Edition #11: Play your own game
It can be the most wonderful time of the year…and also the most stressful. Along with the festivities and cheer, comes the end-of -year assessment:
Did I do enough?
Did I achieve enough?
Am I enough?
I think these questions matter. But they’re not particularly helpful unless you answer a much bigger one first:
What game am I actually playing?
“Personality begins where comparison ends”
~Karl Lagerfeld, legendary German fashion designer
The Problem: Playing someone else’s game
Am I chasing a result I actually want…?
We’re all playing a game - either by choice or by default. At school, the game was getting the highest mark. As an athlete, it was standing on the top of the podium.
Then you step into the real world, and the rules get a bit fuzzy.
One of the best things about adult life is that you get to choose what winning looks like. And there are so many options:
love
adventure
money
fame
freedom
security
meaning
career
The problem is that choosing is hard.
And if you’ve been playing someone else’s game for long enough, you may have forgotten that choosing is even an option.
So when the end-of-year posts, newsletters, and highlight reels rolling in, no matter how much you’ve done, it won’t feel like enough.
Because you’re measuring yourself with someone else’s stick.
The Solution: Choose for yourself
Pick your own game and write the rules…
Life is about making good choices, and we are lucky to have more choice than ever before. Which makes choosing wisely more important than ever before.
There are lots of reasons why we end up playing someone else’s game. Maybe you don’t trust yourself to choose. Maybe it never occurred to you that you could. Maybe it’s just easier to buy a game off the shelf.
Consciously choosing your own measure of success (and then sticking to it as the results of others roll in!) is seriously hard work. So here are a few simple questions to get you started:
How do I want people to describe me when I leave a room?
What would I do if no one else’s opinion mattered?
What activity makes me lose track of time?
And with those answers, you can start updating the rules of your game!
London 2017 Paralympic games pundits, with the athletics stadium in the background. From left to right the pundits are Ade Adepitan, Sophie Christiansen, Stef Reid and Danny Crates
The Application:
Choosing my own definition of success…
I was so excited to be a Channel 4 pundit for the 2017 World Para Athletics Championships. I finished my first day on set with a smile.
But the smile didn’t last long.
Everyone on set disappeared. Not a single person stuck around to tell me if I did a good job.
I thought I did well…but how could I possibly judge for myself? I needed external feedback. Like the kind I used to get after every jump. I’d even take bad feedback at this point. At least then I’d know where I stood.
As I drifted from the set to my dressing room, my body language must have been screaming, “Affirm me! Please!” Because eventually, one of the producers took pity on me and explained how TV works:
“No one is going to tell you you did a good job. Mostly because everyone is too busy. But they will tell you if you do a bad job. So if no one said anything, you’re not terrible.”
Great. Thank you. Super helpful. But how do I know if I’m good?
I could delegate the task to Twitter and Instagram.
Or I could take charge and assess myself based on things I actually had control of, like the quality of my research, preparation, and delivery.
The point is, it’s up to me. I choose the game and the rules.
What bold move puts you in a winning position in your game?
You can’t know if you’re winning if you don’t know what game you’re playing. And if you don’t like the game, does it even matter? So be bold, and choose for yourself.
As you wrap up the year, be firm when it comes to measuring success. Don’t quietly slip back into someone else’s criteria.
And finally, have a very Merry Christmas 🎄 and a Happy New Year 🥂! Edition 12 lands on Friday Jan 9th, 2026.
Stay bold, friends!
- Stef 💪