HeadGames World

The Paperclip Practice

Years ago someone taught me a simple exercise that quietly changed the way I work with athletes and leaders.

Put twenty paperclips in one pocket.

Every time you respond with patience instead of reactivity, courage instead of comfort, or genuine kindness when nobody is watching, move one clip to the other pocket.

The goal is not perfection. The goal is awareness.

Most people believe character shows up in the big moments. The championship. The crisis. The impossible conversation.

It doesn't. Character is built in the hundred small decisions that happen before any of those moments arrive. The ones nobody sees. The ones that compound quietly, like interest.

How many paperclips would you move today?

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For our live and recorded small groups (which are awesome), write Doc Ali to try them for free or go to www.headgameswebcamp.com

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"Very little is needed to make a happy life." — Marcus Aurelius

One afternoon in Nepal I was walking through town with a bag of peanuts, feeling quite pleased with myself for having figured out how to navigate the village.

Then I heard a commotion behind me.

Apparently one of the local monkeys had noticed my snack before I noticed him.

What followed was a ridiculous game of me trying to protect my peanuts and a monkey trying to convince me they were his peanuts.

The monkey won.

What struck me later wasn't that I'd lost the peanuts. It was how quickly I'd recovered from losing them. Five minutes earlier, those peanuts had seemed very important. Five minutes later I was laughing about the whole thing.

It's funny what we convince ourselves we need in order to be okay.

We need the promotion.

We need the perfect outcome.

We need people to agree with us.

We need our kid to stop doing that thing they've been doing for three years.

Then life takes away the peanuts, and somehow we survive.

I've noticed that some of the happiest people I've met, including monks who owned almost nothing, seemed remarkably free from the belief that happiness lived somewhere outside themselves.

That doesn't mean they didn't have goals. It just means they weren't holding their peace hostage until those goals arrived.

There's a difference.

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What peanuts are you chasing these days? If you'd like help finding a little more freedom and a little less striving, I'd love to help. [email protected]