A Crushing Defeat and an Infinite Game

Earlier this week, soccer fans watched the US’s World Cup run come to an end with a 4-1 loss to Belgium, a match that included several hard-to-watch defensive mistakes. I’m not a sports person, but even I got a little misty at this loss. At the final whistle, one US player curled up into a near fetal position in the middle of the field, sobbing privately inside his shirt.

Soccer is what religion scholar James P. Carse called a “finite game” [1]. It has set rules, an end point with distinct winners and losses, and is played for an audience. An “infinite game,” on the other hand, is one where the only real goal is to keep on playing. In Carse’s framework, the one true “infinite game” is life itself.

As coaches, we see our clients through all sorts of defeats—though not usually on an athletic field and often not in ways they are immediately aware of. Many of them may not need new strategies so much as greater awareness of the games they are unconsciously playing.

Which Game Are You Playing?

What’s interesting to me about this finite/infinite game idea is how it opens up a whole set of questions about what kinds of games we’re playing and how aware we are of which game we’ve stepped into.

Are you judging your week or year with a scorecard in hand? Do you play as if you’re doing so for an audience with an announcer broadcasting your triumphant goals and heartbreaking misses?

What unspoken rules are you playing by? What have you told yourself you must or must not do? And how do those rules impact your enjoyment of the game of life?

The finite/infinite game lens can be used as a metaphor for how we may be approaching life—or how we want to be approaching it in the future.

What Rules Are You Playing By?

I don’t want to brag, but I recently learned the meaning of one of soccer’s most obtuse rules: “offsides.” I can now join in the chorus of moans when our team makes this blunder. It’s like finally being given the lyrics to a song everyone else knows while you had been mumbling your way through on a three-second delay.

Naming the unspoken rules of life has a similar effect.

My husband famously did not understand that my unspoken rule for parenting young children was that if they got hurt, it was my fault. Worse, every boo-boo felt as if I had lost at the game of mothering, my kid’s cries the final whistle signaling my defeat.

Voicing this rule would have helped my husband understand why I guarded our young children from harm like a goalie protecting the net. And becoming aware of this “finite” mindset myself would have helped me see why it always felt as if I was taking on the role of mother World Cup style—as if the whole world was watching.

Looking back, I can see that the goal of raising children who never got hurt was beyond impossible—and beyond the point if I really think about my parenting values. Instead, I could have played the long game of continuing to show up for them with love as they developed resilience and competence.

We all no doubt have rules we are playing by that we have not fully articulated. When you notice a finite mindset at play, you might ask: What’s the rule that you haven’t said out loud? What does winning or losing mean to you here? When will you know the game is over?

The Choice is Yours

In Carse’s estimation, there’s nothing wrong with playing finite games. Instead, Carse emphasizes knowing which kind of game you’ve joined and that you have chosen to step into a finite game as the more important takeaway.

Are you a sales rep who either meets the quarterly goal or doesn’t (finite) or are you a teacher who builds long-lasting relationships with their students (infinite). 

And before you say it, yes, the teacher could also either meet or miss their learning benchmarks (finite) and the sales rep could also build long-lasting relationships with their clients (infinite).

Carse would argue that we only end up in finite games by choice, and can therefore choose to exit them by choice as well. Whether or not you agree with Carse, the useful part is realizing we can choose which mindset to bring to a given moment or circumstance.

As you go through your day, how does it change your mindset to consider your activities as either part of a finite or infinite game?

Are there finite games with rules you wish were different?

What would need to happen for you to step away from the boundaries of the finite and into the playfulness of the infinite game?

When we know what kind of game we’re playing, we get to decide whether we are playing to win or playing to play.

If this resonates with you, drop me a line and share your thoughts.

References

[1] Finite and Infinite Games: A Vision of Life as Play and Possibility