When freedom comes into play

About sports and performance in light of the three principles

By Natasha Swerdloff

I played table tennis at an elite level when I was young. That meant long training days, ambitions, competition, and an insistent inner voice reminding me that I had to perform, improve, and preferably win.

I loved the game. But I was also caught up in a fundamental misunderstanding that many people—both in sports and in life in general—live with: that our value depends on how well we perform.

Yet, somewhere deep inside, I knew there was something else. Something I sensed in flashes. Moments when everything fell away and the game felt easy, alive, and completely effortless. I didn't think—I just played, and my body knew what to do.

It was pure presence. As if I wasn't playing, butwas beingplayed.

A new understanding of performance

At the time, I didn't understand it. I thought it was luck or the result of extra concentration. But when, many years later, I came across the Three Principles, I saw something that changed my relationship with performance, but also gave me insight into who we are behind our thoughts.

Before, I thought I had to think my way to calmness and precision. That I had to analyze my way to the right strategy and push myself mentally. Now I saw that truly strong performance comes from somewhere else entirely.

It comes from silence. From not taking our thoughts so seriously. From not struggling to 'be on', but instead letting that which is greater than thought come forward and guide us.

We are all born with access to infinite wisdom and intelligence. It is not something we have to learn. It is something we discover when we stop thinking ourselves away from the enormous resources that reside within us.

The personal mind trips you up

The more we try to figure out life—or the game—the more we trip ourselves up. We get caught up in ideas about how we should be, what we should achieve, and how we might look to others. This creates internal noise, and we tense up.

But we cannot perform optimally as long as we listen to the noise. We do so when we draw on the silence behind us. Here we connect with something deeper and greater than the personal mind. Here we lean on something stable and far more reliable and loving.

When the personal mind takes a back seat, we fall into play, timing, and flow. Not because we push ourselves—but because we shift our attention away from the noise that was getting in the way.

This became clearer to me when I later started playing golf, which is in many ways a quiet sport. You have a lot of time to yourself, and every time I stood with a club in my hand preparing to take a shot, I had the opportunity to discover where I was on a mental level.

The flow of silence

I began to see that my game mirrored my mind. When I thought too much, I performed poorly. When I tried to control my strokes, things went wrong. But when I let go of the need to do everything perfectly, a lightness emerged. I experienced an effortless flow. Something flowedthrough mewithoutcomingfrom me.

It became a kind of active meditation. A laboratory where I experienced again and again that silence, calm, and trust lead to precision, while doubt, effort, and self-criticism create tension and mistakes.

One of my most liberating realizations was that I am not my results, my level, or my ranking. I am not the sum of my successes and failures. I am the one who experiences it all.

When we humans see this, something calms down. We play more freely. We participate in life with less fear. Not because we have learned to 'think positively', but because we intuitively recognize that thoughts are not reality, but passing shadows that come and go.

The inner wise and playful guide

When we stop and listen—not to the stream of thoughts, but to the silence that lives beneath it—we encounter an inner guide. A wisdom that has always been there. It requires no analysis. It is quiet. Loving. Spacious. It shows us, moment by moment, how we can move through life – and in sport – with ease and clarity.

We still feel pressured or frustrated. But we know that it will pass. We know that we can return to the silence again and again.

When we no longer struggle with ourselves, joy returns. Playfulness and curiosity. It's not a strategy—it's our nature. We are designed to play freely. To live openly. To fall into the moment and let something greater take over.

For me, that is the greatest gift: seeing that what I longed for as a young person was already within me. It is within all of us. It is just waiting for us to discover it.