough to beat them yet because that hurts a lot more you know again losing sucks it hurts really really badly so the ego serves a purpose it's doing its job the problem is it's the thing that's also going to hold you back if you really want to improve understand that this ego is a device created by your mind to protect yourself and notice when it creeps up you know the most glaring or common example i see this in is in the self-entitlement or judgment of playstyles you know this player isn't any good you know they're just passive if i played like them then i could be better than them but i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna bring myself down to their level that's beneath me i think those kinds of beliefs are based in insecurity they're based in fear you know maybe for a tiny percentage of people that say those or think those things sure you know there's many reasons to play a game and maybe you don't want to improve a defensive play style but i think for the vast majority of people that say this that's not actually the reason they may say that's the reason but i don't think that's the actual reason the reason in my opinion is that deep down you're scared of trying it and failing telling yourself that other players are only better than you because they're passive and if you were passive you could be just as good but then not actually taking steps to improve is in many ways of being paralyzed by the fear of trying because say you do actually start changing the way you play to mimic those other players and it turns out that you still aren't good enough like you don't want to do that because that just confirms the fear that you already had that maybe you really aren't good enough so your ego creeps up and it says hey no no no you're not actually bad don't worry they're just passive you know they're just spammers but here's the thing you probably know the truth you probably are bad right now and that's okay you know it's okay to be bad it's okay to be bad right now i think i'm bad right now your ego makes it feel like it's not okay to be bad but that's not the truth because it's fine it's totally fine i'll get more into this later but constant comparisons is a connected idea that also can hold you back you know being the best player that you can be for yourself is a much healthier incentive in my opinion and and that doesn't mean not trying to win just to be clear but rather only playing to be better than mordex man 22 is very different than playing to be the best you and if that you can beat mordex man 22 then that's great if not that's okay too so again it's okay to be bad right now because you can't be anything other than you are right now so try and accept where you are notice when those thoughts of self-protection creep up and when you lose a match that you're super invested in don't just write off the investment and tell yourself you didn't actually try and if you just tried harder you could have won because that's your ego bubbling up to stop you from feeling bad you did try and you came up short and that's okay recognize that your mind has a habit to do that acknowledge it and try to redirect your attention to the things i talked about in the first section of this video remember that your goal was not to win that match or to prove that you're the better player but to improve on a small thing step by step try to focus on taking a loss for what it is understand that present struggle is necessary to sow the seeds for the possibility at future growth you can see how this ties into the first section because a lot of the time when we try to protect ourselves from losing by not engaging in those situations where we might lose you know only play in perfect conditions only against an opponent that we might win against we don't want to lose because that affects our ego but that ego is not you it's a part of you it's something that your mind does to protect you but it's not who you are down to your core these kinds of things ego uncertainty consequence ranked anxiety they interact in complex ways and it can be overwhelming the good thing about it is that although sometimes it may seem like a downward spiral with everything connected and everything contributing to everything and making it worse and worse and worse it also means that if you break the chain in one place it can probably make an upward spiral because if everything is connected in one direction they're likely connected in the other as well putting in the work to reduce your ego will probably make it easier to reframe your goals because that consequence will be lower and reframing your goals will probably make it easier to simmer down that ego once you can start breaking down those layers of self-protection that inhibit your growth and and something to keep in mind is that just because something is self-protective doesn't necessarily mean that it does inhibit your growth you know that's something you need to explore and decide for yourself but if it does then that can be the first step in really starting to learn effectively where do you start from there well i mean the first section is all about that but obviously that's not the only thing you can do start trying to ask yourself some good questions that's my recommendation i've answered probably thousands of questions at this point from people looking to improve so i kind of have a general sense at the types of things that people typically think about when their mindset is okay i'm going to ask a question about improving and usually i don't think those questions are the most productive because they're generally pretty general probably shouldn't have said generally there but you know they go off script sometimes i mean why do i even write them if i'm gonna whatever questions like any tips for scythe or any tips for hammer and stuff like that you know i i don't think those will give you the huge breakthrough you're looking for if you're looking for a huge breakthrough i mean looking for small tips is fine but if you're looking for that difference maker i mean maybe it will but i in my opinion that's pretty unlikely because the answer you're gonna get is based on the question you ask and the question you ask is not really accurate to what your problem is you know any tips is way too general because it is general you know it's intimidating to tackle and it's not tailored enough to you and a good alternative to that could be you know what am i specifically struggling with when i play scythe in this situation in this scenario and how can i start working on that and then building a question off from that i mean that could be the question and the answer might not be clear because that takes trial and discovery and probably failing probably a lot of failing but that failure also build up your confidence as a player so you know i get into that later identifying your specific problems it's not always going to be obvious sometimes you drop a down light sayer and yeah that i mean okay that's an obvious thing to work on but sometimes you may have a lot of bad habits that you get away with because you still win games and then because you're not aware of those bad habits they become ingrained into your play and hold you back it's like you're being rewarded for doing bad habits because you're still winning the game those things are very difficult to notice take some time to step back and think ask yourself am i doing this because i think it's the best thing to do right now or because i just automatically did it without thinking having automatic habits is completely fine don't get me wrong if you didn't have them every time you go into a new match you're gonna have to think okay then my uh then spacebar is the jump button and then i go asd to move around and w is i don't know what w like every time you go into a match you need to rethink everything again automatic habits it's how you filter out information and focus on what's important but just think critically situation by situation is this something that i'm okay with or is it not something i'm okay with and work from there so that's one concept about learning taking a step back critically analyzing yourself and asking yourself good questions i also want to talk about another concept yet and it's a big concept in learning for many reasons but i'll just talk about a couple points here the first thing is that yet is important because it's an acknowledgement of where you are in the present i'm not good at gauntlets yet there's no ego there there's no self-protection it's acceptance of the present and that's big that's really big yet also offers opportunity motivation perspective there's a big big difference between saying i'm not good at gauntlets and i'm not good at gauntlets yet saying i'm not good at gauntlets is acceptance yeah but it also ends right there you can't move anywhere you're rigid i'm just not good but that yet makes you flexible gives you the chance to do something about it so give yourself that chance allow yourself to have it yet and be patient because improvement takes time having good practice regimens is also an important aspect of learning especially for things that require putting in pure hours if you've ever played an instrument or lifted weights you know how important repetitions are in order to build that consistency or muscle over time and i know it can be boring to practice hitting orb side lightsair 50 times in a row against a bot in training mode but it's also important if you want to be able to land it when it matters being able to set time for yourself to have dedicated practice is a skill you can learn and attention span is something that you can also build over time if you're just grinding combos or movement over and over and over you're bound to get bored you're bound to want to divert your attention elsewhere to a youtube video or twitch stream or ranked or audio book or something but try to catch yourself in those moments and redirect your attention back to the task at hand without any judgment for the fact that you got distracted because being distract is very easy doing so will not only build up that attention span and help you retain your focus but it's literally a practice to help people's mental health and mental well-being so while we were talking earlier about how reframing your goals is a kind of buff because it can help with multiple things at once this is a similar thing if you focus on developing the skill of being able to sit down and focus on one task at hand and not get your attention diverted elsewhere and if it does you bring it back to whatever you're focusing on like yes obviously that can help with hitting orb sidelight sarah over and over in training mode and focusing on your gameplay but you know also those late night study sessions you don't want to get distracted by your phone you go back to looking at low-fi hip-hop chill beats to relax and study too just don't just don't do it now just finish this video first please non-judgment is a huge part of being able to learn efficiently so it's a very valuable skill to train oftentimes a mental roadblock we run into is how much we judge ourselves for not learning something easily or quickly as other people can and that can demoralize us from actually trying but it's okay to be where you are right now i mean it's just where you are and judging yourself for not being in another place i mean you can't be in another place it's impossible you can only be where you are right now so you know it's fine just gotta work with what you got you know i know i just said you know twice but we're gonna pretend that didn't happen and move past it to the next topic which is that you also just have to play sometimes i know the feeling of anxiety and fear of losing holding you back from playing i know that feeling very well but it's important to try and work through it because you can't get better at playing if you never play if the online cues are too overwhelming or even if they're not i heavily recommend trying to find someone to spar a sparring partner consistently playing against someone that's also trying to improve is one of the best things you can do for yourself it's the story behind so many top players roots in fighting games all around the world and i know i really do know it can be super daunting but if you're able to try to put yourself out there and ping a sparring channel on a public discord server to play and take it as a learning experience who knows you might even make a good friend out of it that'd be great that's the story behind a lot of topper hollow players you know i've been talking a lot about side effects about ranking up you know focus on the best player you can be in the rank up will come focus on sparring people and you might make a good friend out of it if you don't have someone to spar with or you're too nervous to ask that's completely understandable i also recommend trying to play ranked as if you're sparring which i know is very difficult if you can try and detach from the elo numbers close the chat so you don't get distracted and go into every match not trying to win but trying to learn because that's what the goal of sparring really is ranked is great for a lot of reasons you can play people worse than you better than you and around your level all of which are valuable try to take advantage of that if you can because it's a great opportunity to be exposed to lots of different play styles one of the common things i see people talk about is that they've beaten a diamond or a flat player but are stuck in gold and they can't really wrap their heads around that and it kind of makes sense right if you beat a diamond you shouldn't be stuck in gold but things aren't that simple people have different play styles and different experience off days and on days you might be used to your diamond friends habits so you can squeeze out a game but not the general meta of gold you'll get that information from ranked ranked can be your introduction to the common strats people use at varying levels of play and as you play more and more people with intentional practice it becomes easier to notice the patterns between different players decision making and again remember your goal is no longer to rank up your goal is to work on something in the moment and the rank up may come from that taking notes can also be something to implement if you're not sure what to do this is something that helps me in particular because my mind jumps all over the place and i forget things super quickly which i'm sure you're familiar with if you've watched like any of my videos probably including this one but uh just the act of writing literally solidifies things in your memory because of how you have to manipulate the information to get it on the page or the google doc okay i don't mean solidify like it's permanently in there like you got photographic memory i just mean it's it's better than just keeping it in your head that was probably obvious i'm kind of dumb taking notes also helps you focus on one thing at a time improvement can be overwhelming and you don't want to forget any gold nugget or light bulb moment but then you've also got the specific thing you're trying to focus on in the moment so it can be this huge jumble in your head of okay i want to do this where i don't jump twice and then but then i don't want to do the thing where i edge guard and then i don't want to but then the orb side lights there and then it's just like oh my like those nuggets they just get lost but if you write it down you can always refer back to the nugget later like once you've made progress on maybe not jumping twice or not doing that edge grid thing i don't know why i keep saying nugget i think i'm really hungry it's two in the morning please help taking notes can also create a catalog for yourself to look back whenever you find yourself demotivated and hitting a wall once again because that's kind of how improvement goes there are those walls i won't get into the neuroscience of it too much because i don't want to bore you but a specific part of our brain has developed to focus heavily on mistakes and negativities as a survival mechanism it's not an inherently bad thing but the byproduct is that it can be easy to get caught up in negative loops where you're only focusing on the bad and not the potential good like how far you've come at this point sure you might be stuck and you might not be able to rank up but i actually think that's very impressive and i'm not i hope that doesn't sound like i'm being condescending or sarcastic at all i genuinely think that's impressive because you're still trying despite all evidence of your ability to rank up seemingly pointing in the opposite direction and i hope with this video you can see now that the evidence doesn't actually point in the opposite direction but i'm sure that's how you felt and how you may feel right now like you don't know what to do you don't think you can ever rank up and then you still try and do it anyway like don't you realize how impressive that is that is badass i really hope i don't get demonetized for saying that i don't i don't think i will but yeah you're you're you're like a you're a you're in a motorcycle you're harvey davidson derby you're don in a leather jacket with a flag toten tater tot toten you're killing it another thing that holds people back from trying to learn something is that they believe they don't have talent because they notice other people doing things at a much faster rate or it seems like they don't need to try nearly as hard and sure i can entertain that you know maybe that's true but i also believe that talent is one of the most overrated ideas in competitive environments and it's a topic for an entire video but i'll just give you a brief window into my thoughts on the topic so the conventional definition of talent is that it's something you're just born with which already i think is a bit of a a dishonest or not the full picture concept anyway because we're not just our genetics but we're the products of the interaction between what we're born with our genetics and in the environment around us so let me pose you this question let's say player a we'll call them speedy for simplicity's sake they have what we would conventionally call talent they picked up the game extremely fast they started improving at a rapid rate they play only three hours a week but they still won their first tournament after a couple months player b is sluggy they're the complete opposite they picked the game up slowly they were stuck in gold for 500 hours and plat for another 600 they play 3 hours a day and they won their first tournament after a couple years who has more talent well you can't actually know that and it honestly doesn't really matter maybe speedy has extremely supportive parents and a happy home and brawlhalla is a fun outlet is that a talent and maybe sluggy struggles to make ends meet and brawlhalla is something they can only play on the side when they're done with all their responsibilities are they untalented because of that like what if sluggy always beats speedy does that make them more talented you just can't answer it and that really gets to the heart of things which is that talent is impossible to know because it relies entirely on your situation could you confidently say speedy had more talent than sluggy if they had the exact same lives i mean sure but that's not reality and if it's not reality it's not really worth arguing if you're just thinking about getting better every single person in the entire planet has their own unique circumstances that shape the person they become so you really cannot compare these things one to one i mean you can argue anything as a talent being able to learn quickly on your own yeah that's our conventional definition but it also relies on everything you've experienced leading up to that point we put so much stock in being able to pick things up quickly but ignore the fact that there could be a billion factors behind why they're being picked up quickly like what about people that really struggle to learn anything on their own but with a coach they can be the best player in the world are they talented because that doesn't fit our definition no what about people that can spend eight hours a day in training mode are they untalented or do they have a talent for focus and for dedication we tend to look at results and then place a marker of talent rather than understanding all the things that led people up to those results you know the truth is that people are where they are because of everything that's built them up to be there they're genetic sure but also the environment around them their life experiences you just can't know those you know maybe someone does pick up the game in 50 hours and you're struggling at 500 but what about everything that's led them up to that point maybe they've studied fighting game theory maybe they've studied strategy maybe they understand how to learn and reduce their ego improving isn't all just about the time you put into the game it's also your experiences outside of the game and how you grow and learn about yourself and understand how you work but oftentimes we have this mental roadblock of believing we aren't talented because we see others that are more talented and that really stops us from trying and that's it's a shame because how can you know if you never really give it a shot am i saying that incredible like inhuman talent doesn't exist i mean to some degree of course it does you know not everyone will be mozart or michael jordan but it's also not nearly the only thing that matters not even close so don't let you stop yourself from trying just because you don't believe you have talent alright i know i'm just a voice in a video and kind of disembodied i guess but you've already watched this far so might as well try right can't hurt that connects to the next part of this section and the last part which i'd just like to talk about trying your best so part of the reason why we don't want to try our best and the various things we do is because of that fear of failure that i talked about earlier but i want to expand that idea because i think by half-assing we do ourselves a disservice i will say it's very understandable though you know i'm not going to blame anyone i do this myself too because what hurts more in the moment pouring your entire heart and soul into something and coming up short or not really trying so coming up short was maybe expected it's like the first one definitely obviously pouring your heart into something will certainly make it hurt more but which one will you ultimately regret deep down coming up short knowing you always could have done more or coming up short knowing you did the best you could have done in that moment and i'll let you answer that for yourself but in my opinion not giving something your all is another example of your ego protecting you from feeling bad because if you never really try you can never really get hurt from trying think of it like training wheels on your bike those training wheels prevent you from the pain of falling but they also prevent you from being enveloped by the rush of speed and freedom the balance and flow of your hair and the wind the confidence you get from falling and getting back up again doing something a hundred percent the reason why it's so cool is because you're knowingly you're willingly opening yourself up to the possibility of failure the pain of coming up short and then you still choose to do it anyway this is a bit of a side note although it is related but i really think that people who sit on the sidelines and then constantly berate and trash talk people for losing sets and tournament matches and ranked matches they don't really know what it feels like to give your all into something and then come up short because it's a devastating feeling it's devastating and then yet strangely enough it's also incredibly fulfilling and that's kind of strange because it feels like if you gave your all into something and then you come up short you'd be left with nothing but in fact it's kind of the opposite you're left feeling full and i can't really explain that to you you kind of just have to experience it for yourself i genuinely believe if those i don't know what else to say other than like trash talkers and if you're one of those people then maybe take some time to explore that and think about why that's something that you do but if those people really did give their best shot at something try a hundred percent and come up short i feel like they'd have so much more empathy for those that try to compete to the best of their ability put themselves out there to be viewed on a public stage and then lose so give yourself the chance to fail because that is really one of the beauties of life and if you do end up succeeding at whatever you're trying at it won't be a hollow victory it won't feel like something's missing or something's off take off those training wheels and let yourself go off into the unknown improvement isn't easy especially when we're talking about things like mentality and pride and ego they take time don't beat yourself up about things not clicking right away because there's a good chance they won't but just because you're not seeing results right away doesn't mean you're doing nothing not at all trying something taking one step that's a difficult thing to do considering how easy it is to do nothing so be proud that you're even considering taking a step my elbow just cracked and see what you can do to walk at yourself that ego that tends to hold people back from improving as players i mean it drags us down in so many more ways beyond improving at a video game and many people go their entire lives without acknowledging it so the fact that you're even thinking about it at all is already pretty cool we're all growing as people right i mean i've gotta work on this stuff myself day to day the fact that i'm talking about the reason why i'm talking about it is because it's something i experienced so i felt comfortable enough to bring it up and to talk about things that have helped me through it so let's try to be the best people we can be today and we'll see what comes from it and maybe the best person for you or for me i kind of just want to sit on the couch and eat some cheetos today so i don't even i don't even have cheetos i don't even have a couch what am i talking let's just let's move on next section building up your fundamentals you probably hear about mastering fundamentals in every sport and game and instrument and everything like that but why is it actually important for brawlhalla why does it matter when you're too anxious to queue into a ranked game well you can look at building up your fundamentals as building up your certainty competition is inherently uncertain you never fully know who's going to win and our body's response to that uncertainty is part of what makes it exciting it's why gambling and lottos can get so addicting that uncertainty paired with the positive consequence of winning that's exhilarating for our brains those same processes though can also lead to a great deal of anxiety about the result and that's where mastering your fundamentals comes in because that's reducing the uncertainty about yourself earlier we talked about how uncertainty about the result of a game can lead to ranked anxiety because of us trying to control things we can't control but now let's talk about things we actually can control by making yourself the best player you can be in your own vacuum you're reducing the uncertainty of your individual performance and that's ultimately the only thing you actually do have some kind of control over there will always be a level of uncontrollability in a match because you're playing against another human being with their own brains and their own decisions but you can still ensure that you're up to your own best ability to handle the various situations that are thrown your way things like not panicking every time you hit a blaster's delight that could win you in the game or being comfortable enough entering an edge guard that could cap off a massive comeback you've been building fundamentals can include a bunch of things and will be individually focused for whatever you specifically might want to work on so you'll know better than me but i'll still toss in some examples to hopefully get you an idea of something you can work on so it could be improving your defense do you notice that you always dodge a certain way or that you tend to panic jump every time you whiff an attack maybe every time you dodge out of a guitar string you try to attack right away rather than thinking about resetting to neutral and that just puts you in another guitar string and another one and then you're suddenly in the red you know those are things to take a look at another thing could be improving your edge guards and your recoveries cleaning them up you know maybe every time you ground pound you start it from way too high up so your opponent has enough time to react and then you whiff your ground pounds maybe you always unarmed air the moment you get knocked off stage despite more experienced players punishing you for it or maybe you always pick the riskiest option that sends you far down and ends up getting you reversal more often than not edge guards are super complicated and there's a ton of factors that go into them so you know i'd just like to throw in this quick little concept for you to think about a little nugget takeaway a lot of people look at edge guards as just hitting the opponent to kill them but higher level edge guarding isn't just about landing a hit it's also about creating the opportunity to land a hit whether by occupying space and threatening space or baiting out options or relying on past experience with edge guards and so on so keep that in mind if you're focusing on edge guards a large part of building up your fundamentals is consistency and that extends to combos as well like i mentioned earlier you don't want to find yourself in a situation where you land a blaster's down light and kill percent and you aren't sure if you can perform the dash jump recovery to win the game those small little inconsistencies in your play they can add up they can compound and make you more and more anxious to queue up ranked again so give yourself five dedicated minutes just practicing those combos over and over and over again every time you play brawlhalla it'll make a world of difference i promise i'd recommend 30 minutes if you're really struggling but i know that's intimidating and will probably likely steer you away from doing it so i'll just say five five minutes sleep on it and come back the next day learning about the spacing of your attacks that's another thing that's often highlighted as a point to improve on and i completely agree turning on hitboxes in training mode or in your replays to learn exactly where an attack lands can give you some insight and having that insight be a specific focus during a play session can help you start to register the ranges of attacks automatically in your head you know oftentimes i see people getting extremely frustrated when an attack has a certain range and it barely hits them or it feels like it shouldn't hit them but from an analysis perspective where you're trying to improve that isn't the most productive outlook try to instead accept what the hitboxes are in the moment and learn to play with them and around them because you can't change them in that moment the only thing you can do is try and work with them an important part of this that i don't really see highlighted is understanding the spacing of your movement options refining movement is a huge part of improving as a player but because it's kind of an abstract thing to think about it's also something people struggle a lot with me included so a place to start is learning the spacing of your movements how high do you go when you jump how much freedom or airdrift does your character have how far do you go with a dash or a chase dodge how far can you extend or restrict your movement with those options how accurate are your fast falls do you know when you can and when you can't perform them that's a big one right there fastballs are a huge part of moving efficiently once you start being more comfortable with what your movement options are the next step is figuring out when to use them and try to move intentionally to find out what some of your bad movement habits are do you always dash in attack towards an opponent in neutral do you always approach with a jump do you overshoot your opponent when you try to chase dodge all the time or do you undershoot by not moving forward when you need to analyzing your movement could be just as important as analyzing your attacks and frequently i see players that don't allow themselves to move because they're constantly attacking or prevent themselves from attacking because they're constantly moving think about it like a pendulum swing when you're locked in attacking frames you can't be moving and when you're locked in movement frames you can't be attacking so sometimes the best attack to do in a situation is to actually not attack and instead move yourself into a position where you have a better shot at getting a punish this is a big reason why i think people tend to struggle both against sig spamming and against passive play it's hard to curb your instinct to go for the punish when you see your opponent throw out an attack or to bum rush them when they're running away but sometimes you're just too far away to land that punish or your timing is too obvious to be effective sometimes a punish just isn't there and in those situations it might be better to move rather than to attack sometimes just a half second longer of walking forward at an opponent is the difference between landing a hit and you yourself getting parried movement and attacking go hand in hand and if you can understand that then that's really the core of what people talk about when they say oh we were playing footsies or oh we were spacing around each other so that's something to keep in mind something else that i think is very important to improve your consistency and overall grow as a player is to level up what i like to call your b and your c games which is in contrast to your a game i have an entire casual commentary video for this one topic and it's called only wushong players can see this video so check that out if you want to if you're curious about my ram links on the topic but the general idea is that you won't always be playing at 100 so building up consistency and identifying your bad habits when you're on one of your off days is important connecting back to a point in the first section where sometimes we only try to play ranked when we're at our best you know like only when we're on a hot streak only when we reach our ceiling blah blah everything i was talking about there leveling up your b game can actually help with that it can help with building confidence and lowering anxiety in those moments by raising your personal skill floor and giving you a reliable safety net of what you know you're capable of if you really think about what consistency is it's about being able to perform when you're not comfortable being able to compete when you're at fifty percent or sixty percent and you'll only really be able to build that if you play through your bad days and use them as learning opportunities again i have an entire video on this topic albeit it's a rambling video so it's less organized but i think i get the point across there's obviously so much more that can go into fundamentals that i didn't touch on like another little mini tidbit of advice i like to give is to actively try to look at your opponents while you're playing because that helps with reaction time and avoiding stray hits as well as tracking movement and overall focusing but yeah this video is already as long as it is so i only picked out a few things i thought could be helpful so i'm just going to end this section off with some closing thoughts about improving from other players so in my video where i talk about improving through replays i mentioned this idea of becoming a sponge soaking up information from other players and copying techniques to use for yourself the reason that i mention it again here is that like i talked about earlier one of the things that i see holding people back the most is their ego and often it's an ego of being superior to their opponents who use what they deem as less skillful moves or less skillful play styles i think a healthy way to look at things like play styles is with the mindset of if it works it works and if it's something you don't want to use that's perfectly okay as long as it's an active decision you're making for yourself rather than a protective shield that your ego is putting up for you if there are things other players are doing that you think you might want to incorporate into your own play then go for it you know don't let yourself be held back by that ego just go for it and if it works out great and if it doesn't great you can try something else other players have a lot to offer they're a window into skills that you can build up for yourself so use those opportunities and feel free to copy because in copying you're making it your own anyway let's move on to the fourth section which is about comparisons confidence and understanding how your rank is not your self-worth that statement might seem logically obvious but i think most people actually tend to do this way more than they realize what is your worth you know like what is your value it's a weird question but generally speaking we tend to associate it with our surroundings our grades our jobs our external successes it makes sense then that our accomplishments like achieving a certain rank in brawlhalla would come with that you may think you would be worth more if you were diamond but right now you're plat so you're not or if you got top 8 in a tournament you'd be worth more but now you're hard stuck top 32 so you're not but i don't think that's your value i think you have just as much value as a person whether you're bronze silver platt top 32 or the number one power ranked player in the world why because i think your worth as a human isn't determined by those external things your worth is determined by who you are sure our value system in the community is very much based on experience and rank and skill and all that but try not to conflate that with your own personal worth you are not a gold brawlhalla player you are a person who is golden brawlhalla you might be thinking like why why is he mentioning this why this is a weird thing to talk about especially in a brawlhalla improvement guide but i actually think it's very connected to what i've been talking about so far you probably remember at this point that uncertainty about the result has a big component in ranked anxiety and so does consequence which i haven't really mentioned in a little while consequence is an important piece of the puzzle because you wouldn't get anxious about the result if the result didn't matter to you if you tossed a baseball up and down in your room you don't get any anxiety about dropping it because even if there's a chance that you drop it you just pick it up again but when you're at school and someone throws the baseball to you maybe you do get a little anxious because if you drop it then uh you'll be embarrassed because then they'll think you're a loser and then they won't want to be friends with you and then you'll be lonely and then you'll be bullied and then all these thoughts that our mind sometimes bombards us with the higher the consequence the more likely it is that your mind will start to get anxious so bringing it back around if you tie a lot of your self-worth to your rank it makes sense that the thought of ranking down would give you a lot of anxiety if you don't think you're as valuable when you're in silver compared to when you're in gold then of course the thought of a lost streak would make you anxious that's a high consequence for each match and each match remember has an uncertain result but i'm not just gonna sit here and tell you that okay this is maybe something that contributes to ranked anxiety like what can you do about it well you can do a few things none of them are easy but one thing i should quickly mention is that in reducing consequence you're not trying to eliminate it and that's important so keep that in mind there will always be a consequence for losing that's part of competition what we want to do is reduce those unhealthy consequences that we impose onto ourselves when we lose because those can hold us back from growing that's all okay so maybe that makes sense but then what can we actually do about it how can we actually reduce those unhealthy consequences let's start with reducing comparisons constant comparisons to other people can make us feel worse about ourselves and our own value and because it's well understood now on a societal level i'll just use social media as an example looking at other people's lives or appearances or follower accounts and comparing it to our own can easily make us feel inadequate or insignificant compared to others and in the same way it's easy to feel more important or more valuable or superior to others because you have more followers or engagement or monetization and this is true in other things as well but because social media is such a huge easy access opening for those comparisons to be made it's an obvious current example it's very natural to fall into these things for those thoughts to flood in because social media is designed to be a system where your numbers are your value i use this as an example because i think a lot of us can relate to it and i think it's more obvious in regards to social media but in regards to brawlhalla i think it can go unnoticed and it's especially something that can bring people down given that it's a competitive game so try to recognize when you start having those thoughts creep up about how this player is just better because they improved faster and i'm not good enough because look at them and everything they're doing and i'm not doing anything i haven't achieved anything like what i'm just wasting my time look at them but be careful i said recognize don't judge yourself for making those comparisons again it's very natural take note of those thoughts when they come up and acknowledge that that's what's happening but don't just say oh i'm a bad person for do why am i doing this is not helping me but hey like you're not in control of those thoughts creeping up i mean at least not in the moment so again don't judge yourself for having them instead try to take action in the present and redirect your attention to what you do have and what you have just for you but it's also not just blatant negative thoughts like those to be aware of also take note when you put yourself up on a pedestal based on these external things valuing yourself more just because you're better than someone else can be dangerous because it's an unstable place to balance on what happens if they beat you are you worth less as a person then i mean certainly not but if your perception of your worth is tied to how you're better then yeah it can feel like you've lost value and that hurts it's a fragile thing to rely on so again take note of when those thoughts creep up because awareness is the first step to being able to regulate and redirect is that to say don't feel good when you win or don't be proud of how good you are not at all there's a subtle but important distinction here try to be proud of yourself and proud of your accomplishments because of how good you are and not because of how many people you're better than should you be happy about beating a difficult opponent absolutely but are you worth more because you won i'm not so sure about that because if i said yes it would mean that if you lost you'd be worth less you see what i'm getting at tying your accomplishments to be only in comparison to other people will always have the negative flip side of the lack of accomplishment or not being as good as others you can't just have one without the other they exist simultaneously so instead try to tie your accomplishments to yourself because really that's what matters the fact that you did it remember way back in the first section when i talked about how redirecting your focus to be the best player you can be rather than being a certain rank can help with reducing anxiety it can also help with reducing these comparisons be the best player you can be not the player that can beat x y and z that just rhymed like three times i am still rhyming free me from this purgatory again i know some of this seems logically obvious but we tend to make these types of value-based comparisons way more than we realize so catch yourself in those moments i say this a lot if you've asked me questions on stream and it ties back to the talent discussion earlier if you remember that but it's not a race life isn't a race we're all walking down our own individual roads and you can't really compare someone walking down a a windy hilly foresty path with a rocky sandy mountainy one they're just different and that's okay in fact it's pretty beautiful in its own way we tend to assign value to how fast people pick things up and how far they go with it but the fact of the matter is that people learn things differently and that's completely okay so that's talking about the consequence of losing when the result is tied to your worth and then also about roads and stuff i get lost on tangents a lot i'm sorry but what about some of the other consequences of losing like dealing with people who trash talk you or make you feel worse about yourselves for being a certain rank because yeah it's all well and good that i can tell you that i think you're just as valuable as a person whether you're bronze or whether you're diamond but there are people that will make you feel like you're not you know opponents flaming you in post game chat or people trashing you on socials people you might not even know or maybe it's your friends or your peers roasting you in voice chats it happens and it feels real i'm not gonna tell you it's not real and nor am i going to just say brush it off because it's not true that's invalidating how you feel it feels real and it is true a lot of the time when people flame you unfortunately you're just at the brute end of something that probably isn't even about you it's about them and a lot of the vile toxicity and anger people spew online comes from a place of insecurity often when those people see others succeeding or doing something they can't and then they lash out that could also be a result of the constant comparison game i talked about earlier if people judge their self-worth based on their position relative to others and they feel they aren't good enough they may lash out at those people that are doing better or i mean it could be a lot of other things right but the point is that most of the time it's coming from their own insecurities even though they're saying things personally to you it's likely that it's not actually personal and you're just their punching bag for their unprocessed emotions and insecure thoughts and that doesn't make it okay but the reason why i mention it is sometimes it helps me to remember that especially in regards to negative comments and just unfiltered hate and social media in the comments you know i just said comments twice i i'm saying so many things twice i keep saying you know over and over again i don't know why it's not even something that i do usually but now you're gonna think about it every time i say it so i probably shouldn't mention it but anyway maybe thinking about that doesn't actually help you at all or maybe it doesn't apply to the situation you're in what can you do then because that consequence of losing is still there and acknowledging why people can be toxic may only reduce that weight a little bit well there is another solution and it's not easy obviously because it's building confidence confidence is something that allows you to have a grasp of who you are regardless of what other people think of you it's knowing that after losing a game you aren't immediately a worse person or a worse player that you're learning at your own pace with your own methods that regardless if hattori slayer24 calls you trash spam or easyclap bad game you know where you're at and you don't need to prove anything to them to feel better about yourself that you are walking down your unique windy foresty road and that it's okay to fall down other people may think you're bad and that's okay and other people may think you're good and that's okay too it's in some sense detaching from both of those because you have your own inner sense of your worth it doesn't matter whether someone thinks you're hopeless or have lots of potential or whatever because you know where you are confidence is about having an inner understanding and acceptance of yourself no matter those external factors around you so in many ways it's the opposite of that comparison trap we often find ourselves in part of why it's so difficult and everyone ow i just pinched myself with a clothes hanger why am i playing with this let me put this down part of why it's so difficult and everyone struggles with it to varying degrees is that our brains are wired to think socially and compare so how do you actually get there i can talk about what confidence is but how do you gain it that's a loaded question and it's one that i'm still actively working on myself every day i mean clearly i'm pinching myself with clothes hangers by accident but a place to start is recognizing when you make those comparisons giving yourself time to think about who you are outside of them and accepting where you're at in the present and more than anything it's letting yourself fall down sometimes because what builds confidence more than anything it's failure it's taking off those training wheels if you remember that earlier analogy and crashing into the curb and scraping your knees on the concrete and getting back up on that bike anyway what anxiety ranked anxiety does is paralyze us from trying because of that fear of failure that fear of crashing i just pinched myself again i'm putting this down for real this time that's part of why i have such a big focus on ranked anxiety in this video it freezes us up it stops us from trying and stops us from succeeding and failing and everything that comes with that it holds us back from growing that inner confidence and it does such a good job of it that the ranked anxiety can become a feedback loop of itself it can grow into a reward system it can grow into a habit every time you play into the anxiety and avoid the intensity and the emotions of rank you do feel temporarily better in the moment but then the anxiety builds for the next time and the next time and the next time it's very easy to get a lot of something that isn't quite right avoiding ranked makes you feel better so you do it but it doesn't solve the problem behind why you're avoiding it so you keep needing to do it it's a band-aid it's not a solution and you're always going to keep needing band-aids if there's always going to be a cut it's a similar idea behind a lot of overeating disorders which are incredibly difficult to help with because eating food does make you feel better in the moment but it doesn't solve the root behind why you need to feel better so you keep eating that's a bit of a generalization but it's to illustrate the idea in no way am i saying it's anywhere near as severe or difficult to deal with and handle as something like that but i like using that example and i want to use examples like that because it's to show that you are a real person and the things you experience in the game aren't just about the game they also have representations and examples in the real world obviously that's not the case for every time you don't play ranked because sometimes you just don't want to play ranked you don't want to invest those emotions in a given moment and that's okay the key is awareness anxiety can lead to avoidance and being aware of that and making an active decision for yourself whether you actually feel like not playing or whether you're avoiding playing because of fear is important for a lot of us ranked anxiety has become that habit and maybe by reducing it over time it can be easier for us to notice that but we do it because it benefits us in some way it serves a purpose which is making us feel better in the moment making us feel like we have control habits can be really difficult for us to spot because of how we filter out that information but i think if you look at it from a bird's-eye view the puzzle can start to fit together i'm sure by this point it's pretty clear that the five sections i chose to talk about today are pretty linked they're pretty woven together in this intricate web but if you never took a step back to think about it in that way then it might have been invisibly lurking under the surface for a lot longer it seems obvious now but before it may not have so take some time give yourself the time to step back and notice some of the patterns in your behavior decide for yourself if that's something you're okay with in a given situation or something that you didn't actually want to do that'll go a long way in your gameplay and honestly your decisions outside of gameplay as well but i mean i don't know anything about that because let's be honest here i mean i i'm kind of scared of talking to people sometimes and it's i don't know why i have like a southern accent now but howdy partner you ever say something and just immediately regret it like i i can just edit it out of the video but honestly i mean it's just me you can't edit some things the next point i want to make in this section is a little bit of a deviation because i'm going to talk about how ranked anxiety is not a bad thing i know i've been talking this whole time about how it can be overwhelming and these are some ways to reduce it and all that so let me explain what actually is that anxiety what is that stress well when your heart starts pounding and your fingers start trembling it's your body activating your fight or flight response to a perceived stressor your brain doesn't know to make a distinction between running from a tiger or running from a nash side sig it has the same response because that's what it's developed to do under stress and we tend to think of stress as a bad thing but it's really not it's not good or bad it's just a thing so you go into fight or flight your pupils dilate to get as much visual info as possible your heart rate increases to pump more blood to your body your airways relax to get more oxygen glucose release is stimulated to get energy to respond blah blah blah i don't know i'm not a science teacher this is not a biology class it's just basically your body it wants to live in the present it's preparing itself to survive in the moment and because it does that it foregoes other things like digestion in your immune system because if you're going to die in the next five minutes it doesn't matter if you down those talkies or if you're going to get sick and that's why it's also easier to get sick when you're super stressed why does our body do it because it's helpful it's a survival advantage if there's a patch of grass with some orange stripes lurking in them it's a good thing to suddenly get worked up and stressed because let's be honest here there's probably a tiger in there and we're the descendants of those people that got anxious and ran away and they're survivors because those that didn't get anxious probably got eaten they they probably got eight what's important to acknowledge is that our brains developed a certain way to survive in a certain world and that world was with tigers hidden in grass but that world is not the same one that we live in right now because we have the iphones and maybe even android and and in game boy so stuff like intense anxiety which was developed to be a short-term fight-or-flight response can crop up in a ranked brawlhalla game which even if our lives aren't threatened our body responds the same way because that's what it was made for it operates the way it does because that's what it's adapted to do so ranked anxiety isn't inherently a bad thing it's your body trying to help you to prepare for what you perceive to either be a physiological or a psychological stress oftentimes our body does things that we don't like and we try to fight against it in response push away our emotions you know squash down our anxieties but i think it's actually much much better to work with our bodies rather than against them what does that mean for ranked anxiety well understand that it can actually help you pupils are dilating well that's your body trying to increase your ability to see and to focus if your heart is pounding well that means your body is getting more blood which means more valuable resources to respond and react quickly and think about it your reaction time is literally getting faster breathing heavily that means more oxygen and more oxygen in your brain can help you think clearer and more rapidly all things that could be helpful for an intense match so what's the takeaway i've been spending much of this video talking about how to reduce your ranked anxiety and now i'm saying that it's a good thing well no not exactly your anxiety isn't necessarily a good thing and it isn't necessarily a bad thing either it's just how your body responds understanding that is important because it allows you to make active informed decisions on how to move forward can that anxiety help you i mean yeah for the reasons i just mentioned can that anxiety hurt you i mean absolutely and i think that one's more obvious it's avoidance fear pain maybe your body is overdoing it and your heart pumping super fast gets in the way of you focusing your hands start trembling in which case calming it down through deep breaths and slowing your heart rate could help the key is to find a middle ground recognize where it's getting in the way of things and what you can do to reduce that and recognize where it's just your body responding the way it does because it wants to help you because the reality is as long as you care about brawlhalla about improving about that next match you will always get a little bit of anxiety every single top player gets nervous and anxious and stressed for tournaments every single one because that's how we've developed to work you're not weird or stupid for getting ranked anxiety you are wonderfully normal so hopefully i gave you sufficient enough tools to understand at least the basics of ranked anxiety some techniques to try and reduce it when it's harmful for you and accept it when it's helpful for you overall i had such a big focus on things like ranked anxiety and ego and improving stuff like that because i want to try and help you if i can help you have a healthier happier experience with the game so with that let's move on to the final section of this video giving yourself time improvement is a gradual process and you likely won't see grand changes right away but what's important is to be forgiving and understanding with yourself when that happens so it's kind of joked about that new year's resolutions die in the first couple weeks and that's kind of the trend with new habits in general and the big reason for that is a the goals aren't really actionable which is what the first section of this video is about and b we are really hard on ourselves when we don't follow through which is what i'm going to talk about right now so a lot of the time when we start a new habit we're really good about it in the beginning you know maybe you decided you're going to go for a long walk every day you're genuinely excited and you do it those first three days but on that fourth day you're tired and you're feeling like a couch potato and you really don't want to so you don't and that's fine but what happens next is that you give up because you failed and that means you didn't really start the habit and it's overwhelming to try and start it up again and keep it up every single day and it takes so much time and you have to get new shoes and then so on and so on and then the fifth day you don't do it and then the sixth day you don't do it and then soon it was just a three-day stint of walking outside and not your new everyday hobby lots of our habits die like this we forget or we lose the willpower a couple times and then we end up relying on the habit of giving up rather than the habit of keep trying even if you forget because even if you do forget or you do lose willpower it doesn't mean you've done nothing those three days outside were still something good you did for yourself and just because it didn't turn into a perfect exercise habit doesn't mean it was pointless choosing to do something rather than doing nothing that stops reactivating your habit of doing nothing because it is a habit and also reinforces the new thing you want to do think about it like this you're not erasing your old habits you're just creating new ones to follow and making them stronger not following through is a deeply ingrained habit you've been practicing for a long long time so of course it's going to be hard to do new things that makes sense i mean i do this all the time it's very normal so don't judge yourself for that recognize there's a good reason it's hard and it's okay to forget or lose willpower sometimes and every time you break out of that habit and you do try something new that is awesome i'm proud of you because that's not easy to do again following what you've always done is what you've always done so yeah it's going to be hard to break but every little thing you do in spite of that makes a tiny little difference in your brain's neurochemistry and those differences add up so cut yourself some slack give yourself some time and really try not to judge yourself for things taking a while or falling short of your new routines maybe you practice really hard and went a hundred percent for five days and haven't done it again in six months okay that's fine what are you gonna do about it today it's kind of cheesy but there's a saying that i think applies here that the thousand mile journey begins with a single step and what is that step well it's whatever you're about to do right now so be patient with yourself forgiving with yourself because you can't just improve every day for a month but you can try to improve today right now and maybe that'll pile up to a month if you do that 30 times and maybe it won't because you don't want to right now and that's perfectly fine we tend to set these expectations for ourselves that often lead to disappointment in a great deal of anxiety because the expectations are unreasonable unreachable it's easy to say this and much much harder to act on it but i'm going to say it anyway because i think it's important if you can try to remove those expectations for yourself because they're not actually real think about it those expectations are about a future you a future thing you'll do a future world you'll live in but that's not you that's not what you're doing that's not the world that you do live in right now the world you're in is the present the thing you're doing is what you're actually doing and the only person you are right now is you right now try not to let the imaginary you stop the real you from doing something real try to let go of those expectations of yourself and instead just do whatever you can right now because that's enough taking breaks days off giving yourself time to relax and unwind and process that's completely okay too you don't need to focus on improving every second of every day growing is more than just expanding your skill set it's also about understanding and accepting who you are be patient with yourself i've said it before and i'm going to say it again don't judge yourself or give up when you fail in fact let yourself fail you're going to run into walls along the way improvement isn't a linear thing it's full of unexpected curves and dips but i think you can do it even if you don't believe in yourself i believe in you and that might sound stupid because i don't know most of you but it's what i truly think like you got this so as we come to a close here i want to highlight a few of the key points that i talked about number one focus on small actionable steps that you can take rather than your goal being to just rank up try shifting that to things that you can actually do right now that may also help with your ranked anxiety because it can shift the consequence of a loss number two try to play with the mindset of learning rather than just always winning pay attention to when your ego starts creeping up to protect you and organize some good practice sessions remember that our perception of talent is not nearly the end-all be-all that we make it to be so give it 100 anyway number three try to build up your fundamentals and think critically about the various aspects of your gameplay hone the parts of a match that you're in control of and acknowledge that there's a lot that you aren't and that's okay number four remember that you are more than your rank despite how challenging it may be to recognize that sometimes constant comparisons to other players and people can lead you down the path of undermining your personal worth or creating a fragile pedestal to stand on let yourself try and let yourself fail because that will build confidence and remember that your ranked anxiety isn't just a bad thing nor is it just a good thing but instead your body's response to what it perceives in the world finally number five give yourself time and try not to judge yourself for falling short here and there our expectations can often lead to anxiety so try to let go of those if you can and let yourself do enough because if you do whatever you can in the moment that is enough so as we wrap it all up in the beginning of this video i said i've been working hard on it for the past two months but that's honestly not even the full picture i uh this video has kind of been in the making for a full year i started it last year but then my computer broke and then i didn't have one for four months and then i had school for the six months and here we are you know i think of bits and pieces to put in and some things that i've been learning both in school and out of school have found its way into this guide so i really wouldn't have it any other way i understand that it might be a bit overwhelming i mean okay yeah let's look at the length let's be real here but remember the first section you know one thing at a time small actionable steps you really don't have to do everything at once it's okay you know do what you can today because that's really all you can do in the grand scheme of things i hope you enjoyed i hope it was helpful i don't know if i'll ever make another like movie length guide like this but i'm proud of what it is i really am so thank you for watching my video genuinely i i really appreciate it i really do don't don't forget to drink some water and and wash your face and drop a big dookie tomorrow morning remember that sleep is a magical thing not just for improvement but you know i mean definitely for improvement so give yourself some time to relax and unwind and live in your own head for a little while to figure things out you won't learn everything right away and you won't learn everything in game either and i'm sure you've gathered that from what i've talked about so yeah i'm just rambling at this point sometimes you just got to let your mind run free you know put down the controller for a little bit or the keyboard but obviously i've never used one of those so i don't know anything about that [Music] you

Channel: eggsoup

Views: 888,387

Keywords: eggsoup, egg soup, brawlhalla, brawlhalla guide, brawlhalla combos, brawlhalla gameplay, how to improve brawlhalla, brawlhalla ranked, how to get good brawlhalla, brawlhalla montage, brawlhalla tips, how to play brawlhalla, brawlhalla scythe, brawlhalla lance, brawlhalla spear, brawlhalla sword

Id: nH0TOoJIU80

Length: 70min 0sec (4200 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020