and why watching sports keeps us chasing others’ wins instead of creating our own
The Beautiful Distraction
In previous seasons of my life, I thought I liked sports. Thought I liked the local football team, the local baseball team. Thought that their success would bring some type of joy to my life.
I’d show up in team colors, buy the overpriced fan attire, eat the party food, laugh at the commentary, and shout when everyone else shouted.
I’d let the trance take over- leaping from my chair when the team scored, high-fiving strangers as if their success somehow belonged to me.
For years, I told myself I was having fun. Maybe I was, but not for the reasons I thought.
It wasn’t the game that pulled me in. It was the atmosphere.
The energy. The drinks. The noise. The belonging. (And sometimes the Super Bowl commercials.)
There’s a certain electricity in being part of a crowd that moves as one. You feel seen without saying a word. Connected without context. It tricks you into believing you’re part of something meaningful.
But eventually, I saw it for what it was: I never cared about the outcome.
The victories were illusions- empty events dressed in fireworks, slogans, ads, and parties.
What I actually loved was the party.
The vibe. The social buzz. The laughter. The energy. The drinks. The food. You get the point.
All of it was fun — the collective excitement, the permission to just be for a few hours.
It was never about loyalty or sport.
It was about being included in the ritual- the crowd, the noise, the movement, the moment.
A temporary escape from thought, beautifully packaged as unity.
That’s the beauty and the danger of it: the illusion feels real.
For a few hours, people find meaning through momentum on a TV screen that isn’t their own, cheering for outcomes that will never reach their actual lives.
The game ends.
It’s Sunday night.
Then, back to reality on Monday.
Real life- where your illusion of victory or defeat expires, and you’re left to face the scoreboard that actually matters.
The Comfortable Distraction
Don’t get me wrong- I love parties.
I love good food, loud laughter, the kind of nights where everyone’s energy rises together and life feels full. That’s what living is about. Celebration. Connection. Joy.
But this isn’t about the parties.
The purpose of this post isn’t to shame what’s fun, it’s to help us ask ourselves why we’re doing it.
Are we genuinely interested in the game?
Or are we trying to fit in?
To bond?
To make our partner happy?
To not be the one in the room who “doesn’t get it”?
For most people, sports aren’t about the sport. They’re about belonging- about not feeling left out of the ritual everyone else seems to revere.
We tell ourselves we’re relaxing, but what we’re really doing is escaping.
Sports give us an easy outlet- a surge of adrenaline and emotion that requires nothing from us but presence on a couch.
It feels passionate, even purposeful, but it’s borrowed passion- secondhand energy dressed as entertainment.
And it works…because it’s safe.
Easy.
Fun.
Everyone else is a part of it, so I am too. Right?
It gives you something to talk about, something to feel, something to belong to, without ever having to look deeper.
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
I notice it all the time now – women sitting beside their partners at the bar, pretending to care about the game, laughing at the right moments, nodding along as if they understand every play.
It’s not judgment, it’s recognition. The act is familiar.
We’ve all done it somewhere in life, performed interest to earn acceptance.
I used to joke with my husband, “Why do you care if they win? Are they going to send you a check in the mail?”
We’d laugh, but the question always hung in the air because there’s truth in it.
None of it changes your life. The next morning, you still wake up in your same reality- same job, same routine, same patterns that need attention.
Maybe the real reason we watch so religiously isn’t loyalty to a team but avoidance of our own scoreboard.
Because real victories- the ones that matter, require effort, reflection, and creation.
Improving the way we communicate. Building something that lasts. Rekindling our passion. Creating work that moves the world forward.
That kind of victory isn’t televised. It’s lived.
And it’s far easier to invest emotion into a team’s progress than to face the places in our lives where our own growth has stalled.
Perhaps if we took off our masks, stopped performing, and focused on our own victories instead of mimicking someone else’s, we’d find more fulfillment than any game could offer.
Real pride doesn’t come from fitting in.
It comes from showing up as yourself.
The truth is, it’s easier to live through someone else’s victories than to create your own, to feel alive through a scoreboard rather than through your own courage.
But here’s the cost: the more you feed on borrowed emotion, the quieter your own drive becomes.
And one day you wake up realizing you haven’t lost interest in the game – you’ve lost interest in yourself.
The Illusion of “We”
I once stood in line at a grocery store late at night.
The cashier, a young woman wearing an oversized Chicago Bears jersey, looked exhausted. Her eyeliner smudged, her voice flat. Out of habit I asked, “How’s your night going?”
She sighed. “Not great. The Bears lost.”
Then, almost apologetically, she added, “My boyfriend’s a huge fan. When they lose, I’m the one who hears about it.”
That moment hit me harder than any game ever could.
It wasn’t her jersey. She was working through fatigue, trying to make ends meet, absorbing the emotional aftermath of someone else’s obsession.
Somewhere between the team’s loss and her boyfriend’s anger, a woman became collateral damage to misplaced identity.
Decades ago in the 1970s,, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology published a study called Basking in Reflected Glory.
Researchers found that fans say “we won” when their team succeeds, but “they lost” when it doesn’t.
That small, subtle shift of language exposes the illusion: a team’s victory becomes a fan’s self-esteem boost; a team’s failure feels like personal humiliation.
We’re not cheering for athletes – we’re protecting identity.
Their win temporarily covers our own lack of one.
And that’s the danger: when your sense of pride comes from people who don’t even know your name, you’ve actually handed over your power.
We think we’re watching the game.
But it’s really watching us, exposing how often we choose distraction over direction, and noise over our own our own truth.
Why Some Minds Lose Interest
I’ve always wondered why so many intelligent or creative people eventually lose interest in sports.
It’s not arrogance, it’s awareness.
A quiet recognition that repetition only entertains you for so long before your mind starts craving creation.
Sports offer rhythm, community, and shared emotion, all good things. But for certain minds, the loop loses its pull.
They start wanting more than motion.
They need a plot.
A reason.
A story that moves forward.
For people who thrive on progress, predictability feels like quicksand.
They want to build things that last, not just watch things that end.
They’d rather spend time creating something that means something like art, business, ideas, relationships- than escape into someone else’s victory.
It’s not that those who enjoy sports are missing something.
It’s that those who drift away from it start to hunger for creation instead of distraction.
They seek challenge that evolves, not motion that loops.
To a creative mind, the outcome is already known: someone wins, someone loses, the crowd erupts, and life returns unchanged.
It’s not that the game is meaningless- it’s that their own potential has become louder than the noise around it.
We don’t lose interest because we think we’re above it.
We lose interest because awareness grows louder than entertainment.
Because when your life starts becoming your masterpiece, endless replays of someone else’s pursuit no longer feel like excitement, they feel like escape.
Borrowed Glory, Leaked Power
Every time we celebrate someone else’s win as if it were our own, something subtle happens inside us:
our subconscious relaxes.
It thinks we’ve accomplished something.
That dopamine hit feels like achievement, but it’s false fuel.
Then we wonder why we’re restless.
Why we scroll, bet, or chase more distraction.
We’re mistaking stimulation for fulfillment.
The brain rewards you the same way for watching victory as for earning it, but your soul always knows the difference.
There’s nothing wrong with loving the game.
Sports can unite people, spark passion, and remind us what human strength looks like.
The danger lies in forgetting that the same potential lives inside you.
That same discipline, focus, and fire isn’t meant to be observed- it’s meant to be expressed.
It’s easy to hand your emotion to a scoreboard and call it passion.
It’s harder, and far more meaningful, to channel that same intensity into your own life:
To build something.
Build momentum that’s yours to keep – maybe it’s your relationship, your health, your business, or your self-trust. Create something tangible that reflects your effort, not someone else’s.
To repair something.
Strengthen the places that still need attention- the conversation left unspoken, the relationship that only survives on shared game nights and mutual distraction, the habit that’s slipping, the goal you’ve delayed.
Too many couples confuse companionship with parallel avoidance, mistaking “watching together” for genuine connection. Real intimacy starts when the TV turns off and the silence becomes honest.
To deepen something.
Bring energy to what actually matters , the partner waiting for presence, the purpose that needs commitment, the life that’s asking you to engage fully.
Because real victories don’t happen on television.
They happen quietly , and in the way you follow through, the way you grow, the way you show up differently than you did last season.
You don’t need to chase someone else’s adrenaline to feel alive.
You just need to remember that creation is the most natural state of a fulfilled mind.
So, enjoy the fun, the food, the laughter- but don’t stop there.
Don’t let the ritual of spectating replace your own rhythm of living.
Life isn’t meant to be watched from the stands.
It’s meant to be lived, felt- created.
Cheer if you want to, but cheer for yourself first.
For the progress no one else sees.
For the goals you’re actually building.
For the reality you’re brave enough to shape instead of escape.
Because that’s where real fulfillment lives, not in the highlights, but in the work, the depth, and the quiet wins that no scoreboard can measure.
Your Scoreboard:Â Lioness Action Plan
- Audit your attention.
Where are you watching instead of building?
Track the hours, then imagine what they could compound into if redirected toward your own pursuits. - Reclaim your emotion.
The adrenaline you feel during a close game is yours.
Channel it into something that actually advances your life. - Celebrate creation, not consumption.
Feel the same pride when you learn a new skill, finish a project, or simply keep a promise to yourself. - Re-define “team.”
The only “we” that should define you is the one you’re actively shaping off the TV screen- your family, relationships, your goals, your mission, your life.
Spectating can be beautiful- the shared excitement, the movement, the emotion, the sense of connection.
But when it starts replacing your own focus, your goals, your creation, your growth, that when it becomes dangerous.
You weren’t meant to live through other people’s moments.
You were meant to build your own.
Stop getting lost in someone else’s story and wins.
Start living inside the one you’re here to create.
Stop borrowing pride from strangers.
Start earning it from yourself.
The game was never meant to end when the whistle blows , it was meant to begin when you realized you were the one meant to play.
The world doesn’t need more fans.
It needs more players.
It needs you.
