You Can’t Win a Game You Don’t Want to Play
Why purpose isn’t a destination. It’s a decision.
Principle #3 of 9 in the Art of Encore Living series.
I used to believe that purpose would reveal itself if I waited long enough. A sign. A calling. Some moment of clarity that would point to “the thing I was meant to do.”
But that’s not how it works.
At least, not in my experience.
For years, I drifted between identities: musician, teacher, restaurant manager. Each role had its moments, but none gave me a sense of direction. I could succeed at the work in front of me, but I couldn’t tell you the larger game I was playing. I didn’t know the rules. I didn’t know what winning looked like. I only knew how to keep going.
After the cardiac incident that pushed me out of the restaurant world, I became a professional guitarist. It was meaningful, fulfilling, and aligned with my skills. But years later, when the opportunity came to step into coaching at the Akimbo Workshops, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time: pull.
Not pressure. Not obligation.
Pull.
The kind that comes from inside. Or maybe it was outside?
An increasingly loud and persistent call telling me, “This isn’t who you are any more — this is who you are.”
But even then, I didn’t have a map. I didn’t know what coaching was “supposed” to look like. I didn’t know how to turn it into a vocation or whether I had the right credentials.
What I did know was this:
Meaning isn’t found by waiting for clarity. It’s found through committed and intentional action.
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That’s when I learned the truth of this third principle:
You don’t find your purpose. You define your game.
Purpose isn’t a destination. It’s not buried in your past or hidden in your soul like treasure. You can’t think your way into it or journal your way toward it.
Purpose is something you make up — and then make real — by choosing an endeavor done on purpose, with purpose, and for people who matter to you.
You define your game the moment you choose:
who you really are
what you’re really good at
and where you really belong
Then you pick an endeavor that uses those elements to make a meaningful difference.
People don’t suffer from a lack of purpose.
They suffer from misalignment.
A misfit between:
their values
their strengths
their scene
and the work they’re doing
Encore living is the process of closing that gap.
And that process begins with this principle:
Define your game — or someone else will define it for you.
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Choosing your game requires three kinds of honesty:
1. Honesty about who you really are.
Your values aren’t aspirational. They’re revealed in the choices you make when things get hard. If you want to define your game, you start by asking:
What principles do I refuse to compromise?
What do I believe a meaningful life looks like?
What kind of person am I committed to becoming?
Purpose grows from character — not ambition.