PLAY YOUR OWN GAME

Derek Hagen
1 day ago
3 min read

❝Our time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.❞ -Steve Jobs

You can't know if you're winning until you decide what game you're playing.

I'm reading articles Charles Ellis wrote for the CFA Institute, looking for every keynote speech I can find. I've just finished Winning the Loser's Game, and I want more Ellis. I find one particular keynote that opens with a story.

Ellis is cheering for a friend running a marathon. They station themselves along the way to cheer as she passes, then head to the stadium to watch the runners finish.

A Kenyan wins in just over two hours. The crowd goes wild. Then something strange happens.

One by one, runners keep crossing the finish line. Their arms are raised in a Y, faces lit up, grinning like champions. Three hours. Four hours. Five hours. Each one crossing with the same energy as the winner, even though the race was over hours ago.

Ellis sits with this for a moment. Then it hits him: they were all winning. Every one of them.

Some were trying to be first. Some were trying to finish under four hours. Some were setting a personal record. Some were finishing a marathon for the first time. Some were finishing for the last time.

Each runner had achieved their own realistic objective. Each one was fully entitled to their victory lap.

I stopped the video and sat there for a while. I'm not sure I'd ever thought about which race I was actually running.

THE MIMETIC DESIRE TRAP

Most of us don't choose our race. We inherit it.

The instinct to copy others is hardwired. Psychologists call it mimetic desire. We want what others want because they want it, not because we independently decided it was worth wanting. For most of human history this made sense. If the tribe started moving without you, you didn't ask questions. You followed.

That works well when the objective is survival. It works less well when you're trying to figure out what will bring you a meaningful life.

You might know this as keeping up with the Joneses. The difference now is that the Joneses aren't just your neighbors. They're a curated highlight reel of everyone's best moments from around the world. We're not comparing to the people around us. We're comparing to the best version of everyone.

THE RACE YOU NEVER CHOSE

As a result, most of us end up running a race we never consciously entered. The metrics were handed to us:

What income should I be making?
What should my net worth be?
What title should I hold?
How big should my portfolio be?
What kind of house should I have?
How many followers should I have?
Where should I vacation?

None of this was chosen. It came pre-installed, making it easy to mistake for something you decided. Some people run the rat race their whole lives without knowing they're in one.

The question worth asking is simply: why am I running?

This questionnaire is an instrument that taps into ten valued domains of living. It assesses the perceived importance of each of these ten life domains and the degree to which you are living in accordance with this perceived importance.

DEFINE YOUR OWN RACE

Choosing intentionally isn't about lowering your ambition or stopping wanting things. It's about making sure the game you're playing is one you actually want to play.

A person finishing a marathon in five hours isn't less ambitious than the person trying to win it. They're optimizing for something different. Most of us inherit the idea that we should optimize for money. What I'd suggest instead: optimize for your life.

PLAYING YOUR OWN GAME

Asking whether you're missing financial opportunities or how to pay as little tax as possible assumes the metric is always more money. That's someone else's game.

The right question is: what does winning look like for you? Given your values, your sources of meaning, what brings you genuine satisfaction.

What do you want your life to actually look like?

Don't benchmark your life against an index. Don't benchmark it against what you think you're supposed to do. Benchmark it against your enough and your ideal future.

You get one life; live intentionally.

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