1. Humility roots success and nourishes growth:
Most of the best League of Legends players in the world, domestic and international alike, don’t let success prevent the development of a genuine humility throughout the process of achieving stardom. A pair of star LOL players, Bjergsen and Faker, both never downplay the strength of their opponents and realize staying on top takes more effort than getting there. Acknowledgement of success is acceptable — comfort and bragging in success is not and can start to tear away the roots of what made you better in the first place.
2. Drive extends beyond the 9-to-5
Success in sports and especially e-sports requires work well beyond the normal work hours. Because gaming is not incredibly physically demanding, professionals will practice for up to or more than 18 hours a day. Aspiring gamers and many others sleep very few hours a night in order to grasp a shred of success and that always needs to be appreciated, recognized, and learned from when it is apparent:
3. Take care of your body
But while you can and must sometimes sacrifice greatly to achieve greatness, you can’t leave your body behind. The newfound respect for physical and mental health represents part of an on-going paradigm shift in professional gaming that will one-day trickle around to all types of recreational gaming. Pro e-sport organizations are recognizing that the stereotypical sedentary gamer who drinks Mountain Dew and eats Doritos is not a successful gamer. You can put a lot of stress on your body by playing video games (Or just sitting at a desk all day) for a living, and this new push for teams to incorporate fitness and nutrition coaches into their regimens is a very welcome one. To achieve the success you have in mind, you have to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
4. Wear your heart on your sleeve
When I first dove into the world of e-sports, I was timid about presenting this passion to others. Even now (even though LOL has a larger viewership than the NHL’s Stanley Cup Finals), e-sports are not totally socially accepted. The instant I shirked this social and mental stigma, and became forthcoming about my love for e-sports, great things happened. I bonded with others who had similarly closeted feelings towards e-sports, became closer with friends and family, and even just by wearing a battered TSM hoodie to work, I’ve made some great acquaintances that have provided incredibly useful advice.
5. It takes a team to create greatness
As with a lot of these lessons, the growing team aspect of e-sports is becoming a reflection of professional traditional sports, which is great. Individual performances of course always matter, but at the end of the day, a team’s success depends on a huge conglomeration of complicated parts. And these parts aren’t just the players — the “teams” that drive success in e-sports are family members, coaches, managers, support staff, sport psychologists, and fans alike. With the stakes and competition being elevated, you can’t do it alone anymore.
6. Be Vulnerable
I think that oftentimes vulnerability and weakness are often conflated, to the detriment of both terms. You can certainly maintain one without the other. In essence, you are making yourself vulnerable whenever you attempt something new or strive to complete something greater — vulnerable to criticism, sadness, and failure. But I think oftentimes people forget that the same opening-up of yourself makes you vulnerable to positive outcomes as well — vulnerable to praise, happiness and success. Both the positive and negative outcomes are conglomerated into the same vulnerability, never one without the other. So all that there is left to do is work as hard as possible and strive towards the positive goals.