Getting beaten at chess by a roomful of 8 and 12 year-olds, and having his shoulder dislocate 30 seconds into his debut boxing match, is not the background you imagine for a chessboxing world champion.

Yet that is what Matt Thomas encountered on his way to success.

What he learnt on the journey, he shared with attendees at the inaugural Bermuda Entrepreneurship Summit, of which he is a cofounder.

His message was that reframing adversity and seeing it as a blessing can be transformative and move you forward in life and business with a positive attitude.

Events can have a different meaning depending on your perspective and where you are in life’s journey. Mr Thomas illustrated this with a parable and the example of his own life.

The parable was about a farmer and his son, and described a series of incidents that could readily be described as bad luck in the moment, but which became good fortune as subsequent events unfolded, such as the son breaking his leg at work a day before an army leader came looking for able-bodied young men to join the war effort.

While others viewed each incident, in the immediate moment, as bad luck, the farmer would say “good luck, bad luck, who knows?” That proved to be a wiser attitude to adopt as subsequent events recast what was seen a bad luck into good luck.

“Depending on who you are in the story, good luck and bad luck is different for everyone. And depending on where you are in the story’s timeline, each thing takes on a different meaning,” Mr Thomas said.

He paralleled the story with his journey to becoming a chessboxing champion.

As a youngster, he was a keen chess player, and when he entered his college years he took up boxing.

However, less than a minute into his first boxing match the fight was in danger of ending early when he dislocated his right shoulder.

He described how he went on to win, and how he founded Brawl for a Cause, an organisation that trains first-time boxers to the point that they can step into the ring and raise funds for a charity or cause of their choice.

Mr Thomas knew boxing was going to be a big part of his journey and he wanted to provide that type of space and opportunity for others to learn about themselves.

His path to chessboxing took shape as he recuperated from an operation to repair damage to his shoulder. He was watching YouTube videos about boxing, and also viewing online chess, when YouTube automatically suggested a video for him to watch — it was about chessboxing.

“I thought this has got to be made up. There is no way someone has combined chess with boxing,” he said.

He watched the video and found out it was a real sport, created in 2003. It involves players taking part in a round of boxing, having a minute to transition and then playing chess for three minutes, before transitioning back to another round of boxing, and so on.

Mr Thomas got in touch with someone involved in the chessboxing competition and said he’d love to participate in as event.

That led to him getting ready for the world championships in India, he prepared by playing summer-camp chess players aged 8 to 12 in a quickfire version of chess. He was promptly beaten in every game.

Dejected, he went home and in his mind ran through every excuse he could think of to pull out of the chessboxing championship.

But as he looked at himself in the mirror, in his mind he saw the eyes of the 300 or so people he had previously encouraged to step up to the challenge of boxing in Brawl for a Cause.

“These people who had never fought before, signed up to do something really scary and had every excuse in the book not to take a punch for what they believed in,” he said.

If he was going to walk his talk, he could not step away from the challenge.

He said: “I could not walk away. I needed to go back.

“I realised this was not about me or my ego, or saving face, it was about something bigger. If I can make this about something I believe in, about my purpose, then I win regardless of whether my hand gets raised [as victor] at the end.”

He returned to training for eight weeks, sparring in the ring and playing chess. Then he travelled to India for the championships.

He reached the final.

“Right before it started, I thought back to that parable. I thought back to my very first fight when my shoulder dislocated; good luck, bad luck, who knows?”

He said the shoulder injury in his first boxing match could have put him out of that fight and made him never fight again.

“But it ended up being this challenge and adversity that I was able to overcome and prove something to myself,” he said.

“I looked back at the surgery, it looked like bad luck — a long recovery time. But that’s when I found out about this sport [chessboxing] that I thought I was tailor-made for.

“I thought back to that first day of chess training with the little kids, and getting beat, and in the moment it felt like bad luck, like something insurmountable that I could not overcome.

“But in the big picture of the journey, it was something that was instrumental and made me double-down focusing on chess and ultimately winning the final by checkmate.”

Mr Thomas gave the audience a guided meditation and breathwork designed to reinforce the moral of the parable he had earlier described, and be something they could use in their life and in their pursuit of entrepreneurship.

He concluded: “Whatever adversity comes your way, these are all blessings if we see them as such. We can reframe our perspective — like the farmer did, to accept whatever comes as ‘good luck, bad luck, who knows?’

“And we can move forward with a positive attitude and make it something that transforms us into the best version of ourselves.”

The one-day summit was cofounded by Jared Kleinert, an award-winning author and TED speaker, and was staged at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club.

The event’s list of sponsors and partners included Bermuda Business Development Agency, the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club, Ptix.bm and the BEDC, KPMG, AAC, and Meeting of the Minds.