This post is inspired by several coaching conversations I’ve had this past week and my recent visit to my grandson’s soccer (football) match last Saturday.
During any kid’s soccer game, there’s always a certain kind of chaos — parents shouting, whistles blowing, kids chasing the ball like a swarm of bees. And yet, in the middle of it all, your child can somehow hear your voice above the crowd.
It’s remarkable, isn’t it? Out of all the sounds, that one voice cuts through the noise. It has meaning. It matters.
But sometimes, that meaning becomes a distraction. Your child turns and yells, “Mom, stop yelling! You’re making me lose focus!”
And in that moment, I saw something profoundly human (and the idea to write this post). We all live surrounded by the noise of life — opinions, headlines, expectations, judgments, and the endless chatter of our own minds. And just like that, young player, we often latch onto one piece of noise that bothers us, thinking it’s the thing keeping us from peace, clarity, or success.
We start trying to fix it.
We create problems to solve.
We get lost in the game of managing noise.
As my mentor Michael Neill says, “For something to be a problem, it has to fit in a wheelbarrow. If you can’t put it in one, it’s not a problem.”
Yet most of the problems we wrestle with can’t be picked up, weighed, or carried. They’re made of thought — noise we’ve mistaken for truth. We shake our own snowglobes of thinking, then wonder why everything looks so cloudy.
How Do Pro Players Do It?
When you watch professional soccer players, something stands out. The noise in a stadium is deafening — tens of thousands of fans chanting, cheering, and shouting — but the players are calm, composed, and responsive.
They don’t try to control the noise. They don’t wait for the crowd to quiet down before they can play. They simply see past it. Or maybe it’s hear past it.
They’ve learned to trust their instincts, their awareness, their presence. Their focus isn’t forced — it’s natural. Beneath the noise, there’s a quiet intelligence at work. They’re in the game, not in their heads.
We could learn a lot from that.
Life doesn’t have to quiet down for us to play well. (Unless you’re playing golf, but that can be another post later).
The world doesn’t have to stop shouting before we can think clearly.
We just have to remember where our experience is coming from — inside-out, not outside-in.
When we understand that, the noise stops being a problem. It becomes just part of the atmosphere — something that fades into the background once we drop back into the present moment.
Playing Beneath the Noise
The next time you find yourself reacting to the noise — that one comment, that headline, that nagging thought — pause. Notice what’s really happening.
The noise isn’t out there. It’s just a thought passing through, a mental echo that doesn’t need fixing. Beneath it, there’s always a quiet field of clarity and wisdom. That’s where life’s real game is played.
The pros know it.
Kids forget it.
And we — the rest of us — are just remembering it again.
Reflection:
Where in your life are you waiting for the noise to stop before you play?
What if you didn’t have to wait at all?
Play on!
If this message resonated with you — if you’ve been caught up in the noise and are ready to rediscover the quiet clarity beneath it — I invite you to explore it more deeply. Join me for a Reflection Session where we look beyond the noise together. You’ll leave with a clearer mind, a lighter heart, and a renewed sense of flow in the game of life.
👉 Book Your Reflection Session Here
Rick Ruppenthal | COACHING 