Seven Days in Utopia

When athletes talk about finding their game, they refer to playing at their best on a consistent basis. Physical training supplements this, but truly finding your game primarily comes through training at a whole different level. In fact, finding your game actually has little to do with the activity, sporting related or otherwise.

“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.” (1 Timothy 4:8)

The movie Seven Days in Utopia revolves around the idea of finding your game in life through the pursuit of godliness. This gem of a film provides many life lessons making the movie worth watching, but five lessons stood out as steps to take immediately to find your game.

How to Find Your Game

  1. Know your convictions. Ask yourself why you do what you do. If your purpose is excellence in a sport or in any area of life, consider what drives you. When we discover convictions that go well beyond the temporal, we find motivation in a deeper purpose our existence.
  2. Develop emotional control. Rhythm, balance, and patience, essential elements for operating at your best, come through emotional control. Rhythm, balance, and patience cannot exist with any level of consistency when emotions control. Instead, use emotions as gauges to make finding your game a continual reality.
  3. Be willing to deter from the expected. So often, we become trapped by expectations, both our own and that of others. Find your game by stepping out of what’s expected and stepping into the will of God.
  4. Stay prepared. Some people naturally exude confidence. Others struggle with it. The core of true confidence exists not in natural ability but instead through adequate preparation. Preparation creates a confidence that allows for handling the unexpected and the spontaneous with what often seems like a natural grace.
  5. Confront the lies. What lies drive you? Is your value is found in the game that you play? Or is it found in how and why you play the game? Knowing your value comes from Christ alone provides the convictions and confidence necessary for finding your game.

The Role of Mistakes

In addition to implementing the above elements to consistently operate at a higher level, realize the importance of how to best deal with mistakes constantly. Mistakes can easily knock us off our game and into being off balance, out of rhythm, and lacking patience, or we they can help build confidence.

Mistakes help build confidence when we use them to address the lies that say we’re the sum total of our accomplishments. They build confidence when we refuse to let them snowball and instead choose to see ourselves through through the eyes of Christ. This revolves around knowing who are you as a Christian believer.

When we choose to not allow mistakes to negatively impact our self image, and we instead begin relying on our identity in Christ, we find that we are always acceptable. As we learn to be Living Stones, we discover that we can live and walk in repentance and bask in grace. In that, we finally find our game in a way that impacts eternity.