Here’s a question.

“If you had a goal, but could tell absolutely no one about it, would you still go ahead and do it?”

I bet many of us have hardly taken the time to ask ourselves what mattered to us, irrespective of others’ perceptions.

Are you winning at a game that you simply don’t enjoy playing?

I know people who are tremendously successful in their fields and have achieved just about every goal set out for them. Yet, they still seem unsettled and unhappy.

It often starts with playing a game you don’t enjoy but for the lack of a better alternative, you gut it out. 

If I win, great!

Otherwise, I was never really into this, to begin with.

Honestly, I was only here for the money.

How many times have we heard the same old tired excuses that we give ourselves?

I remember at one point desiring to play the piano.

It sounded great and pianists always seemed so composed and elegant. 

So, I took several lessons and somehow didn’t find myself engaged enough to continue.

And it’s not because I was a bad student or that piano wasn’t as fun as I thought.

I realized that I didn’t have the desire to actually learn how to play, rather I was more drawn to how great the piano sounded.

This takes me back to a famous soundbite from former Jets coach Herm Edwards’ post-game rant.

The Jets were on a losing streak and the season was spiraling out of control. A member of the press asked Coach Edwards if he had relayed his thoughts on quitting to his players.

His response was a fiery rebuttal that he would never entertain any thought from his players of quitting.

While it’s become a meme, his words of ‘you play to win the game’ really capture the essence of sports and life for that matter.

Why do we do what we do? And for what?

For many of us, our careers each have varying metrics of success and the things that we value can also be different.

Let’s face it. 

Success is typically measured by how much money you earn, whether it’s for your company or for yourself. We value promotions, bonuses, and fancy executive titles that confer expertise, prestige, and respect.

This can quickly become a problem. 

While you may have a personal definition of success and what it means to you, once you’re presented with a simple quantifiable representation of success – like a number on your paycheck – that simplicity overrides your personal value. 

It’s far easier and more convenient to just adopt the value of whatever game you’re playing than to determine your own.

When I was fighting in the UFC, the only title I chased was the UFC Middleweight Championship. 

I gave little thought about the rankings and any lofty PPV numbers were the UFC’s way of measuring success, not mine.

Unfortunately today, many of us end up playing status games instead of playing to win.

An example to illustrate this: You started a podcast to spread knowledge and share your opinions with others but quickly become obsessed with how viral your content could be.

In a 14-year study, Professors Wendy Nelson Copeland and Michael Sauder found that university and college rankings were the defining factors for students’ enrollment decisions.

The “top-ranked” school automatically became the “best” school, regardless of what students themselves valued in their academic journey. 

In other words, when someone else determines what it means to be successful, there is no need to define it for yourself.

Then, you end up playing a game you don’t enjoy because it wasn’t what you valued intrinsically in the first place.

More startlingly, this represents a loss of freedom. 

And if you know me, you’ll know I’m really big on individual freedom of thought.

Sometimes, win or lose, it’s important to pause and ask yourself: What am I doing this for?

Are these goals what I truly value or are they just a means to gratify others’ perceptions of me?

Late last year, I wrote a blog post about How to Know What You Really Want.

Do we simply fall into something because of peer pressure? Or are there other factors at work that shape and influence our thoughts and desires?

Sometimes we take our desires for granted and we simply assume we want something because  “it’s good for us.”

Take me for example, I knew what I wanted. And it was certainly not what most people or my peers wanted.

I went from being a high school math teacher to becoming a UFC fighter.

So really it comes back to my question at the start of this post:

If you could get what you wanted, but you couldn’t tell a soul that you got it, would you still want it?

What game are you playing? And more importantly, are you in it to win?