The Game Within The Game

In athletics, the illusion of there being a world “out there” is persistent and cunning. The scoreboard, the crowd, the stat sheet, are all moving independently of you, while you simply react. As if you're simply a participant in a the game. You were handed a jersey and a role by coach, left to cope with whatever the game decides to throw at you. This is the myth of separation. This idea that the performance lives outside of you, and your job is to catch up to it. You’re the quintessential greyhound chasing the rabbit. Though you pursue it with tireless resolve, it evades you as if tethered to the horizon.

But! You can shift your perspective.

The reality is the game isn’t happening to you.

It’s happening through you.

Every decision you make. How you frame pressure. How you talk to yourself after a mistake. How you enter a workout. How you recover from a setback. All are a brushstroke on the canvas of your inner world. You don’t need to wait for the stat sheet to give you permission to feel like you have it under control.

Mental performance is not about chasing “good games” and avoiding “bad ones” like a child dodging vegetables at the dinner table. It’s about understanding that the labels we assign - good, bad, hot, off, clutch, choke, flow - are products of your internal algorithm. And that algorithm is built, not inherited. Constructed, not imposed. It’s crafted by your habits of thought, the meaning you assign to moments, the standards you set, and the stories you tell yourself after the buzzer sounds. The stories we silently whisper within become the footsteps we take in the world and the mirror in which we look ourselves in the eye. Through these quiet narratives, we weave the very fabric of our reality.

The culture of sport has also created a perspective in which athletes instinctively assign different mental burden to the exact same action. A free throw in preseason versus a free throw to win the championship are viewed differently. Physically, it’s the same motion: same ball, same rim, same form, same distance. But mentally, the weight is entirely conjured up in your head. The heaviness assigned is your decision.

In preseason, there’s freedom. The stakes are low, the outcome forgettable. The mind is loose, the body flows, things are in rhythm and the shot often feels easy, not because the mechanics are better, but because the internal dialogue is lighter, more free.

Fast-forward to a championship deciding free throw and suddenly the shot has a different gravity to it. Not because the laws of gravity changed, but because the assigned meaning did. Now it represents legacy, championships, expectations, status, pressure. But the truth is you assign that meaning. The moment didn’t change, your perception of it did. This mental weight was constructed long before the game winning free throw was ever in play.

The difference isn’t in the shot. It’s in the story you tell yourself about the shot.

Mastering mental performance means recognizing that pressure is not in the moment, it’s in your perception of the moment. The elite don’t just train their bodies to execute. They also spend swaths of time training their minds to equalize the mental weight so every free throw is just that - a free throw.

The real internal shift can happen when you stop treating performance as a mysterious external phenomenon that if you could only decode you would be a monster. Instead, you have to learn to treat it as a direct extension of your internal architecture. The framework of your mind.

You’re not just playing the game; you’re programming it.

Every rep, every drill, every moment is filled with self-talk. It is estimated that the average person has upwards of 70,000 thoughts a day. What you say to yourself, and how you say it, will determine the kind of athlete you become. Whether you’re aware of it or not, your internal dialogue coupled with your choices form who you are and how you show up in real time. You are firing and wiring neurons with every thought in every breath. And over time, those neural pathways become your lens through which you see the game, yourself, and the results.

So when you say, “I had a bad game,” (because aren’t we all this kind when we speak to ourselves) pause and look deeper.

Was it bad? or was it unfamiliar?

Was it failure? or was it feedback?

Was it chaos? or was it simply information urging you to evolve?

What if we could come to the perspective that performance isn't good or bad?

It just is.

A missed shot. A made shot.

A turnover. A dime.

A win. A loss.

A record-breaking game.

None of these events carry inherent meaning. The meaning comes from your judgment. You hold the power to assign the meaning.

When you stop labeling moments, you free yourself to respond instead of react. Those with an elite mindset embody a stoic awareness that allows them to be in the game without judgment. They embrace reality as it is. Frictionless. Your need to assign a value to an outcome is what creates the friction. Let things be what they are. They are neither good nor bad. Doing this can provide the internal space to respond with clear intention rather than an impulsive reaction. This presence is the superpower. This mindset is how legends of the game transform high pressure scenarios into another rep in their rise to dominance.

In this mindset a turnover becomes feedback.

A bad game, or even a good game, becomes data.

And a great game is simply a moment, no pedestal, no expectations, no pressure to conquer.

People will confuse your poise with apathy. But it’s not that you don’t care. You simply refuse to let your identity rise and fall with outcomes. Because who you are is not connected to any outcome.

Mastery begins when you stop needing events to be different than they are, and start meeting them exactly where they are.

Athletes often think their performance determines their confidence. But it’s the other way around. Confidence is a decision, not a dividend. It begins when you realize your mind is not a courtroom arguing facts. It’s a garden, and in the garden of your mind, you are both the seed and the one tending the soil.

So, what kind of performance are you scripting?

What internal algorithm are you curating?

When you shift the currents swirling in your mind, the stories you weave, the focus you choose, the world outside unfolds differently.

This isn’t about ignoring the scoreboard. It’s about awakening to the truth that you are the author of its meaning.

And if you are the author of your story that means you hold the pen to craft the story you want to live.