What Are You Actually Playing For?

September has a particular energy to it. The Premier League is a few weeks old and already every fixture is being talked about as though it might define the season. The NFL kicks off with the same certainty - this is the year. And on the tennis calendar, the US Open is playing out its final rounds, the last Grand Slam before a long, cold run into 2027.

Ask any of the athletes involved what they're playing for right now, and you'll get a fast, confident answer. The title. The playoffs. The trophy. It sounds like a values statement. It isn't one — and the difference matters more than it looks like it should.

The wrong version

Here's what it tends to look like when a player has an outcome where a value should be.

A young footballer has a poor first month of the season. Not injured, not dropped - just quiet, off the pace, invisible in games he used to influence. In session, when I ask what's driving the frustration, the answer is usually a version of: I'm not doing what I said I'd do this year. Dig a little further and "what I said I'd do" turns out to be a number - games started, goals, minutes. A result he doesn't control and can't directly aim at.

The same shape shows up in a tennis player two matches into a Slam. They tell you their goal is "to go deep this tournament." It's a perfectly normal thing to want. But as a compass, it's useless the moment the scoreline turns against them, because it only tells them anything when they're winning. The moment they need direction most - a set down, rattled, second-guessing a shot they'd trust blindfolded in July - the outcome-goal has nothing to say to them.

This is the trap of September specifically. Season-opener energy makes everyone state their goals loudly and early, and almost all of those stated goals are outcomes wearing a values costume.

Values, properly

In ACT terms, a value isn't a target you hit and then you're done. It's a direction you can walk in indefinitely, and - crucially - it's something you can act on right now, in this rep, this point, this half, regardless of the scoreboard.

"Win the league" is not a value. It's not something you can do this afternoon. You can't take a single action today that either completes or fails to complete "win the league" - it's entirely dependent on results you don't control, months away.

"Compete for every point, even the ones I'm going to lose" - that's a value. You can do it in the next thirty seconds. It doesn't care what the score is. It's still fully available to you two sets down, 0-40, in the last five minutes of a dead rubber. Nothing about the circumstances can take it away from you, because it was never about the circumstances.

The useful test I give players and clients is simple: could you do this even if you knew for certain you were going to lose? If the answer's no, you're holding a goal, not a value. If the answer's yes, you've found something worth building a season on - because it's the one thing pressure genuinely can't touch.

This isn't about pretending outcomes don't matter, and it isn't about lowering ambition. It's about noticing that outcome-goals are a poor thing to run on moment-to-moment, even while they remain a fine thing to aim toward. You still want the title. You just can't use "I want the title" to get you through the next point.

Try this

If you're a player, a coach, or a parent reading this in the thick of a season just getting going, here's a five-minute version of the work I'd normally do across a session or two:

Write down what you said you were playing for this year. Then, next to it, ask: is this something I can act on today, regardless of how today goes? If it's a number, a ranking, a result - it fails the test. Rewrite it as the behaviour underneath it. Not "make the playoffs" but "compete for the full sixty minutes." Not "go deep in the tournament" but "play my game on the point in front of me, whatever the last one did."

Then use that rewritten version as your pre-match or pre-session cue instead of the original. Not because the original goal disappears - it doesn't, and it shouldn't - but because you now have something to stand on when the scoreboard turns against you, which, at some point this season, for every single athlete reading this, it will.

Next month: what it actually looks like to act on a value when form deserts you — using the early rounds of the World Series and the Rugby League World Cup as the backdrop.