Is it true that playing and learning chess has no applicable benefits or skills in life?

Lots of benefits. To me, one major is the ability to treat/turn “bad decisions” as/into “useful information”.

It has played an important role in helping me discover myself, how I would perform under unfavorable circumstances….

In the following, either because I was careless or the opponent was good (or both), I recently played a game that started hunky-dory and I became overconfident.

I was playing white. By some time past midgame, I still had a lot of advantage, until wham! All advantage disappeared and I was left with an outcome that meant I was going to lose:

You see several dips in my opponent’s advantage? For each attempt I made to decrease his advantage, he somehow came back stronger and this state of affairs continued such that I no longer had the option to make a dent in his advantage.

A normal person would have given up, resigned. But chess has taught me never to resign if there’s even a smattering of hope. So I kept at it until my opponent became bewildered and made a serious blunder.