Play Beyond Pressure

Play Beyond Pressure

PLAY BEYOND PRESSURE

“To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic. In play, the mind is prepared to accept the unimagined and incredible, to enter a world where different laws apply, to be relieved all of weights that bear it down.

To be free.”

~ Hugo Rahner

It is possible to become so focused on performance that you forget to play. When you forget to play, you get tense and do not perform. The difference between performance and play is how it feels. Performance feels heavy and a burden. Play feels light and a fun experience.

Play is a way of being. The game is still fundamentally the same, but your approach to it can get in the way of playing it with freedom. Play is open and flexible; it is without fixed ideas or rigid plans. There are no expectations, and you are ready for anything. Play is openness to the game’s possibilities and a fearlessness to meet the unknown.

How much fun might it be to realise that this is all play?

What a weight off your shoulders it is to know that playing the game is infinitely more valuable than performing at it. The spirit of the game is different when you are playing the game, rather than performing at it or using it as a tool for self-validation. This enables you to have a deeper respect for your opponent and the officials, stemming from a deeper understanding of yourself and the game. You go back to the simplicity of enjoying the game and challenging yourself to the edge of your skills and abilities.

The more that you love the game, the more fun it becomes. Therefore, you spend more time playing and practicing, and so the better you become. This is a virtuous cycle - the more you give, the more that you get back. Saying that you love the game can make the ego feel vulnerable and insecure because its sense of validation is attached to the outcome. However, it is by moving beyond this limited sense of identity that you can experience the unlimited connection with, and unconditional satisfaction from, playing the game. This frees you up to express yourself on the field. You become more motivated, but without any weight on your shoulders. You know that there is nothing to prove.

Your journey, both in the game and away from the field of play, is uniquely your own. There will always be opinions, judgments, comparisons and help from others. However, it is learning about yourself and the game, for yourself, that is endlessly rewarding. This is a ceaseless path of realising your potential - ball by ball, moment by moment, game by game. Every match, opponent, situation, success and failure will ask a different question of you. In the end the only game worth playing is the one where you know that it is a game, and you are playing it.

What might be possible if you were to play on the biggest stage rather than perform on it?

Can you treat the ‘biggest’ match as a backyard game?

Because, without all your thinking about it, that is what it is.

“This is the real secret of life - to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play.” ~ Alan Watts

Perform Beyond Pressure is available on Amazon (£11.99 paperback, £6.99 kindle):

Richard Giles

Head of Oxfordshire Disabilty Cricket at Oxfordshire Cricket Board

2y

Very interesting but the question I would ask is this. At what age and at what level of ability do you need to be at to adopt this philosophy?

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