The Grand Metaphor of Sports
With everyone talking about Kobe Bryant this week, I've been thinking a lot about the role sports plays in our lives. It’s clearly a powerful one: Kobe’s name is on everyone’s lips.
The things I have to say aren’t about Kobe (although I’ll reference him too). There are people far more qualified than I to articulate what needs to be said.
Instead, I’m going broad — I want to talk about sports itself.
I'll wax philosophical for a minute (bear with me) and then I have some things to share that I’ve found practically applicable and use in my daily life. I hope you’ll find them useful too.
In this email:
The grand metaphor of sports
It’s not about you
Sports and business
Some quotes
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The grand metaphor of sports
Why do we care so much about sports?
It's more than just the adrenaline of watching your team win. It's not just about living vicariously through athletes, or the community among fans, or the entertainment of the game.
Those things matter. But on a deeper level, I think we love sports because they encapsulate (on a high-stakes and therefore highly engaging stage) so many essential pieces of the human experience.
Strategy, leadership, team dynamics. Personal mastery, the mastery of skill, the pursuit of greatness. It's our exploration of human potential and our proxy for war — because even in times of peace, it's important to test strength and know who's strongest.
We love sports because it’s a small-scale metaphor (the context of a game) for life itself. To win at life, you have to be good at strategy. To master the world around you, you must first master yourself. You have to train and push your own limits in order to grow.
And unlike life, sports are easily measurable. There are numbers, stats, and clearly defined rules.
It’s life, but shrunk down so we can see it all at once — the same way a novel distills years of human life into the most essential pieces, so we can see how all the threads tie together.
We love it because it’s relevant. We relate to it on a human level, and looking at everything on a small scale helps us understand. Which is why the athletes that master the game become not just our sports heroes, but icons that bleed over into the other things we do — and studying sports makes us better in all the other areas of life, too.
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It's not about you
In the spirit of learning from athletes, two things have stood out to me as people talk about Kobe:
He was always talking about other people, not himself. He found meaning in lifting others up.
He was committed to the purpose. He did whatever he had to to help his team win: his own role in the process was less relevant than the goal.
That second one parallels one of the points Ryan Holliday makes in Ego is the Enemy (I’m paraphrasing, because I can’t find the quote): fall in love with your purpose, not your own role in creating it.
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Sports and business
Books on sports mentality are one of my favorite things to study. Partly because I just really love sports psychology, and partly because they’re incredibly useful.
Spots and business have a lot of parallels: competition, refining your craft, mental toughness (like Yogi Berra said, "90% of the game is mental. The other half is baseball.")
Some of my favorite reads:
On the inner game: Mind Gym by Gary Mack — I first read this book in high school, and it completely changed the way I thought about the internal components of growth. Mack has worked as a sports psychologist with all the major sports leagues — NFL, NHL, MLB, etc. As he says: “Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course: the space between your ears.”
On mastering ourselves: The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey — this book is about mastering the game of tennis, but it’s equally applicable to business. It’s about how we learn (and don’t learn), and what mental states enhance our performance vs. shut it down.
On leadership: The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh — an obvious one, since it’s advertised as a book equally relevant to both coaches and executives. It’s a blatant bridging of the gap between the two worlds.
What are your favorites? Reply and let me know — I’m always looking for more recommendations.
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Quotes:
"As a young basketball player, Bill Bradley would remind himself, 'When you are not practicing, remember, someone somewhere is practicing, and when you meet him he will win.' The Bible says something similar in its own way: 'Blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.' You can lie to yourself, saying you put in the time, or pretend that you're working, but eventually someone will show up. You'll be tested. And quite possibly, found out." -- Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy
“Neither mastery nor satisfaction can be found in the playing of any game without giving some attention to the relatively neglected skills of the inner game. This is the game that takes place in the mind of the player, and it is played against such obstacles as lapses of concentration, nervousness, self-doubt and self-condemnation.” — Tim Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis
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Writing this has gotten me all excited about sports — lucky for me, the Super Bowl is this weekend, and judging by how the conference final games went, it’s going to be a good game.
I’ll be spending Sunday thoroughly enjoying the grand metaphor of sports — and after going through my notes to put together this email, I’ll probably be re-reading some sports psychology books between now and then. ;)
Until next week,
Hannah