Arguably, there are a lot of good ideas in chess which may be useful in real life for chessplayers and non-chessplayers alike.
Here are some ways in which ideas can have practical use.
Here are some ideas which might be useful:
The outcome of a chess game depends on the player's decisions during the game. Chess teaches people to take responsibility for their actions, as they should in real life.
Chess teaches us not to be impulsive, to consider the consequences of our actions.
In chess players often analyse a game afterwards to replay the interesting moments and see what they can learn. This is sometimes called a postmortem.
In life it is possible at the end of the day to review the day's events and see what could be learned from them. How did the day go? What things went well, what could have gone better, how were interactions with other people? One time this can be done, is while falling asleep.
Chess players use various principles to help them make decisions. These principles can be applied to real life in various ways.
In real life an 'opponent' might be be your counterpart in a zero-sum game. It might even be a friend or it may be a nonentity such as the weather or an organization of people.
In most situations its best to assume the opponent will make the best move. This means you are prepared for the worst possible thing that would happen. In real life it is easy to assume the other will play a bad move.
Chess teaches us to examine all possible likelihoods, priority given to the most likely outcomes. For example, rather than assuming that tomorrow's weather will be the most likely, take all contingencies into account (especially if you live in Melbourne).
Chessplayers like to improve their rating. It can be watch to watch your rating go up, to be able to do things that you couldn't do before and change your ranking relative to other people.
But what about improving your life "fun rating". Fun can be having a good laugh, or a good rave (for non Aussies, a rave means an enthusiastic and enjoyable discussion). It could also be a very moving experience which might be feeling deep sadness or terror from watching a creepy movie. Fun might be catching up with an old friend you haven't seen for years. Fun can the satisfaction of a job well done.
I use fun in a very broad sense here.
Maximise your possibilities.
In chess initiative is very important.
In chess, in a complicated position where there is no clearly best move, one should play the most harmonious aesthetic move. I feel aesthetics and feeling are underrated in aiding decision making in errors such as medicine etc.
In chess, seeing is more important than thinking. If perception is so important in an intellectual game like chess, then what to say about life?
In chess, although there is a fixed number of possibilities in each situation, there are trillions of possibilities as you look deeper in the situation. What to say of life when there are almost infinite possibilities?
In chess, material is important, but there is danger in being too materialistic.
Chess theory has sometimes held incorrectly that a move is best in a situation, sometimes for decades. There are many examples of this in other fields.
Chess involves using the left and the right brains. The role of the right brain in other activities is underestimated. Or to put it another way, chess involves logic, but it is also a highly intuitive game.
As an exercise you may like to explore real life situations in which the following well known chess concepts and ideas. In some cases some imagination will be useful. Analogies might be relatively specific or very abstract.