The Internal Game

It's what gives our effort meaning

Every person I’ve met who’s chosen to carve their own path begins the same way: with a feeling they can’t justify but can’t ignore.

It’s not a safe or predictable path. It asks for responsibility, risk, and a steady willingness to walk into the unknown. Yet people keep stepping toward it, not because it’s easy, but because the cost of ignoring it feels greater.

There is a force inside that pushes them to be challenged. I’ve come to see that this force usually arises from one of three deep motives, or a combination of them:

1. Security

2. Expression

3. Contribution

These aren’t professional goals. They’re inner forces that pull a person toward a larger life.

Many people seek security. For those who grew up in homes of poverty, neglect, or dependency, the drive is to create stability for themselves and their families. They want more control over their lives so they are not vulnerable.

Others are driven by expression. They feel contained in their current environment and can no longer conform. They have something to say and need to create their own path to say it. These are often the people who make poor employees but great artists or entrepreneurs.

And there are those moved by contribution. They want to serve, to add something meaningful to the world around them. Many were helped by others who changed their lives and now feel compelled to pass that forward.

All three share a unifying thread: the desire for freedom.
Not freedom from something, but freedom to commit to something—the life we actually desire.

On the surface, someone might leave a salary to escape dependency and seek independence. But beneath that is the deeper wish to live from a place of sovereignty.

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Freedom and the Desire for More Life

Connected to this desire for freedom is an impulse for discovery.

There’s a moment in many lives when the outer world feels steady, maybe even good, but something inside knows it’s not enough. There’s a restlessness for more life.

As children, that freedom is everywhere. We are constantly changing—new schools, new friends, new experiences. The body matures, the world opens, and everything is in motion. Each stage asks something different of us. Each step forward expands who we are.

Then, in early adulthood, the rhythm shifts. We begin to commit to a partner, a profession, a place. Routine takes root. The pace of change slows.

For some, that brings peace.
For others, it brings a quiet ache.

A sense that the life they’ve built no longer stretches to contain who they’re becoming. The same energy that once carried them forward begins to fade, like a river that’s lost its current.

So they leap.
They start again. They make a move that others call risky but that feels inevitable. They walk away from what’s known not because they are fearless, but because staying still has become too painful.

Through that leap they discover something vital: life responds to movement. New frontiers wake up dormant parts of us. Risk, though uncomfortable, keeps the inner world alive.

I think of this as life force—the current that runs through us when we engage what’s real. It might appear as the pull to start a new venture, to tell a truth that’s been avoided, to slow down when everything around us says go faster. It’s the moment we stop managing life and start meeting it again.

When we’re connected to that force, we welcome change. Even our problems become raw material for growth. That’s the work of those who lead, create, and build: to meet the unknown each day and find themselves within it.

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The External Game

The irony is that the moment we step into this path of freedom, we’re met with a flood of measurable indicators of success or failure.

The entrepreneur faces revenue targets.
The leader faces KPIs.
The artist faces views, sales, and applause.

What once felt alive and immeasurable soon becomes something that can be counted, tracked, and managed.

These markers are useful. They provide structure and feedback. Without them, the journey loses form. But they are not the thing itself.

When we mistake the markers for meaning, the very path that was meant to set us free begins to feel like another cage.

I once worked with a sales leader who had just taken over a new territory. Early on, he struggled to sleep because he was anxious about failing. One morning at 4:30 am, he woke, checked his phone, and saw an email with the previous day’s sales numbers. They were off target. He got up immediately to fix it.

The next night, he woke again at 4:30 am. This time, the numbers were good, so he went back to sleep. Soon, he no longer needed an alarm. His nervous system was the alarm. Every morning, he woke at 4:30 am to check.

If the numbers were good, he rested. If they were bad, he worked.
Three years later, he was exhausted, burned out, and resentful of the work he once loved.

His success had become dependent on something he didn’t even choose. Every morning was a referendum on his worth.

Allen Carr, the British author on addictions, would ask smokers when they decided to become addicted. The answer, of course, is that they never did. It just happened.

The same happens in life. We get pulled into patterns we never consciously chose, and because we never question them, they grow.

When I met that leader, we had to rediscover why he chose his career in the first place. It was security, the wish to create stability for his family. But that same motive had a shadow side: fear of losing it all.

Until he could create safety within himself, no number would ever be enough.

The goals we set matter. They give us form and focus. But without connection to what lives beneath them, they become hollow. The path that began in pursuit of freedom starts to feel like something to survive.

This is why we must continually return to why we began. The targets matter, but how we approach them—and from what inner state—determines whether they nourish us or drain us.

When we lose our center, every problem feels like a threat. When we’re grounded in it, the same problem becomes a teacher.

The Compass Within

In the beginning, we need frameworks. We look to mentors, books, and best practices, anything that gives structure to the unknown.

But something shifts as we grow. The problems become less technical and more human. The playbooks stop fitting. What once felt like wisdom now sounds like noise.

The higher we go, the less our work is about following best practices and the more it’s about developing our own. We move from asking “What’s the right thing to do?” to asking “What’s right for me, here, now?”

This is where many people feel unmoored. They’ve spent years excelling by doing things the right way. But at a certain point, external guidance can’t carry you further. You need something deeper—a signal that doesn’t come from the noise around you but from the clarity within.

Next week, I’ll be working with six partners at the top wealth management team in the country. They’ve just stepped into leadership. They’re brilliant executors, but now their task is different. They can’t just follow the rulebook; they have to write their own. They have to stop waiting for permission and find what’s meaningful to them so they can lead not just with performance, but with presence.

That’s why clarity of center becomes everything. At the highest level, you’re not managing results; you’re shaping reality. And you can’t do that without knowing where you stand.

When we’re connected to that center, every challenge becomes a chance to align the inner and outer worlds, to let what’s happening outside reflect what’s unfolding inside.

When we lose that connection, life gets noisy. We start looking outward for answers, copying others, chasing formulas that don’t fit. There’s nothing wrong with seeking ideas, but we have to treat them as experiments, not blueprints.

There’s no universal formula for a good life. No perfect routine. No single way to lead, to love, or to succeed. There’s only your way, the one that reveals itself as you walk it.

And when you treat each decision as a chance to deepen that connection to yourself, life gets clearer. The fog lifts. The next step shows itself.

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Freedom as Practice

Freedom isn’t something we win and keep. It’s the ongoing practice of self-discovery, the courage to keep meeting who we are becoming.

Every challenge, every success, every risk is an opportunity to align what’s happening outside with what’s true inside.

The external game gives us form and feedback.
The internal game gives us meaning.

And the only real mistake is forgetting that the game was always ours to play.