My First Year Gaming with Growth Mindset - Season 12 Recap

League of Legends Season 12 finished up last week and I achieved my final rank of Bronze 4. That is actually a division lower than where I placed after my placement matches at the start of the season (Bronze 3).
At the start of the year I definitely would have found that intensely frustrating, but right now I’m feeling quite good about it. Though on paper it seems like I have moved backwards, I can feel how much I have learned during this year of playing the game.
When I started out playing League almost exactly one year ago, I had no idea about any concepts that I now am thinking about regularly when I start playing. I had no idea what any items did, what any champion abilities were, about buffs or CS - and the list goes on and on. But I feel like that’s exactly what learning a new skill is all about: coming in excited, totally green and playing completely for fun before progressing to a point where a passion starts to kick in, and that passion drives you to learn more about that skill.
For me, I started playing jungle because I liked the idea of influencing the entire map and I liked playing some of the jungle champions. I played some pretty simple champions at first, and eventually hit level 30, at which time I jumped straight into my placements and was spat out into Bronze 3. I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to Silver, but I continued playing regardless. I played for a few weeks, hovering between Bronze 3 and 4, all the while consuming quite a lot of YouTube content on how to improve at the game. I also decided to change champions and play Kindred (who is my absolute favourite champion in the game). However, perhaps unsurprisingly, this went rather badly - I dropped immediately to Iron 1, and then on to Iron 3.
My confidence in my skill at the game was pretty shot!
Thankfully, it was at about this time that I came across the Broken By Concept podcast - a great little podcast by two Aussie guys: Coach Curtis and Nathan Mott, who both run their own coaching programs for the mid lane and jungle, and make videos too. They reintroduced me to some really crucial things to bear in mind when it comes to League of Legends and life generally:
- Skills take time to develop - we need to have patience
- Believing that we can improve is the first step to improving
- Having a growth mindset, and focusing on how to improve ourselves is the only way we can reliably improve ourselves
They talk about these ideas and more quite extensively in their podcast - it’s a ‘must listen to’ for any players who really want to improve at the game!
Armed with this and fresh motivation I continued to play, and eventually switched to playing mid lane - as I wanted to learn more about how to play in a lane against an opponent directly. The rest of my season has been spent experimenting with different champions and playstyles, and I would be lying if I told you it wasn’t extremely frustrating at times. I lost my temper and really struggled to climb out of Iron for a good couple of months. But, as the wise Aussies reminded me, these things take time.
After what felt like an age of experimenting with mages, assassins and fighters in the mid lane, I finally landed on two champions that I liked to play consistently: Yone and Talon. At some point it just clicked that I needed to find champions that I enjoyed playing. And I think that’s a lesson for life generally: do things that you enjoy doing, when you do, even when you need to work hard at them, it doesn’t feel like such hard work.
Having settled on these champions it wasn’t long before I climbed up to Iron 1, and then got promoted back into Bronze 4 on my first attempt at the promotion playoffs. It’s weird how quick the climb felt. I can’t point to anything in particular over the week or two that I climbed - something just clicked! And that’s what happens when you use patience to learn a skill. Eventually, lots of little things accumulate into one big improvement!
So my message to you is this: keep at it! You may be closer to your goals than you think. Put in the time to learn and practice, exercise patience, and continue to believe in yourself - and the results will come!
If you want to hear more about how my League journey is going, I’ll be posting more articles here on my blog. My next article will be about my plan for season 13 pre-season! I have lots of ideas I want to explore and I hope you come along for the ride!