The Game You Can’t Win

Issue #531 – Monday, June 8, 2026

📬 In This Issue:

🧠 The unwinnable game that’s quietly exhausting you

💡 The new Holosync suite that helps your purpose find you

🎤 MaryEllen on why acceptance isn’t quitting

🏛️ How awareness is the key to end suffering

📣 Be honest — how often do you argue with reality?

🧠The Big Idea

Estimated Read Time: 4 Minutes

The Game You Can’t Win

(And the Freedom That Comes From Stopping)

By Ryan Standifird

Have you ever caught yourself arguing with reality?

The traffic that "shouldn't" be this bad. The plan that "should have" worked out. The chapter of life you're in that isn't the one you pictured.

We do it constantly. We decide how things “ought to be” and then we get frustrated with the way they actually are.

And it's exhausting.

I know this one personally. After I graduated with a creative writing degree, I knew writing was my purpose. What I didn't have was a job that would let me do it.

So while I sent out resume after resume, I paid the bills however I could. 

I was a sign-twirler for a shoe store, wearing a giant shoe costume under the 100-plus-degree Arizona sun. I cold-called real estate agents to sell them social media tools. I even sold cable door-to-door. 

I hated all of it.

And on the drive home, I'd get this empty pit in my stomach because none of it was where I was "supposed" to be.

The Game of Black and White

Bill Harris, Centerpointe's late founder, had a name for that pit. 

He called it the Game of Black and White.

Here's the idea.

We split the world into halves. Good and bad. Want and don't-want. The way things should be, and the way they shouldn't. 

Then we spend our lives insisting that our preferred half should win - that having should beat not-having, that the dream job should beat the shoe costume.

But here’s the thing: 

It's an unwinnable game.

Bill pointed out that the two halves actually need each other. Up only means anything because there's down. You can't have one side "win" and erase the other any more than you can keep the heads of a coin and toss the tails.

And here's a concept that blew my mind:

"Black" and "white" aren't even real qualities of things. They're labels we add from the outside. The shoe costume wasn't a failure - I decided to see it that way. 

The pit in my stomach wasn't coming from the job. It was coming from the fight against reality.

Bill used a beautiful image for this. He said most of us look at life like a whirlpool in a river and mistake it for a solid, permanent thing. But a whirlpool isn't one thing. It's a constantly changing flow.

Everything is like that. Always moving. Always becoming something else.

And when we cling to how the flow "should" look and resist the fact that it's always changing, that's where the suffering comes from.

How to Stop Playing

So what do you do about a game you can't win?

You step out of it. It doesn’t have to be all at once, just a little at a time. Here's how to start.

1. Catch yourself mid-game.

The next time you feel that familiar tightening - frustration, resentment, that "this shouldn't be happening" feeling - pause and name it. 

There I am, playing the Game of Black and White again.

That awareness is the first step in letting go of the resistance.

2. Let whatever happens be okay.

This was Bill's go-to advice, and I'll be honest, it sounded impossible to me at first.

It doesn't mean you give up or stop trying to change things. It means you stop adding the second layer of suffering - the fighting-with-what-is piled on top of the thing itself.

I was already in the costume. If I wanted to get paid, I had to twirl the sign. Resisting that fact changed nothing except my mood on the drive home.

3. Keep choosing what matters - without the war.

Surrendering to reality doesn't mean surrendering your dream. 

I never stopped pursuing writing, not for a single one of those jobs. Bill was clear that you can create all the change you want as long as you stop “resisting what is” while you do it.

The wanting was never the problem. Resisting the reality of the situation was.

This is where meditation is key. It's tough to notice your resistance when your head is full of noise. Meditation helps you stay aware of what you can and can’t change right now.

The Drive Home

Remember that empty pit in my stomach?

It's gone now. I eventually quit all of those jobs. They paid the bills while I figured out how to get where I needed to go.

And eventually, I made it. 

I get to write Mind Power for a living - the dream actually came true. And those jobs… they had their use. They paid the bills and now provide a perspective on my life that I never would have gotten without them.

See, the pit was never really about the shoe costume or the cold calls. 

It was about resisting a reality that I didn’t want and couldn’t do anything about at the moment.

That's what Bill was pointing at all along.

Freedom isn't winning the Game of Black and White. Nobody wins that one.

Freedom is setting the game down - still chasing what matters to you, but with an acceptance of where you are right now.

You don't have to win. 

You can stop playing the game, knowing that eventually you’ll get to where you need to be.

💡Check it Out!

(New Suite) Purposeful Life

You don’t find your purpose. Your purpose finds you.

This week’s essay is about stopping the fight with reality so you can actually hear what matters. Purposeful Life takes that one step further.

It’s a 4-part Holosync journey designed to create the inner conditions where your purpose can finally be heard — four tracks guiding your brain through opening, understanding, activating, and living the purpose that’s been with you all along.

Discover what happens when you stop searching and start listening.

🎤 MaryEllen's Mic Drop

Everyone wants the breakthrough. Almost no one wants the part where you stop fighting the moment you’re in.

But that’s the whole trick: you can’t push your way to peace. The people I’ve watched build something real didn’t force reality to cooperate — they stopped wasting energy arguing with it, and spent that energy moving instead.

Acceptance isn’t quitting. It’s where the power finally goes back into your hands.

— MaryEllen

🏛️ Founder's Archive

“Once you develop to the point where you can observe your
thinking process, rather than being it, you can
direct your mind, and in doing so begin to
take charge of your life.”

-Bill Harris
Centerpointe Founder
(1950 - 2018)

🗝️Insiders Only

Listen to the Most Recent Brains ‘R’ Us Podcast

Today’s Kids Are Tomorrow’s World Leaders
By MaryEllen Tribby

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🤣Meditation Meme of the Week

🪞 Like the New Look?

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