When Freedom Comes into Play

On Sports and Performance in Light of the Three Principles

By Natasha Swerdloff

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

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

And yet, somewhere deep inside, I knew there was something else. Something I sensed in fleeting moments. Moments when everything fell away, and the game felt light, 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 concept of “The Three Principles,” I saw something that changed my relationship to performance and also gave me insight into who we are behind our thoughts.

I used to think that 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 realized that truly strong performance comes from somewhere else entirely.

It comes from stillness. From not taking our thoughts so seriously. From not struggling to “stay in the moment,” but instead letting what is greater than thought step forward and guide us.

We are all born with access to infinite wisdom and intelligence. It’s not something we have to learn. It’s something we discover when we stop letting our thoughts take us away from the immense resources that lie within us.

The personal mind gets in the way

The more we try to figure out life—or the game—the more we get in our own way. We get caught up in ideas about how we should be, what we’re supposed to accomplish, and how we might appear to others. This creates inner turmoil, and we get tense.

But we won’t perform at our best as long as we listen to the noise. We do so when we draw on the stillness within. That’s when we connect with something deeper and greater than our personal minds. That’s when we lean on something stable, far more reliable, and loving.

When the personal mind takes a back seat, we slip into play, timing, and flow. Not because we’re pushing 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 took up 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 swing, I had the opportunity to discover where I was mentally.

The Flow of Silence

I began to realize that my game reflected my state of mind. When I overthought things, I performed poorly. When I tried to control my swing, things went awry. But when I let go of the need to do everything just right, a sense of ease emerged. I experienced an effortless flow. Something flowedthrough me,withoutcomingfrom me.

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

One of my most liberating realizations was that I am not my results, my skill 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 that, something settles within us. We act more freely. We participate in life with less fear. Not because we’ve learned to “think positively,” but because we intuitively recognize that thoughts are not reality, but fleeting shadows that come and go.

The Inner Wise and Playful Guide

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

We still feel stressed or frustrated. But we know it will pass. We know we can return to the peace and quiet again and again.

When we stop fighting with ourselves, joy returns. Playfulness and curiosity. It’s not a strategy—it’s our nature. We’re designed to play freely. To live openly. To surrender to the moment and let something greater take over.

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