Throw Out the Score

We live in a world defined by results. From sports to business to politics to relationships, we devote nearly incomprehensible hours and dollars, thoughts and energy and attention – resources – to achieving outcomes. And sure, outcome is important: Look no further than this election. And, accomplishment is important. Ask the city of Los Angeles how good it feels to win championships, especially in the midst of a tragic and difficult year. The players, coaches, management, and ownership – not to mention the fans – of the Lakers and Dodgers undoubtedly feel validated, like “it was all worth it” because they finished the season on top. In sport, getting a ring is arguably the biggest accomplishment and to many, the whole point of playing. In politics, it has become all about winning, gaining and holding power at all costs. There are several problems with this perspective.

The first is that winning is HARD. There is SO MUCH that goes into winning even one game or match or race at the highest level. Talent, skill, hard work, dedication, and perseverance are under our control, and an athlete needs all of them to succeed. Support is critical because no one wins alone. Then there’s staying healthy; the 2020 Lakers and Dodgers – and almost every champion at every level, individual and team – managed to stay away from major injuries. Conversely, there are countless teams that could have won it all and didn’t because their best player got hurt. Another thing that’s outside of our control? The opponent. An athlete or team can play their best and still lose; it happens all the time, far more often than does winning. I’ve been watching The Last Dance and in Episode 2, they talk about the 1986 playoffs and Jordan’s 49 points in Game 1 and record 63 in Game 2. And yet, the Bulls got crushed (by one of the best teams in history, more proof that the opponent matters). And then, even if all of that goes right, champions need luck. 

The 2015 Golden State Warriors not only managed to avoid injury to their best players, but every team they played in the postseason had one major contributor hurt and unable to play. That’s double luck! It doesn’t take away from the Warriors’ greatness, just like the 2018 Warriors losing Kevin Durant and then Klay Thompson to injury doesn’t detract from Toronto’s title; it merely shows the uncontrollability of an outcome. Which brings us to the point of all this: Using a single outcome as a measurement of success, happiness, fulfillment, validation, or worth is a trap. It’s a trap because this “only one outcome is worthy” is the same as saying “I/we have to be perfect in order to succeed,” which is objectively untrue and also: PERFECTION DOESN’T EXIST. It’s a trap because most athletes compete at a high level and rarely – or never – win the big one. Does that mean that their careers were a waste? That they never accomplished anything worthwhile? That they themselves were worthless? This single-minded attachment to outcome as the only measure of success prevents us from appreciating the process and acknowledging the small victories; it closes us off to growth. This consumption with winning is a hallmark of the fixed mindset.

Think about the phrase “championship or bust.” This is the “all of your eggs in one basket” approach to sports. There is so much about a championship that’s outside of our control that has to go right if we’re going to win.  Every once in a while, with skill and luck, it works out. But mostly what happens is that we drop the basket and the eggs break. More often than not, it’s “bust.” What do we do then? The fixed mindset would say that we have to deem everything we did a failure, that there’s only one way to measure fulfillment and losing ain’t it. Coaches lose jobs, players get traded, narratives become “truth,” talking heads spout off opinions, and fans suffer or behave badly (especially in 2020 with the anonymity and buffer of the internet). For the fixed mindset athlete, having only one definition of success leaves them prone to extreme emotional and mental fragility and severe consequences like hopelessness, depression, and burnout. For a team, this can be the end; teardowns and rebuilds and reactive decision-making often start with unfulfilled championship expectations. And yet, we set ourselves up for this! Knowing that winning is so hard and uncontrollable, we stake everything upon it anyway.

On a less severe but no less consequential level, this fixed mindset athlete or team or organization misses out on opportunities for growth in the present moment. Being consumed by something in the future that hasn’t happened (and may not happen) draws our attention out of the present. It takes our focus away from what we’re doing and makes it extremely difficult to actually control the things we can (more on this later). A fixed mindset tells us that everything is just how it is; skills and talents are inborn and unchangeable, challenges are threats, external validation (rings, trophies) is required for success, and worth can only be defined one way. Teams that don’t win are “failed franchises” or places that players don’t want to play. Some of these organizations are plagued by poor management decisions, meddling ownership, the challenges of a small market, or bad luck; the Portland Trailblazers likely forever be known as the team that could have drafted Michael Jordan and Kevin Durant, and that let Bill Walton get away, rather than the 1977 NBA champions and perhaps the most locally beloved team in the NBA. The “loser” tag is a hard one to shake, and a losing culture is even harder to change (Blazers fans, I’m NOT talking about our team here). It becomes a mentality, an expectation, and very often a fixed mindset can push us hard from the extreme that is attachment to the other far end of the spectrum: Detachment.

Detachment is also fixed: The fragility of our attachment to a single outcome, when challenged by the failure to achieve that outcome, can actually push us over an emotional cliff. When this happens, we go from “I only care about winning” to “I don’t care about anything.” If we aren’t going to/didn’t win, what’s the point? This is the extreme reaction to the failure of achieving an outcome; we detach completely and stop caring. This is also fixed, because if we have decided that everything is worthless, nothing matters, there’s no way for us to succeed, then everything (except that one perfect result) is a failure no matter what. At first glance, this might seem freeing, but it’s not; this isn’t being carefree, it’s burnout, a condition that is characterized by…wait for it…mental and emotional fragility, depressive symptoms, a sense of hopelessness, physiological exhaustion, and a detachment from – or even visceral aversion to – the activities that once brought us joy. 

So, attachment leads to detachment. Both are places of low self-awareness and a fixed mindset; in one, all of our attention is on the outcome. In the other, we’ve given up and have no reason to pay attention at all. In both, we have lost the ability to learn. We have sacrificed self-compassion, attention, mindfulness, and control. We are chained to the past (all the mistakes and failures and things we did wrong that robbed us of the win) or consumed by the future (the uncontrollable and unknowable, but desperately and singularly needed). Either way, we are unable to do the things that help us learn, grow, be grateful, be hopeful, cultivate health and resilience, find joy, find meaning, perform, and that give us a chance to win while also diversifying our definition of success. What are those things? They are, quite simply, the choices in front of us and how we approach them. The acronym W.I.N. is a favorite of mine: It stands for “What’s Important Now.”

In the middle, between attachment and detachment is non-attachment. It is neither holding tightly to a single outcome nor hitting the eject button on everything. Rather, non-attachment is a space in which we can choose to direct our attention, free from the lure of the future and the chains of the past. The outcome becomes, rather than the only definition of success, a goal that we are working towards; we want it, but we don’t need it to validate the worthiness of our process or the growth along the way. It is the “middle path,” a place of resilient balance and self-aware, mindful choice. It is a place of connection – to ourselves, and to our love and appreciation and gratitude for what we do. It is a place of intrinsic value and motivation and optimism. As one of my golfers said last week, it is “throwing out the score” and just playing: Playing free from the expectation of perfection that comes with attachment and free from the indifference of detachment. This is often where we play our best. 

It seems counterintuitive, because we’ve been taught that “championship or bust” is how we show that we care. We celebrate that perspective, but we dehumanize athletes in the process. It’s part of our discussion about teams; we pre-assign labels and predetermine worth based on this fixed mindset approach. It’s really unfortunate, because what we should be doing is celebrating the effort, sacrifice, devotion, love, trial and error, small redemptions, and luck that it takes to do anything at a high level. Also, and crucially: Non-attachment doesn’t mean that you don’t care. What it means is that you care about the right things. Non-attachment helps us be more resilient in times of adversity by putting us in a growth mindset. This, in turn, allows us to view challenges as opportunities rather than threats, and it cultivates mental health by reducing self-criticism and removing the pressure of perfection. It helps us work harder and work smarter by objectively examining and understanding where we can most effectively employ the finite, renewable resources of attention, energy, and willpower. It makes us more effective competitors by allowing us to plan based on reality rather than projection. And, it gives us the freedom to feel and think and make mistakes and fail and achieve and learn and develop and strive and win in a space of self-compassion, resilience, realism, and hope. Most importantly, it brings us back to ourselves and to the task at hand, the next choice, the only thing over which we have any control.

It is a winding journey, and it all begins by asking yourself this one simple question:

What’s important now?

Originally published on October 29, 2020