Losing streak

Current Division: Diamond II

Hi everyone back again with a new update!

This last week has probably been my worst week since I started my journey. I went from being ranked 165th in the EUW server, being Diamond I with 78 LP (if i remember correctly) to being ranked 1100th in EUW falling all the way down to Diamond II with 0 Lp. My mmr at Diamond I was great. I was winning 28 LP and losing about 15 LP max. But then came the dreaded losing streaking. I went on to lose 18/20 games!

Now some might wonder what actually happened. The truth is I do not know. I think it was a combination of being matched up with horrible teammates for the first couple of games which lead to me becoming extremely negative and about the 10th-11th lost game I myself became so negative that I started to be the main reason we lost games.
The first few games had no so much to do with me, the game was lost in laning phase already since my teammates fed their opponents before I even had a chance to have an impact in the game. This has kinda become the norm for my losing games recently. Top going 0-4, Afk farming jungler with 0 presence in any lane yet somehow falls behind in cs as well. I got caught up in this huge wave of negativity and therefore could not even stream for the last two days because I knew that I might be able to control what I would say.
That is a weakness on my part that I need to work on and that is exactly what i did. I have been trying to become a bit positive in regards to soloque but there is however one thing that I must get out there.

Many people, including the professional players keep saying that:
Soloque is for training purposes only, there is no reason to get angry because it is not the same as team 5v5 ranked. Use your time in soloque to develop and become a better player.

Fine I agree partially, specifically on the point that you should use the time to develop and become a better player. But what people seem to forget when telling me “dont be upset over a loss in soloque” is that soloque for me is a platform to show myself to the great teams in the LoL community.
This week was especially hard for me since I really felt that I deserved to win the games that were lost.
I remember 1 game out of those 18 losses where I felt. You know what, my lane opponent had a greater impact in the game than I did. Every single other game I won my laning phase, roamed more had more cs etc despite being ganked but that did not add up to a win because the other lanes were so far behind that it was not winnable.

My point is: I need to reach a high ranking in order for my dream to become reality, logically I do get frustrated over this because they are delaying my dream.

A guy once asked me: Would you get angry if you got outplayed by your mid opponent and lost the lane?
A: What? Why would I ever get angry over something like that? He is simply better than me and I need to find a way to improve as a player in order to beat him.

What I cannot do is win my lane despite having enemy jungle presence, then to magically snowball both my other two losing lanes. and this is why I was so frustrated the last couple of days. I have played this game for 10 months now. I know if I am the reason we are failing a game. 17/18 games I honestly dont feel like I could have done anything different.

But enough negativity the whole point of writing about this subject is to show you how negative I have been and that there is always a way out of it. Despite this losing streak, I wake up every morning ready to take on yet struggle in order for me to reach my goal.

I shall never give up! A winner never quits, and a quitter never wins!

The mindset of a winner

Current ranking: Diamond V promotional matches

Back again with an update, this week had been up and down, I was playing a bit on Diamond IV level but after a couple of games I dropped back to Diamond V there have been few games where I have played poorly so I am utterly convinced that if I continue like I do, i’ll eventually reach Challenger tier. Xerath have truly become my main champion now with over 200 games with him and a steady KDA of 4.5 which in my opinion is quite a good one.

 

But lets focus on the topic at hand. Today I would like to discuss my idea of a winner mindset. Before anyone can win, they must first believe that they can win. This is not only true for sports but for most aspects of life such as having a successful career, being able to handle money or simply truing to accomplish a goal. I firmly believe that if you wish to be successful in life, you must be successful in all aspects or at the very least strive to be successful in every aspect. My definition of this is as follows:
A successful person must work on their craft (in my case League Of Legends) as well as keep a successful lifestyle. Therefore one cannot be truly successful in the long run if the only successful part of your life in your craft. You must also tend to other matters such as taking care of your body by working out. Continually educate yourself especially in the field of human psychology as a big part of life is the people you met.

You must treat yourself like a successful person even if you are not at the moment. The main points for me are:
* Keep your surroundings clean: I cannot imagine any truly successful person being reckless with their belongings or their surroundings. Keeping your house and work space clean is something that I wish I will hire someone to do for me in the future but at the moment it is something I myself have to tend to.

* Your body is your temple: Do you throw trash in a temple, do you break it down and ignore it until piles of dust have gathered? No, you clean a temple, you go there for meditation and keep it as a safe haven to return to when everything else have failed you. Your body is what enables you to do your minds work. If you have many ideas but cannot summon the power to put them in action, maybe the body is lacking sufficient energy. Because the body is such a vital part of your life, you should tend to it with the utmost care. One of my goals apart from becoming the best mid player in League of Legends, is that I will change the current image of a nerd. By becoming the best, i.e the greatest nerd, I have a responsibility be healthy as well. Meaning that I cannot be grossly fat or undernourished like most of the pro players you see today on gaming scene. I want to show that fitness and health is a requirement in order to push you to the limit of your ability. Only through being successful in all aspects of your life can you also become the best at your craft.  Therefore I dedicate 6 days a week to training.
Monday,Wednesday and Friday I go to the local gym
Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday I swim 1KM.

* Keep educating yourself. I read an article about geniuses and what makes them special. Many of these people are capable of making connections between two totally different subjects. They have the ability to take in a lot of information, process it and find the connection that is vital to their work. Now League of Legends is a whole world for me. But in order to become the best i cannot just focus on that world alone. By reading war strategy such as Art of War, I expand my perspective. I even watch Heroes of Newerth pro games and take from it things that I can use in League of Legends. I read books on motivation, on conquering yourself and your mind in order for me to focus more on LoL. I read books on personal economy so that money problems wont interfere with my focus on LoL. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, therefore to have sustained success you cannot put all your energy on LoL alone and ignore the other parts that are vital to your overall success.

* Get to know yourself. This is one of the hardest of all points for me. How do one get to know oneself? I started with meditation and quickly found out that I have a huge problem of sitting still for 10 minutes doing absolutely nothing. I felt that I was wasting my time, but I did not give up and eventually the meditation showed my sides of myself that I did not know existed. Through meditation one can achieve a state of mind where there are no thought. This in itself is a huge relaxation which calm you down and allows you to focus more intensively on the task you set yourself to afterwards. Instead of analyzing other people and trying understand why they act a certain way or why they dress a certain way, ask those questions about yourself. Many people defend themselves by saying: No one knows me better than myself. That might be true indeed but on a scale from 1-100 how well do you actually know yourself I ask.

* Always look for ways to improve. You are never perfect, there is always room for improvement. ” If a thing´s worth winning, it´s worth cheating for” I absolutely detest this kind of mentality because it is a shortcut to victory that wont last. I aspire to be so good that people could cheat and I would still win. This is done by constantly working on your craft, day and night. When everyone is sleeping you are awake working. When people are out partying or relaxing you are working. This is the concept of always looking for improvement.

These points my friends, are my own interpretation of a successful person. I shall always strive to follow them.

On a side note, I have started to stream on Saturdays at 00.00 GMT +1. So tune in and watch me play on Saturdays as well at

http://www.twitch.tv/Shinse1

 

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

Current Division: Diamond V
I literally just lost my last game and bumped back into Diamond V. During the whole week I have been at Diamond IV but today and yesterday I have been playing horribly due to unknown reasons and therefore am back at this division.

Due to the increase in viewers both to my stream and blog, I have received a lot of questions often the same ones. Therefore I dedicate this post to the answering of those frequently asked questions in a question answer format.

Q: Is it really true that you dropped out of Med school in order to pursue a carrier in the League of Legends community?
A: Yes, I dropped out April 19th. I had the option to put my studies on hold and come back two years later but I wanted to burn all my bridges in order to totally focus on the journey I had set to take. I knew that if I simply put it on hold that I would not be 100 % focused and would subconsciously  always know that I have a way out in case things did not turn out like I expected. Now I have nowhere to turn back to, therefore if I face an obstacle, instead of turning back to med school I have to force my way through it.

 

Q: Is it not stupid to give up a safe high paying job to play video games and risk not earning anything at all?
A: That depends on who you ask, if you ask me I would say no because in my case that safe high paying job would be the bane of my existence. I have seen it countless times, people stuck in a job that they do not like but put up with because of the money they earn. They get up early in the morning and would trade anything for a couple of minutes of extra sleep. Yet they force themselves to go somewhere they do not really want to go in order to do something they do not really want to do so they can get some money to continue living a life they do not want to live. There was a question I read once that really got me thinking and it went something like this:
“Would you sit in an empty white room 8 hours a day 5 days a week doing absolutely nothing and not being allowed to sleep, for 10 million dollars a week, or would you work with what you absolutely love 8 hours a day 5 days a week but get paid so little that you can barely survive on it”. My choice would of been the latter. I assume those asking this question would choose the first option.

 

Q: How long have you played League of Legends?
A: I started playing seriously two months ago. But have played a while at season three before taking a 8 month break from it.

Q: Do you have any experience from similar games or did you just start out?
A: I started playing DotA when I was 13 years old and completely loved it. When Heroes of Newerth (HoN) was first released I started playing that too and reached a quite high MMR before promising never to play that game again due to its incredible toxic community even at the top tiers.

Q: How old are you?
A: 24 years old

Q:Where are you from?
A: Well this is more of a definition question. I am born in Sweden so some would call me Swedish. I do however not look Swedish since my parents are Kurdish, so some would call me Kurdish.
If you ask me, I would say that I lean more towards being Kurdish than Swedish but would prefer to be called human since we all are the same.

Q: What made you start this journey?
A: Three factors played a huge role.

My trip to Japan was the main one, I truly opened my eyes when I was in a foreign country living with people who saw things very differently from how I saw them. It taught me that med school was not the only option in my life as I had thought before.
Second was a book by Napoleon Hill: Think and grow rich. There was a part in this book that called for the creation of plans that you actively work towards instead of just waiting for some lucky strike. At first when I read this book I still had med school in mind so I sat down and started creating plans. The problem was I literally had a blank paper for two weeks despite investing almost 1 hour a day for the creation of these plans. I knew something was wrong because I could not come up with any decent plan on how to advance within the field of medicine. The second I got the idea of becoming a professional League of Legends player the ideas were flowing and I ended up writing down a 60 A4 pages plan on how to become a professional player. Including every aspect such as gameplay, budget, sacrifices, etc.
Third a video on youtube by Jad T Jones: Finding your purpose in life. After I had finished this video I was in tears because I knew I had found what I really wanted to do. I decided then and there that no matter what people say, no matter how hard it gets I will become a professional League of Legends player.

Dealing with temporary defeat

Current ranking: Diamond V

Hello everyone, back again with an update. The last week has been a roller coaster going from good plays to slightly worse, from a good team to afks and ragers. I do think that I have improved game wise as I start “abusing” the smallest advantage I get. More specifically I pay much more attention to:
* When the enemy or I hit the next level. This is to be able to react faster to a surprise attack or do make one myself
* Timer for Heal, Exhaust, Ignite
* And the most important improvement, I pay much more attention to where the jungler should be even though he has not shown himself yet.

There are of course several other points that I should work on before I think that I deserve to reach challenger tier which are:
* Improve cs mechanics
* Counter jungling more effectively
* Increase my champion pool to include more assassins (at the moments I specialize in long range mages)

But recently I have had some really bad games, both due to my own skill and partially because of my team. I told myself a long time ago that even though a teammate might feed 0-3 by 5 minutes, if I really want to climb the ladder I should be good enough to snowball 3-0 by the time my teammate have fed. This is of course much harder said than done but it is this attitude that have kept me from raging in games because I blame the loss on myself and my lack of skill. Sometimes though I can feel that it is beyond my control, like today when I had 15-3-10 with Xerath and we lost due to an afk at 13 minutes. Still we held the game until like 45 minutes but could simply not win.
The great part was that I did not rage which I would normally do because I realized there is truly not more I can do, I played the game almost perfectly and therefore had no regrets whatsoever. It was simply out of my control.

So how do one deal with temporary defeat, even though it might be something you could of had prevented?
I believe that there are some points that are vital to overcoming defeat and failure, they could be linked the previous post I had about perseverance:
* Believe in yourself: I put this first because I believe it is the most important point. If you do not believe you could achieve what you had set out to do, there is no point in even trying. People look at successful people and sometimes say that they were lucky. I strongly believe that there is no such thing as luck for long lasting success. Because the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that most success stories are fundamentally the same and it starts with belief that you can achieve what you dream about.

* Keep reminding yourself of your goal: you have to look at you dream everyday and remember that you will eventually reach it. Take 10-30 minutes each day and just focus. Just focus on what it is you want to achieve. Once you do this you should visualize yourself already achieving it and if you are doing this correctly you should be creating intense emotions which is a sign that you are doing it correctly. In my case I want to win the LCS, World championship and Allstars and become the best mid player in the history of League of Legends. I sit down everyday and visualize myself actually doing this, receiving the trophy, being crowned MVP. I visualize a big stadium full of people all screaming at the last final battle before my team takes the nexus. At first this type of exercise didn’t bring much as I could not attach any emotions to my visualization. But I did not give up and eventually the visualization became a means of affecting my subconscious mind. Even if I logically know that I have not won anything in League of Legends yet. Sometimes I get this strange feeling that I know I will succeed and that I already won it. This is a sign that your subconscious mind believes in your goal and will make effort to realize your dream.

 

* Realize that failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success:
This is taken straight from “Think and grow rich by Napoleon Hill”. Every failure, if carefully analyzed would reveal some kind of success. You might learn something about yourself that you did not know. Maybe you needed to fail in order to realize that you need to work on a certain aspect of yourself. Therefore failure is not necessarily something bad, actually quite the contrary I would say that it is necessary to fail in order to succeed. Given of course that you analyze the failure and take from it the lesson that it could possibly teach you.

Looking at this picture, most of us can admit that we have once thought that the process to which one becomes successful was that of the left hand side. I have during my past 4 months come to realize that the type of success in which one continually moves forward without any setbacks is that of a short lived success. Everyone who knows me knows that I hate to study. Sometimes I am forced however to do it and the process is similar to that of the left hand side. I start the studying process, learn the material I have to in order to succeed in the coming test. Do the test without any major setbacks and “succeed”. It is true that I put in a lot of effort but in the end all the material that I have studied in this straightforward fashion did not stick, thus short lived success. I am now engaged in the right hand side of the picture, where I move forward one step only to move back 3. Then the next day I might be on a winning streak and on and on. I know deep down however that even though my rating might not show it. I am getting better and better at the game and that in itself is a victory for me.

 

And that is all of the tips I have regarding temporary defeat and not letting it take you down.  Never give up no matter how hard it gets, it is only through persistence that once can become truly successful!

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison

 

Rekindling the Flame!

Current ranking: Promotional games to Diamond III

Back again with a new update, this past week has been really good game wise. Have managed to keep up with the streaming as well and its getting more and more views. Have played a lot with the Diamond I division since I have started to Duo with one of my friends so I get to feel how the second to best top division is like. I must say the games are really intense, the greatest difference between Diamond I and Diamond V is that once you do a mistake, the better players capitalize much more on it and do not let you do a comeback in the game. Also the jungler has a much greater impact on the mid lane than I was used to.

As for the topic of this post. Since I am getting closer and closer to my goal (faster than expected I might add) I felt it was time to relive the beginning and how it all started. As stated in a previous post, my idea of becoming a professional gamer all started in Japan. It was after I was sure Medicine was not for me, so I began my search for something that would fit me. Something that I could become the best at. It was not clear at first and I felt like giving up several times because I could not feel that I had a passion for anything at all. But I kept telling myself that everyone must have something they are passionate about, something they could do every single day without getting tired of it.

I remember thinking about gaming and if I could live off doing it. But I quickly dismissed the thought because of my upbringing and how gaming have always been seen as a waste of time and or childish by pretty much everyone I knew. I was leaning more towards Japan and Japanese at the time, doing something that would keep me there but I knew, I truly knew deep down that Japan was not enough for me. Even though I was in the country that I had been dreaming of since as long as I could remember, there was still something missing in my life. I could not pinpoint it but I just knew even though I was in total bliss almost every day. I knew it would not last and therefore I kept searching until one late night when I was sitting in my room. I had looked through several YouTube concerning finding your passion in life.

I came across a video by Jad T Jones on “How to find your purpose in life” and it was at the end of this video that my life had been completely turned around. I knew then and there that I was meant to become a gamer, I knew that most of the people around me would be against it and that I would get little if no support at all from relatives and friends. So I decided to not tell anyone about my change of heart. I dedicated the coming 4 months to totally ingrain in my mind that I would become the best mid player in the history of League of Legends. I wrote a text to myself and read it every morning and every night, I walked around listening to music and visualizing myself already winning the world championship trophy. I did this for 4 months not telling anyone about it because I feared that the slightest negativity regarding my choice would break me and turn me back to med school.

 

After 4 months had passed I was truly convinced that I would become a professional gamer regardless of what people told me. I was convinced that I would succeed and I was convinced that I would reach the top. This is when I started telling friends and family about my decision and it did not come as a shock when they all thought I had lost my sanity. I remember my father not liking the idea at all saying that I would not succeed if I tried. He then proceeded to ask me: Well son, how many people do make money out of this game. I told him that I did not know, maybe 200 professional players out of 67 million players.
What happened after he said these words is something I will remember for the rest of my life. My father asked me:
Do you really thing YOU can be one of those 200 people who make money out of this game?

When I heard these words, I completely stopped thinking. It was as if i was no longer in control of my body or my mind.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I do not believe in spirits, ghosts or any supernatural powers whatsoever. But I cannot explain this next event without the usage of supernatural. As I heard the words, it felt as if I was looking at myself from a birds view and seeing myself. What happened next was that I locked eyes with my father and said: No! I will not become one of those 200, I will become the best. As I finished saying that sentence, I returned and was quite shocked that I had said it at all. I said it with an intense certainty as if I knew that it was going to happen. My father proceeded to laugh and said:
Well you seem to be very confident, i hope it works out for you then.

Realization: A burning passion is not something you wake up to someday, it is something you have to create out of your interests and then work at to develop into a burning passion.

Below I have added the video of Jad T Jones which got me into pursuing my dream in the first place:

 

Update! Almost two months

Current ranking:
DIAMOND V!!!!

Today is a milestone in my pursuit to become a professional League of Legends player. I started less than two months ago at Silver V and have reached top 1 % of the server right now. I am even in the series to Diamond IV as I write this post.

There have been many ups and downs, I failed the promotional games to Diamond V four times before I finally succeeded and it did not come easily. The ecstasy of reaching it however was totally worth the time I had to invest into the game. Everything before this point have been a thought. It was a mere thought, which then developed into a dream and then into a passion which drove me to pursue the professional life. Today, right now it is not a thought anymore, it is a very likely reality that will soon come to pass. I cannot explain how happy I am, but I do also realize that the easy part is over, from now on I will face people who are dedicated to the game and does everything to win. The real challenge begins now and I have no intention of backing down. I will become a professional League of Legends player whatever people might say about my age or my start. I shall show the world that a 24 year old med school dropout can achieve his dream no matter how hard it gets.

I have come to love the champion Xerath as well because he is an overall overpowered champion that for some reason has not been picked that often in the competitive scene. I climbed from platinum to diamond by only playing him. His strength lies in positioning and knowing when to roam. He is pretty much like a Twisted fate if you play him with teleport. He has a stun every 7 seconds, insane ulti that does 1800 (!!) magic damage when i have full build with him (given that you learn how to hit it) and his poke is insane. The way to play him is safely behind your whole team focusing down their ADC or AP carry from a distance.
During team fights focus on hitting their back line with your ultimate as soon as they seem to be engaged in some activity such as poking or running away. It is at these points where their focus is off and you can hit all three ultimate spells. If you do this correctly they will be forced to back away which will give your team an edge!

I will continue to play Xerath on my stream which for the record will be weekdays 00.00 (GMT +2) and 12.00 (GMT +2). I will play three ranked games on each occasion. Sundays I will not stream and Saturdays I might stream but not on a regular schedule. As I progress in the game I will consider streaming more but for now these hours fit me very well and you are all welcome to log on and watch me play.

This is my very first “honor ban” i was playing the whole night vs the same people so they started fearing my Xerath and decided it was a good idea to ban him.

I will try to answer any questions during my streams as soon as I have time to do so. Hope to see you soon.

http://www.twitch.tv/shinse1

 

Streaming

Current rating Platinum II

So this week has been very good, I managed to get out of my mental rut and have been dominating games as mid. I have been trying out Xerath a lot and with quite a good feedback. I have also been trying out Draven which is because I dont always get the lane i want when I play. Either way i have been on a winning streak for the last couple of days until yesterday when the servers were down for the whole day.

Today the ranked system was down as well which is why I have not been playing at all. Took the opportunity to relax and enjoy the Swedish sun (a very rare thing). I have also bought some new internal memories for the computer which will allow me to stream my games live. I shall start streaming no later than Wednesday next week, I will most likely start streaming from Saturday but it would not be optimized as I must try out a lot of setting.

Once I have started streaming it will be according to a strict schedule of several ours with a break between each 3 games. Will most likely start streaming somewhere around 8 AM to 4 AM GMT 1+ but more on this later.

I have also bought myself a proper headset with noise cancelling microphone which will further increase the quality of the stream. Look forward to having some viewers and if you do have any requests such as me explaining my thought process as I play ill try to incorporate it into the game play. Anyway here is a link to the streaming website and I do apologize in advance for the commercials. I cannot control it and would remove it if I had the chance.

http://www.twitch.tv/shinse1

Temporary setbacks

Current ranking Platinum II

Back again with yet another post! I would like to apologize for the delay, did not have time to write a post on the scheduled time since I spent the entire Wednesday experiencing the pain of childbirth! Yes you read that correctly, on Wednesday morning I was taken to the ER because of an unbearable pain on the right side of my stomach.

I was literally screaming on top of my lungs for an entire 30 minutes asking for painkillers and someone to take away the pain. I was given morphine and other types of painkillers that took about 20 minutes to kick in but by that time I had been in an excruciating pain for the last 50 minutes and simply fainted because of it. Once I regained consciousness I was still in a great deal of pain but I learned that I had just had a kidney stone attack of which the pain is comparable to that of women giving child birth.

Now a funny thing that happened during these hours was that even though I was in the worst pain I have ever experienced before. One of the few things that went through my mind was:
When can I get back to my work
I wonder why Gangplank is not played that often anymore.

I had two entirely thought up games played through my mind, I was so convinced that I was playing that I even asked myself why would you play a ranked game in your condition? It was not until a couple of hours later that I realized that I had actually been on the hospital bed for the entire time. It seems as if my mind transported me to a safe zone where I was doing something I loved in order to deal with the pain. The mind truly works in mysterious ways.

As for the title of this post. Last week on Thursday i reached Platinum I and was on my promotional games for Diamond V. I had actually won my two first so i was literally one game away from the Diamond League. I have not yet found the origin of the problem, but for some strange reason, as I got so close to one of my goals I started playing like s***. I lost 11 games in a row which brought me back to Platinum II and from there went back to Platinum III. I got stuck there for a couple of days until finally something just let loose and my normal gaming skills came back to me.

I believe it is very important to analyze these kinds of scenarios as they do tell a lot about you as a person and how you deal with stressful situations. I believe that I was playing so badly because of hubris. I believed myself to be better than I was and therefore did some awful decisions which were obviously not in my favor but I thought I could pull it off. This started a chain reaction of bad decisions which lost me a lot of games and then eventually made me lose my confidence.

So this kidney stone attack, however painful it might have been was a good thing since it forced me to get away from League of Legends for an entire day and to focus on the reason why I have been on a losing streak.
My final conclusion is simply: It is a temporary setback which I have already begun to overcome