I should really be in Diamond, but...
Have you ever found yourself thinking this? Or have you ever heard another low-level player say this?
Sometimes people find themselves in the Top 8 of their league and wonder why it is that they haven't been promoted. They look at their rank and think that they're so close to getting to that "next level" that they basically "are" at that next level. If only 11/11s, deathballs, and Zerg remaxing weren't so OP...
It's an easy trap to fall into. After all, it's only natural to look at your ladder ranking, see that you're in the top 8% of your league, and assume that you're close to promotion. Just a few more points and you'll make it, right?
The problem with slipping into this mindset is that it takes your focus off of improving and puts it on the "reward" you get for improving: league membership. Once you fall into this trap of thinking that you should be in league X, your progress becomes stagnant. You'll start grinding out games, thinking that since you're so close, all you need is just a few more wins and you'll get there. You'll stop watching replays, you'll stop focusing on fixing your failures, you'll lose to the same things you always do, you'll start to rage, and you'll start blaming broken game mechanics, imbalance, and overpowered units for your failures instead of the thing that's really failing: you.
Your league and rank are indicators of your win percentage weighed against the rest of the Starcraft player base. If you're not moving up in your league, it's because you aren't winning as often as you need to be in order to get promoted. As I've discussed before, you can get to Masters and beyond just by cheesing. If your goal is just to get to Masters, then you can certainly change your map settings to cheese friendly maps and 11-11/sixpool/proxy gate all day. However, a lot of players might not define someone who can only cheese as being good at the game, and just getting to Masters isn't a good enough goal for you (I'm assuming, since you're reading this blog :P)
At the end of the day, if you actively focus on improvement and then improve as a result, you will win more games. If you win more games, you will ultimately move up through the Starcraft leagues. If you focus on moving up through the leagues, rather than improvement, then you run a good chance of staying exactly where you are - or even getting worse as you get lost in the frustration of going nowhere. So if you find yourself thinking that you're "owed" a promotion, just remember this: You are in the correct league based on your win percentage. If your win percentage was higher than it is now, you'd already be in the league above your current one. If you were constantly improving, your win percentage would be going up. Ladder points are ultimately meaningless - you can have a 50% win percentage and be at the top of your league, but a 50% win percentage isn't going to push you any higher than you are now :) Bottom line: You belong where you are, and you are where you belong. Get better, and you will move up.
There is an (admittedly) cheesy quote from Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon that encapsulates this a bit. "It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of that heavenly glory!" The ladder leagues (Bronze, Silver, etc.) are fingers, pointing to the moon (being good at the game). Focusing on the pointers will cause you to ignore what you need to get to the moon - constant improvement - and cause you to miss out on what you actually want - which is to get better at Starcraft.
