Most people think that it’s smart to play smart. Smart = smart-no, no, no. In fact, it’s not smart to play smart using only your intellect!
The usual interpretation of the typical “player” with the attitude of “just play smart” is to act and do everything very cunningly. Outsmart and outplay everyone around you. At work, in a romantic relationship, simply always, everywhere, and with everyone. The most common thing is that the opposite happens. These people overplay themselves, make unnecessary moves or too many, and often, in the end, lose. They don’t know when to stop. They don’t know when enough is enough.
They function on the autopilot of their subconscious. They don’t know the harsh rule, both in work and life, that the rules change during the game.
There are no announcements, no preparation. This is what makes life incomprehensible to most people. These are strange sports that require you to consciously experience every situation anew. For this reason, “players” naively believe that their copy-paste strategy will bring them success again. There is no repetition. Every situation that seems identical is actually slightly or more different. On the stands, there are the even worse ones – the life fans, who unfailingly know what the right move is for every player at any given moment. They criticize every mistake without asking why they themselves aren’t on the field when they’re so good and know everything.
Most of the time, both “players” and fans realize this too late, only after the feeling of great unsubstantiated superiority, enormous wealth without knowledge, and sudden fame without merit. In the end, despite unrealistic expectations of victory, they still lose. And that, truly, hurts.
So the question is: how to play in the best possible way?
The answer is perfectly simple. Every one of us knew it as children. Play smart – it’s always a game at the core. In both English and German, the infinitive “play” is used for playing an instrument (play the piano, spielen Klavier), for engaging in sports, theater, etc. In some other languages, the term “playing basketball,” “acting in a play,” are used.
Children have the healthiest combination of passionate play and serious dedication. In the first 7 years of life, everything for a child is a game. And the game is everything. It is almost absurd that most of us raise children to stop playing the game of life and finally get serious and grow up. To behave according to their age. When you stop playing, you become too serious. The spark in your eyes fades, the joy of life disappears, and strong winds of your environment extinguish your smile. Then you start losing pieces of yourself, your essence, parts of your soul, until you lose it entirely and become a robot. The greatest people in history have always played as children. They didn’t play “smart,” they played with creativity, openness, originality, honesty, inspiration, …
They created new and brilliant products, trends, styles, fields of science… Nikola Tesla, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Ronaldinho, Pele, Federer, and all other greats in various fields simply stayed childishly in lthe ZONE, in SAIL and completely dedicated, both to themselves and to the game. If you think deeper you will realize that children live in SAIL. They are sincere, authentic, have clean Integrity and pure love. As Picasso himself said: “The hardest thing for an artist is to grow up.” Therefore, the foundation of every great achievement is LOVE.
Love is the only thing that can give the energy, joy, persistence, and perseverance necessary to achieve top results in any field.
Intellect doesn’t play; intellect executes.
The heart plays, and it plays with love.
Intellect, which is 95% of our waking time controlled by the subconscious, plays it safe. It repeats. It repeats the same thing. More of the same.
When you know, you don’t think.
When you think, you don’t know.
When you know, because the heart knows, you feel what the right move is. You don’t have to think. When you think, it means you don’t know. And when you don’t know, the EGO, the conditioned you, tells you what to think, say, do, or be … And then it seems smart. What a costly delusion!
The heart knows, the intellect has to think.
So, who do you listen to? The heart or the intellect? Do you know more often, or think more often? Do you play, or do you “play”?
Every time we don’t liste to our heart and intuition, but follow our intellect, that child inside us grows older and we lose a part of our soul.
In the end, when you lose the last piece of your soul, you become a zombie, you become a number, you become a mediocre, you become what you were never meant to be, and you become what, in your essence, you are not.
Intellect is a great servant but a poor master. When our subconscious becomes the automated master, when we ignore the quiet messages of our heart, when we no longer follow our navigation system of love, we stop playing well for ourselves and for anyone else. Intellect should be responsible for efficient execution. This is the ART of life: to listen to your heart, not your intellect.
Play smART by heART, stARTing NOW !
Ivan Kokeza