Stay in the Game | Stand Where You Are

There’s a moment in every run, every stretch, every ordinary Tuesday where the mind quietly slips off the field. The body keeps moving, but attention wanders up ahead, or drifts backward, or starts negotiating with a version of life that isn’t happening right now.

This is us dropping out of the game.

Not quitting. Not blowing a whistle. Just tuning out enough to miss what’s happening right beneath our feet.

We’re Already in the Game

Playing the game isn’t hopping around and psyching ourselves up. It’s standing where we are and allowing that to be enough. When we cannot stand where our feet are, we miss the game entirely. Not because we lost or sucked. Because we only get to play when we show up each moment.

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“You’re already in the game. You can’t not be in the game.”

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Those words of Ram Dass echo, reminding us that life is happening in real time. And our only job is to stay present for it, to experience it…inch by sacred inch.

No eject button. No press conference.

Animals know this intuitively.

One Hoof, One Moment

Place yourself underneath an ibex, inching its way across a vertical cliff face. You’ll witness what it looks like to be present. There’s no second guessing. No overthinking. No daydreaming about the future. When that wild goat lands its foot…it lands. It’s all in.

It doesn’t look five steps ahead and freak out. It doesn’t shake out the last rock it climbed. It doesn’t rush. It doesn’t freeze. It weighs its weight down into whatever foothold it’s standing on.

Right now.

If that isn’t freeing, I don’t know what is. The ibex takes this presence thing to another level. Every step is deliberate, precise, and fully committed. The ibex isn’t “building confidence.” It isn’t visualizing success. It’s responding to the rock that’s actually there.

No extra drama. No wasted motion.

What looks impossible from a distance becomes manageable up close—because the ibex never leaves the step it’s on. It doesn’t borrow trouble from the ledge above or panic about the drop below. It stays in the game by staying in the moment.

That’s the quiet power of presence. When attention is exact, balance follows.

No Sidelines in Real Life

We like to believe that motivation mostly comes from focusing on the next step. The truth is, clarity arises when we stop trying to get somewhere. When we plant our attention deeply into the here and now, our movement follows. It comes naturally. When we’re present, we don’t need to chase the next step… it comes to us.

This is why trails teach us so much without saying a word. We can’t daydream our way across loose rock. We can’t future-plan our way over roots. The trail insists that we stay with it. Miss the moment, and we may stumble. Meet it fully, and we flow.

The mountain goat doesn’t call this mindfulness—it calls it being alive. And maybe that’s the point.

This Is the Only Field There Is

Staying in the game doesn’t mean being calm all the time. It means being honest about where we are. It means feeling the wobble and staying anyway. Feeling the burn and breathing through it. Feeling the uncertainty and placing our foot down with intention.

This is Dirty Zen in motion. No bypassing. No pretending. Just presence with a little grit on it.

So….keep standing where your feet are. Let that be enough for now. The next move will come when it’s ready.

Nature always plays fair like that.

Cheers!

Kether

Spunky Mind

"If we can't stand where our feet are,

we miss the game entirely."

—Spunky Mind