Reading the Game, Reading the Moment
Imagine a rugby team attacking a well-organised defence. They have the ball, a plan, the skills to execute it, and a shared objective. But they have no guarantee of what will happen next.
The opposition adjusts. Gaps close. New opportunities appear. Every action changes the situation, and the next decision has to take account of what has just happened.
The team cannot control everything that comes next. But it can read the game, recognise opportunities, learn from the opposition’s responses, and make choices that improve its chances of success.
What if the difference between trying to control an outcome and learning to influence it is one of the most important distinctions we can make in our own lives?
When Trying Harder Isn’t the Answer
Picture a team repeatedly running straight into a well-organised defensive line. The players are committed. They are working hard. They want to move forward.
But what if effort alone isn’t the answer?
Perhaps they need to change their angle of attack. Perhaps they need to draw defenders into one area to create space somewhere else. Perhaps they need to recognise that the opposition has anticipated their approach and adapt accordingly.
Of course, running directly into a defender can be a perfectly sensible tactic. It might draw in opposition players, secure possession, or create an opportunity for the next phase. The question isn’t whether a particular approach is right or wrong in isolation. The question is whether it is serving the team’s purpose in the situation they face.
A good team doesn’t simply keep repeating what it planned to do before the game began. It reads what is happening and responds.
We can find ourselves doing the opposite in our own lives. When something isn’t working, we may try harder, push further, or tighten our grip on the situation. We can become so focused on the outcome we want that we stop noticing what the situation is telling us.
Sometimes perseverance is exactly what is needed. Sometimes the wiser move is to change our approach.
The challenge is learning to recognise the difference.
The Difference Between Control and Influence
Planning matters. Preparation matters. Taking responsibility for our choices matters. But none of these gives us complete control over the outcome.
We cannot determine how other people will respond. We cannot anticipate every change in circumstances. We cannot guarantee that even a carefully considered decision will produce the result we hoped for.
That doesn’t mean we are powerless.
It means we need to understand where our influence lies.
What is actually happening? What is shaping this situation? What can I influence? Which response is most likely to help?
These questions shift our attention away from trying to force a particular result and towards understanding the circumstances well enough to make a meaningful contribution.
This isn’t about becoming passive or accepting everything as it is. It is about recognising where action can make a difference, where a different approach might be more effective, and where we may need support or collective action to change the conditions themselves.
In rugby, a team cannot make the opposition disappear. It can, however, change its tactics, exploit an opening, improve its communication, and respond to what it learns.
And that brings us to something even more valuable.
Every action gives us information.
A team learns from how the opposition responds, which spaces open up, and which approaches are proving effective. That information helps the team make better-informed decisions in the next phase.
The same is true in life.
We may not be able to control the outcome of a situation, but we can learn from how it unfolds. When we pay attention to what works, what doesn’t, and what might explain the difference, we build a clearer understanding of the circumstances we face.
That understanding helps us recognise possibilities sooner, weigh our options more carefully, and make future decisions with greater confidence.
We don’t need certainty about what lies ahead to make a more informed choice about what to do next.
Understanding the Patterns We Carry
There is another layer to this idea.
Sometimes, our difficulty in letting go of control has very little to do with the situation immediately in front of us. It may be connected to patterns we have developed over many years.
Perhaps we learned that being in control made us feel safe. Perhaps we discovered that being dependable, successful, or indispensable earned us approval. Perhaps we have experienced situations where letting go really did carry a cost.
These responses may have helped us navigate earlier circumstances. They may even have served us well for a long time.
But circumstances change. A strategy that once protected us can eventually restrict our choices, drain our energy, or make it difficult to recognise when another approach is needed.
Understanding this doesn’t require us to condemn ourselves for the ways we have learned to cope. Nor does it mean that we must suddenly abandon the habits that have helped us survive or succeed.
It invites us to become curious.
What am I trying to protect?
What am I afraid might happen if I stop managing everything?
What has this way of responding given me, and what might it be costing me now?
Am I responding to the situation in front of me, or to something I learned to expect from an earlier experience?
What is genuinely within my influence, and what am I trying to control that isn’t mine to determine?
These questions are not a demand for immediate answers. They are an opportunity to understand ourselves more clearly.
And understanding takes time. Recognising a pattern is a beginning, not an instruction to change everything overnight.
The value lies in the process: noticing, questioning, learning, and gradually discovering that we may have more choices than we first realised.
Reading the Game. Reading Ourselves.
A rugby player has to read more than the ball. They watch the defensive line, notice movement, assess the available space, and respond to what is unfolding.
They also have to recognise when their original plan is no longer the best option.
We can apply the same kind of attention to our own lives.
We can learn to distinguish preparation from the need for certainty. We can ask whether the security we are protecting is helping us grow or keeping us in a situation that no longer serves us. We can recognise the difference between supporting another person and taking responsibility for decisions that belong to them.
Sometimes the best decision will be to stay and persist. Sometimes it will be to change our approach, establish a boundary, seek support, or leave a situation altogether. Sometimes we may not need to make a decision immediately. We may simply need to understand what is happening before we decide what comes next.
There is no single response that works in every situation.
The point is not to find a universal rule for how to live. It is to become more attentive to the circumstances we are actually facing, rather than responding automatically or insisting that reality conform to our expectations.
And as we learn to read situations more clearly, we also learn to read ourselves.
That knowledge can change the quality of our decisions.
The Present Is Where We Can Act
We often think about the future as something we need to secure. We make plans, anticipate problems, and try to prepare for every possible outcome.
There is nothing wrong with planning. Looking ahead can help us identify risks, prepare resources, and make thoughtful choices.
But we cannot know everything the future will bring. Circumstances will change, other people will make their own decisions, and some things will remain beyond our control.
The present is where we can observe what is happening, assess what we know, and decide what to do with it.
This is not an argument for ignoring the future. It is an argument for preparing for it by paying attention to the present.
When we act, observe the response, and learn from the experience, we build knowledge that can guide our next decision. We may not be able to predict exactly what will happen, but we can become better equipped to respond when it does.
A setback can reveal something we had overlooked. A conversation can change our understanding of a problem. An approach that fails can show us where our assumptions were mistaken. An unexpected opportunity can help us see possibilities we had not previously considered.
None of these experiences guarantees success the next time. But each can give us information that makes our next choice more informed.
This is how we move forward without needing to control every step.
It is also important to recognise that not every barrier can be overcome through individual effort or a change in personal attitude. Some barriers are built into institutions, policies, environments, and social attitudes. They require collective action and changes to the systems that create or maintain them.
Understanding where our influence lies includes recognising when a problem needs more than an individual solution.
In rugby, a player can change their line of running, but they cannot single-handedly remove the opposition from the field. The team has to work together within the conditions of the game.
In life, too, understanding the situation helps us recognise not only what we can do ourselves, but also what needs to change around us.
Every Phase Teaches Us Something
A rugby match is made up of many phases. The ball moves, the defence responds, players reposition themselves, and new opportunities emerge.
A team may make progress in one phase and lose ground in the next. An attack may come to nothing, yet the players may learn something valuable about the opposition. A promising opening may reveal a new possibility, even if the team cannot exploit it immediately.
The outcome of each phase matters, but it is not the only thing that matters.
What the team learns can shape what it does next.
Our lives rarely unfold in a perfectly straight line either. We make decisions with the information available to us, discover things we didn’t know, encounter barriers we hadn’t anticipated, and sometimes realise that a different approach is needed.
We don’t have to get every decision right for the experience to be valuable.
A decision that doesn’t produce the desired result can still help us understand our circumstances better. Changing direction doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning our purpose. It may mean that we have learned enough to pursue it differently.
And when we understand more about a situation, we have a better foundation for whatever decision comes next.
Progress isn’t always about getting the outcome we wanted. Sometimes it is about becoming better equipped to choose our next move.
Beyond the Score
At the end of a rugby match, the score tells us who won and who lost. It gives us a result.
But the game itself reveals much more. It shows us how players observed, decided, acted, adapted, worked together, and responded when things didn’t go according to plan.
There is value in that process, regardless of the final score.
The same is true of our lives. We can become so focused on whether we have achieved a particular outcome that we overlook what an experience has taught us along the way.
We can mistake effort for effectiveness, interpret a setback as proof that we have failed, or continue pursuing an approach simply because we have already invested so much in it.
But what if we also asked what the experience has helped us understand?
What did we learn about the situation? What did we discover about ourselves? What influenced the outcome? What might we do differently with what we know now?
These questions don’t make the outcome irrelevant. They help us draw more value from the experience, whether the result was what we wanted or not.
A game can be a starting point for reflection. So can a difficult conversation, a change in circumstances, a challenge at work, or a decision we have been struggling to make.
The experience gives us something to examine. Our willingness to look at it carefully helps us discover what it might teach us.
And that learning travels with us.
We may not be able to control what tomorrow brings, but what we understand today can help us meet tomorrow with greater awareness, more options, and better-informed choices.
Perhaps that is one of the most useful things rugby can remind us: we don’t have to control the whole game to make a meaningful contribution to what happens next.
We have to read the moment, recognise where our influence lies, and be willing to learn from the response.
So, the next time you find yourself trying harder to force a particular outcome, pause for a moment.
Ask yourself:
What is happening now?
What am I not seeing clearly?
What is shaping this situation?
What can I influence?
And what can I learn here that might help me make a better-informed decision next time?
We may not control the outcome. But we can learn to understand the game we are playing, recognise the choices available to us, and use what we learn to shape our next move.
That is how we move forward—not by knowing exactly what the future holds, but by becoming better equipped to meet it.
Beyond the Score — because sometimes the most valuable thing we take away from a game isn’t the result. It’s what the game helps us see.