Remove The Brake

I parted ways with my co-founder this week. My technical co-founder. It was mutual, which helps, and it is still a loss, which is honest.

So I have been somewhere south of my usual energy. Nearly back to four out of five. Slowly reorienting, figuring out what is next.

And then, of all things, football reached in and handed me something.

We were watching England against Croatia. At halftime it was 2-2, and honestly England had been bad. Nervous. Jittery. Playing like people worried about getting it wrong.

Then they came out for the second half with all guns blazing. Completely different team. Loose, sharp, alive.

Afterwards the pundits did the usual thing. What did the manager say at halftime. He must have given them the hairdryer.

But Kane and Bellingham said no. No hairdryer. The manager, Tuchel, said something simpler. Something like: you know who we are. You know how we play. So let’s go and play our way. If we lose, we lose. It does not matter. At least let’s play our way.

That is it. That is the whole speech.

He did not fire them up. He gave them permission.

He let them feel safe enough to play the way they actually wanted to. And that removed the brake.

Dan Peña has a crude version of this. Remove your brake. Stop pressing the accelerator and the brake at the same time. Get rid of the resistance you are adding yourself.

Alan Watts and Osho point at a softer version of the same thing. Play with life.

Watts talked about life as music, or dance. Something you move with while it plays, not a journey you complete. Osho said much the same.

Treat it as something to play, not something to win.

Same move, different accent. Take your foot off the brake.

And then the thought did what thoughts do, and got bigger than it should have.

Because what is life is a genuinely open question. There is the standard answer, a few variants of it, and then there is whatever you privately decide it is, which quietly changes everything.

If you decide life is something to be played, rather than won or passed or proven, then a lot of it simplifies in a slightly violent way.

Did you play your way. Did you give it your style. Did you leave it on the field.

That is the whole scorecard. The result is not on it.

It is an almost extreme internal locus of control, except held lightly, with enjoyment, instead of gripped.

Now, obviously. This is one good half of football. It is the first game of the tournament. We might go out in the group stage and make me look ridiculous. Building a life philosophy on forty-five minutes of England playing well is exactly the sort of thing that ages badly.

And I do need to remind myself not to take this stuff, this life, so seriously in the first place. That is sort of the point.

But still. Who would have thought the England team would be the ones to nudge me, in a low week, back toward something lighter.

I will experiment with some version of it.

Take the brake off. Play my way. See what happens.