"The magic happens when we stop trying and start letting the game play through us."
All games, sports, and hobbies are life in miniature. They present challenges and pleasures, offer opportunities to improve, and demand we overcome difficulties. They hold hopes for a better future — and regrets over past errors.
Yet our greatest moments, our most memorable ones, are when we’re completely lost in them.
“I was so focused — I was in the zone.”
Anyone who’s ever played a sport knows the feeling. The magic happens when we stop trying and start letting the game play through us. When effort turns to instinct. When thoughts fall away.
We try to explain it after the fact- the why, the how- hoping to bottle it, to understand it, to repeat it. But how do we best think about not thinking? How do we analyse the absence of analysis?
That’s the paradox: in our greatest moments, we gave up control. We surrendered. And now we’re trying to control the very thing that only arrived when we let go.
We’re trying to cage freedom.
If games, sports, and hobbies are life in miniature, then life by definition is the big game. And just like sport, our best moments come when we stop forcing and start flowing. When we let life live us. When we become present, stop grasping, and let freedom lead.
Analysis and reflection are tools not foundations. They should serve us, not define us.
We’ve been conditioned to believe we are the outputs of our thoughts. But who hears the thoughts? Who watches them pass? Beneath the noise, there’s a quieter self- the one already in the zone.
So whether it’s golf, running, music- whatever moves you- don’t use it to chase the zone. Use it to realise you’re already there.