Taking Risk on the Pitch

There is a phenomenon that people with bad eyesight report, one where when testing their vision without their corrective lenses, they notice that for a split second they could crystal-clearly see. I have had that experience. I saw it with my own eyes but never reported it to anyone besides my dad. No one would have believed me anyway. It was a sliver of evidence that somehow behind all the malfunctions of my eyes, they still inherently had the ability to see. 

The same thing used to happen to me on the soccer field. (Or as I used to call it, the football pitch.) While playing and competing on the pitch with and against my teammates, on a game-day versus a better or worse team than mine, or in the park with and against my friends, these strange little sparks of energy would use my body and legs to produce a small creation of what seemed to me nothing other than magic. A perfectly timed goal-saving tackle, heading the ball back to my goalie, reading the mind of an opponent striker, playing an assist-worthy long ball, scoring a perfectly-timed header, or anything else that was executed, somehow, through me, in a world-class level. It almost seemed like a sliver of evidence that there is more of me to tap into. More of me waiting to be discovered, doing its best to show itself to me, sometimes in moments that counted the most. I never learned to dig for more of it. Instead, I chose to do what most of us do: pray for more magical and unpredictable visits. 

Praying instead of digging was fully tied to my confidence. When I had the confidence to dig, more of the creative force showed itself to me. When I lacked the confidence to do, to act, to try, and just prayed, the evidence was never clear. It’s almost like creativity almost exclusively gels with confidence, but struggles to exist in a drought. 

Most of those world-class moments took control of me when I was on auto-pilot, in the zone, moments where I chose not to care. These were all moments of me taking a break from thinking. In my thinking mind, I never consistently had the confidence to justify the risk of pulling-off a world-class act. The stakes were almost always too high. It was too risky. A self-driven mistake, or unforced error, always seemed, to my rational mind, overly ambitious. A mistake on the pitch could lead, at any moment, to losing a starting position, which leads to losing your identity and dream of being or becoming a soccer player. (Or what I would say to my dad, a footballer.) Which pretty much leads to losing everything. Being a bench player steals your rational ability to keep your dream alive. Staying on the pitch, however, keeps your dream alive, even if it’s as ridiculous as dreaming of playing for Manchester United. 

But the stakes almost always seemed too high, which is why most times when a creative and ambitious idea popped into my head, inviting me to the dance, I said no. I was usually too scared. I said no so many times, year after year, season after season, until it stopped visiting. Until it left me alone to think rationally about every decision I had to make on the pitch, stealing from me what I loved most about the game, the magic. 

It got to a point where being creative had to be forced out of me with my thinking mind. But it was never the same. It could only be a ghost version of what my creative side used to be. It was me doing what I thought I should be doing. It was me trying to replicate and recreate moments that used to be effortless and free of risk-calculations and stake weighing. That’s exactly why I didn’t really hang up my boots for good and announce the end of my journey when I did on that cold, rainy, November, Sunday afternoon at the University of Michigan, losing and being knocked out of the Big Ten tournament. It really happened years earlier when I started noticing that the force of creativity inside of me had stopped visiting to show me bits of evidence that I should keep going. I knew it was the end when negative thoughts about the security of my position on the starting line-up would never take a break from swimming in my head. Thoughts of what my coaches or teammates would think about one or more of my unforced errors would keep me on edge for every second of every time I was on the pitch. When I reached that point, soccer, very simply, became too hard to play. 

If my son asked me what I would have done differently on my journey to increase the odds of making my dream a reality, one of my answers would be that I should have listened more to the suppressed voice inside my heart, so desperate to get me to dig deeper. I should have looked at each surprising moment of world-class soccer as not surprising at all, but as proof and evidence that I was on a path and that I was climbing a ladder, and that each glimpse of world-class was a step up on the ladder of becoming a world-class player. I should have repeated every single of those moments over and over again until I could perform them effortlessly at high stakes on the pitch, when it really counted, in front of my teammates, my coaches, and the parents. Once I reached that point I would have qualified to be exposed to the next levels up the ladder, taking me step by step, to everything that I ever wanted. 

I understood that the odds of making my dream a reality were low. I understood that to make it I needed to play. And to play I needed my coaches’ approvals. I mostly played to satisfy my coaches. To satisfy my coach I had to minimize risk. All this equals focusing on not making mistakes so that the coach decides to keep playing you. But I was wrong. The odds of making it are actually a lot lower than I ever could begin to imagine. Any analogy would break your heart into tiny pieces. The odds are impossible. Because the odds are already stacked completely against all of us, the only existing chance of actually breaking the ceiling of impossibility (everything they show us on TV), is by bringing out, reliably and gradually, the most authentic and creative version of who you are as a player. You want to learn to mold yourself more and more into the player that visits you sometimes when you are not too busy thinking. The player who reminds you that you are more than a generic clone of a player. The player that you wish you were brave enough to listen to. 

Water that creative force. Spend time thinking about it. Let it breathe. Give it a bit of sun every once in a while. Listen to it a little tiny bit more than you would normally. Take a little more risk with not-so risky moves. Maybe believe in yourself a little bit more than you do. Maybe a bit less brain and a bit more heart. It might only be for a split second, but the evidence is right there for you to see for yourself. Crystal clear.