This winter, my pickleball game fell apart. I wasn't feeling low — I was still showing up — but I had quietly shifted from playing to competing. Focused on the outcome, the ranking, the score. The fun left. The pressure filled the space. I had pickleball burnout. In a hobby. And it turned out to be a signal about something much bigger than my backhand. In this episode, I share how I got my mojo back — and why the shift from playing to competing is one of the quietest, most damaging things that happens to leaders and their teams.
Summary
This winter, my pickleball game fell apart. I wasn't feeling low — I was still showing up — but I had quietly shifted from playing to competing. Focused on the outcome, the ranking, the score. The fun left. The pressure filled the space. I had pickleball burnout. In a hobby. And it turned out to be a signal about something much bigger than my backhand. In this episode, I share how I got my mojo back — and why the shift from playing to competing is one of the quietest, most damaging things that happens to leaders and their teams.
Takeaways
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TEASER
Hey there. It's Bernadette. In this week's episode, I'm gonna talk about a time I had pickleball burnout in a hobby, but it turns out to be a signal of something much bigger. So let's get into that in this week's episode of Good Vibes Leadership.
INTRO
Hey there. I'm Bernadette Smith. Whether you're in between meetings or on a quick commute, welcome to Good Vibes Leadership. This show focuses on playful, inclusive leadership through micro lessons you can actually use. My goal is to help you connect authentically with your team and clients and create a world where everyone actually wants to show up. Lead with joy, build for everyone. Let's go.
EPISODE
Welcome back to Good Vibes Leadership. I'm Bernadette Smith. I'm CEO of Equality Institute. I'm author of Inclusive 360. And, apparently, I'm also someone who can get burned out on pickleball. So that's what I'm gonna get into today. But, actually, it's not really about pickleball.
You know, I tend to be a pretty intense person. So if I'm excited about something, I can go pretty deep. But this topic is about what happens when leaders, including me, stop playing and start competing, and why that matters for your team more than you might think. So let's get into it.
So this winter, I joined a queer pickleball ladder league. Essentially that means that the better you do, the higher you go up in the ladder, and the worse you do, the lower you go in the ladder — the rankings drop. And somehow, the pressure of the pickleball ladder league, as opposed to just kind of playing pickup games or rec games for fun — somehow the pressure of the ladder league made my game fall apart. Not dramatically. I never felt especially low about it. I was still showing up. I was still going to the court, still playing, but I definitely was putting way too much pressure on myself. I also felt like I was physically moving slow, and then I was sliding down the rankings. But I couldn't quite figure out why this was happening.
But then I realized I had pickleball burnout in a hobby. I know that sounds kind of silly. But what happened was somewhere along the way, I stopped playing, and I started competing. And I think the ladder league triggered that. I became too focused on the outcome, the ranking, the score, and I lost a lot of the fun. And that sort of was replaced by pressure. And pickleball, which is something that I do for joy, for community, for the cardio, for all of it — the endorphins — it just became a place to prove myself, or another place to put pressure on myself.
And once I sort of figured all that out, I just knew something was off. So what did I do? I didn't try harder, and I didn't practice more. I just remembered why I showed up in the first place. And that's joy. Joy above all else. Certainly above the ladder ranking, above the cardio, above the networking, which I can do sometimes. I decided to create a new mantra. I decided to create a few check-ins with myself to bring my kind of meandering and self-critical brain back to the present, back to the process, and back to the play. And when I did that, my mojo came back.
So what I would wonder about for you is: have you ever made a shift in your personal life, in your work life, from playing at something to competing at something? And sometimes these things happen quietly. You might not notice it's happening. You might still be showing up. You're still functional. But something has left. Maybe the joy has left.
And I think leaders do this all the time. They stop playing, and they start competing. And when they do it to themselves, they also can do that to their teams. When we're competing instead of playing, the development gets replaced by the outcome. Any curiosity gets replaced by essentially a scorecard, and the joy leaves. It kind of leaves slowly, and people might not even notice it until it's gone.
And I know that some of you lead sales teams, and competition is literally the point. I get that. I hear that. But even some of the best competitors will tell you that when it stops being fun, the numbers follow. The mojo leaves first, and then the metrics catch up.
So playful, inclusive leadership requires actually playing. A process over an outcome. Curiosity over a scorecard. Joy built in — not as a reward, not as an afterthought for hitting the numbers.
So when leaders shift from playing to competing, you might lose some of the mojo of the team. So here's the question I wanna leave with you today. It's not whether your people are showing up. It's whether they're still in it. Is your team playing, or are they just competing? What about you? Are you playing, or are you competing — at work and in life?
GOOD VIBES TO GO
Alright. Let's move into this week's Good Vibes to Go. This week's Good Vibe to Go is to check out the stand-up special Comfort Beyond God's Foresight by Ian Carmel. You can watch the full-length special on YouTube. I really, really enjoyed that show, so check it out.
OUTRO
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That's your weekly shot of Good Vibes Leadership. For the full rundown of this week's top stories and some proof of positive change, grab my 5 Things newsletter at 5thingsdei.com. Remember, lead with joy, build for everyone. Now go be the leader your people deserve.