In Simon Sinek’s book, The Infinite Game, he introduces a concept that is very useful for considering more widely how people, organisations and even countries behave, and why often the longest surviving players play as if they are in an infinite game and not as if they are in a finite game.
A finite game is what we would normally understand as a game. There are two or more players, with set rules, with a clear end and usually there is a winner. A soccer game is a prime example – it lasts 90 minutes and there are clear rules and there will be a winner and a loser unless there is a draw – in a knock out tournament the rules are tweaked to ensure that at each round only one team in a game can win.
An infinite game is quite different. There are multiple players, the rules are fluid, each player has its own idea of their objective, but all players adhere to one overriding principle is that they need to keep the game going indefinitely. There are winners and losers in infinite games, but when a player drops out the game continues and new players can enter the game. Soccer as a whole is an infinite game, though it is made up of many finite games – all teams want to survive, and in fact soccer would be a tedious game if only one team ever won.
When a finite player comes into an infinite game, they sometimes succeed for a while, but often they drop out of the game – either they run out of resource, lose willingness to play, get taken over by another player, or find a more interesting game to play outside of the infinite game.
Life is an infinite game, and the smartest players treat their own lives as part of that infinite game. (Read Eric Berne on Games People Play if you have never thought as life as a game). Of course, in our lives we play many finite games, but usually we play to survive as long as possible, and to keep the game going.
On the world stage, politics is an infinite game. When states try to play finite games, say by invading another country, they often come up against an opponent who is playing an infinite game. The current prominent example is Russias invasion of Ukraine, that should have been a slam dunk win for Russia, but has turned into a prolonged and tortuous war. Russia are playing a finite game, Ukraine are playing an infinite game. Russia want to gain control of Ukraine, Ukraine wants to survive. The stronger player may win, but often the one with the infinite mindset outlasts the stronger player (e.g. Afghanistan, Vietnam).
Education is an infinite game. Of course it has many finite games in it – school, qualifications, university. However, education is not just the formal stages we think of. Getting a degree may be a worthy and honourable thing to do, but it is not the degree that puts food on the table, it is what we have learnt to apply from a degree that enables us to earn a living. And education does not end when we complete all the formal stages.
The contention of this post is that mindfulness is an infinite game. Modern mindfulness traces its roots back to the Buddha, but the Buddha did not invent mindfulness and the Buddha learnt from other lineages. Mindfulness appears in some form in many other spiritual traditions, and we can see in modern psychology that there are forms of mindfulness that do not draw on Buddhism.
However, individuals and mindfulness organisations often treat mindfulness as a finite game. For example someone may only turn up at a mindfulness meditation session when they feel the need for some stress relief – they may get some immediate benefit but it is unlikely to be long lasting. Mindfulness is routinely packaged as short courses (MBSR, MBCT, Mindfulness for Life, .b), and these are in themselves finite games. Organisations that centre themselves around one or two trainings are likely to struggle to survive.
In the rest of this post, we will examine modern mindfulness from the perspective of Sinek’s Infinite Games. Mindfulness will be considered to be the modern approach to mindfulness, largely derived from Jon Kabat-Zinn’s development of MBSR.
Characteristics of Infinite Games
Just Cause
Everyone in the mindfulness world does share a common belief that mindfulness is beneficial; regular practitioners sit down daily to meditate, they go to meditation groups and mindfulness classes. They know from their own experience how beneficial it is, and encourage others and support others in developing a mindfulness practice.
Buddhism is often framed in terms of reducing or eliminating suffering, and the implicit or explicit mission of most mindfulness organisations is that. This is laudable, and often gels those organisations in ways that are limiting. As a just cause, it ticks most of the boxes, but it is not inspiring for those outside of the mindfulness world.
Flip the “reducing suffering” to “promoting flourishing”, and mindfulness becomes much more appealing. The successful mindfulness apps have upbeat presentations and appeal to a much wider audience. The apps are players in the infinite game. They are largely motivated to keep mindfulness going, not just because it is a valuable market, but they genuinely believe that mindfulness is beneficial. Many mindfulness practitioners and organisations may not feel that apps are playing the game right, or indeed that they are offering genuine mindfulness. But their reach, as their growth suggests, implies that many people do.
So the question for mindfulness organisations is “What is your Just Cause, and how best can you express it in an appealing way?”
Trusting Teams
An inspiring leader can often lead an unwilling team in short term success, but without a trusting team and a just cause things often fall apart. In an organisation where everyone has the potential to lead, even in a small way, then the chances of success are much greater.
Building trust is a slow process. The formal leaders know that it is their duty to take care of the staff team. They will put staff before profits. They will spend time understanding their direct reports, and work to support them through personal difficulties.
Trusting teams are hard to build, easy to destroy. Changes in formal leadership are always risky – someone coming in with a vision that is not aligned to the organisation and who cannot build the trust quickly enough to realign their vision or the vision of those who work in the organisation can rapidly destroy trust. Leaders who think that their role is to tell others what to do soon lose the trust of their teams.
Worthy Rivals
From an infinite game perspective, an infinite player will see other players as rivals. There is no intention to eliminate rivals (unless they become rogue and attack you). All players in an infinite game are (normally) keen to see that game continue, and they are willing to tolerate rivals that do not threaten them directly. They see that each player has a role in the ecosystem, and if everyone plays ethically then the ecosystem itself will thrive and all the players in it.
This is quite a switch from the perspective of many businesses, who seek to dominate markets and harm their competitors. Becoming number one is a finite game strategy and can often damage or destroy the infinite game. Those with an infinite game mindset can often become number one in a market, but they do it without necessarily aiming to get there.
An infinite game player will know which are the rivals they can learn from. They may not agree with the behaviour of a rival, but they respect it and try to understand it. They will choose which behaviours to emulate, and which to avoid. Unless a rival is rogue, they will want to see them flourish.
The mindfulness world has not fully woken up to this. Jointly they have saturated the market for the standard offerings, and have not fully learnt from each other. Apps are frowned upon in many circles, but they are successful. The professional association BAMBA has a limited perspective on what professional mindfulness teaching is, and restricts its jurisdiction to just a few mindfulness based interventions and organisations that offer them. Yoga and Buddhism are not embraced as fully as they may be as alternative routes to developing mindfulness skills. Universities focus on particular styles of teaching and research and do not embrace the wider ecosystem.
The mindfulness world needs to understand its players, consider rivals outside of the mindfulness field (e.g. counselling and psychotherapy), understand where they succeed and fail, and begin to find new strategies.
Existential Flexibility
The common response to a fall in sales is to resort to marketing. Sometimes that works, but in an infinite game where all the players respond to a general drop in demand then many are going to fail. Marketing is useful, but not as an emergency response to a rapid decline in sales without a clear understanding of the reason for the fall in sales.
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) like MBSR and MBCT can be challenging to deliver in certain contexts. The response of the field has been to create specialised MBIs for particular contexts, such as MBRP for addiction relapse prevention. This has led to a large number of MBIs, which solves part of the problem, but complicates the field. Training organisations perpetuate this by centring training on particular MBIs. BAMBA reinforces this by only accepting certain MBIs and those organisations that train them.
The mindfulness field needs to more fully understand the existential threats, find new strategies, and open up to new ways of offering mindfulness teaching.
Courageous Leadership
Players in an infinite game need courageous leadership. That means making decisions that may not be the easiest or good in the short term, but that keep the organisation in line with its just cause, maintain trust, and ensure its survivability. That often means making radical changes in direction.
It is clear that the current approaches to mindfulness teacher training have created a market, then saturated it. It is too soon to say how teacher training organisations will adapt to survive, but it will be those that have a clear vision that reframes mindfulness in a way that it extends its reach. It is doubtful that the programme-centric models that specialise programmes for new contexts is a sustainable way for those organisations to survive.
Of course, the longer standing approaches to mindfulness in various spiritual traditions will survive, as they have done through millennia.
Mindfulness at the intersection of other infinite games
Infinite games overlap. As individuals in life, we are playing an infinite game – we aim to survive in it as long as possible. However as part of life we play in many infinite games: family, education, hobbies, healthcare, work, the list goes on.
Likewise, the infinite game of mindfulness intersects with other infinite games. Below we consider some key games and open up some thoughts on how mindfulness relates to these games. .
The research game
Modern approaches to mindfulness have played well in this game. The number of research publications is high and growing. There are strong research centres exploring mindfulness, and there have been some remarkable results in terms of comparing mindfulness with psychological therapies and drug therapies. There have also been some less impressive results in other areas such as education.
In terms of survivability, mindfulness will depend on continued success in this context. There will need to be continued compelling evidence, and perhaps a revision of mindfulness in terms of its measurable value, for it to continue to receive research funding. There are many worthy rivals competing for a limited pool of resources and funding.
The media game
The media has been kind to the mindfulness world. On the whole it is treated with respect. However, the media is fickle, and one bad result can be inappropriately attributed to the whole of mindfulness: a research project with a bad premise or a weak methodology that returns a negative result can result in widespread news items that imply that mindfulness does not work in a particular context.
The education game
The success of mindfulness in the education game is patchy.
At a university level it does not appear to have embedded itself in the psychology mainstream. The few academic qualifications available are postgraduate. This is surprising given the prominence of mindfulness in research and in the public consciousness.
At a school level, mindfulness is on the edge of the UK national curriculum. PSHE is in the national curriculum but not mandatory, and it is the clear home for mindfulness. Mindfulness has not yet penetrated the curriculum for school teacher training. Mindfulness has many worthy rivals in this space – other subjects, schools counselling and wellbeing services, social media.
The healthcare game
The healthcare game has evolved over many centuries to the science-backed approach prominent today that is disease centric and that emphasises cure. The remarkable success of modern medicine has, to some extent, excluded more holistic approaches to healthcare. There are approaches to integrative medicine that are aiming to rebalance that perspective.
MBSR was first introduced as a palliative to support patients who had reached the limits of modern medicine in terms of its curative capacity. JKZ’s book on this was called “Full Catastrophe Living: Living: How to cope with stress, pain and illness using mindfulness meditation.” It was only later that research emerged to show that mindfulness practices could have some curative possibilities.
The emphasis on health has arguably skewed mindfulness to be viewed as primarily a response to illness, and not as a more general way of improving wellbeing.
The spiritual game
Spiritual traditions fit the infinite game model very well. They have a just cause, and they adapt to survive. They have been the vehicle for what we think of as mindfulness.
Mindfulness derives much of its practices and some of its psychological underpinnings from Buddhism. Some see mindfulness as a secular expression of Buddhism. However, mindfulness can be traced in other spiritual traditions.
In a very real sense, the spiritual traditions are worthy rivals of modern mindfulness. Interestingly many of the leading mindfulness teachers are Buddhist.
The yoga game
Yoga has entered the west mainly though Hatha yoga, one of the eight limbs of yoga. It is perceived mainly as a fitness practice. Yoga devotees who explore the spiritual side will find similar practices and philosophy to Buddhism. Arguably the historical buddha adapted yogic practices, with some subtle changes to the underlying philosophy.
Yoga does not put the same barriers to practice up that mainstream mindfulness does. Most yoga classes welcome newcomers, advise them to take care of themselves, and the teacher will monitor and ensure their safety. Only a few who try it will continue with it, but those that do often are devotees.
Given the intersection with yoga practices and mindfulness, there is much to be learnt from how yoga has entered the mainstream in a clearly sustainable way.
The political game
Politics is an infinite game, at local, national and international level. There has been some engagement with national politics with the mindfulness in parliament initiative. One would be forgiven, listening to parliament, for wondering how much effect that has. There is little direct evidence of mindfulness impacting mainstream politics, except through individual politicians who adopt mindfulness practice.
The game of life
Mindfulness practice is very often something that people adopt when they have faced some crisis. That can be quite late in life. Often the crisis they faced that was the trigger for mindfulness practice could have been handled better with some prior mindfulness training and practice. This strongly suggests that mindfulness needs to be offered much earlier in life, and not just in schools.
The intervention focus means that once someone has completed a training they are usually left with very little that encourages them to maintain a regular practice and to develop more insight. There is no developed concept of community, and what is available is ad hoc and teacher-dependent.
Treating an individual’s mindfulness experience as an infinite game could change dramatically how mindfulness is adopted. Teaching it in schools and colleges could provide people with tools to aid them in the crises that life inevitably throws up. Offering it in adult education could provide some preventative measures for mental health. Learning from the spiritual traditions, some form of ongoing community support could help people engage with, learn and maintain a mindfulness practice.
Conclusion
Mindfulness has emerged into the public consciousness over the last half century in ways that would have been unimaginable even 25 years ago. Meditation is accepted as a valuable practice, even if it is widely misunderstood. Mindfulness has a long history, going back at least two or three millennia. There is little doubt that it will continue in some form for many millennia to come. The vehicles for transmission in the spiritual world will continue to survive, and there is reason to assume it will continue in the healthcare context as successful therapies are developing using mindfulness based approaches.
The decline of demand for teacher training seems to stem from a number of factors, arguably from approaching mindfulness with a largely finite game mindset. The training of teachers is very much based on particular programmes, and widening access is based on adapting these programmes for particular contexts, resulting in a proliferation of programmes and complexity in the training programmes. BAMBA set a high standard for mindfulness teaching that is also programme-centric, with a high continuing professional development requirement. There is little whole-life thinking around mindfulness, with therapeutic approaches dominating research and teacher training. The research on mindfulness in education has often framed the research questions in much the same way that they have been framed for therapeutic applications of mindfulness, with mixed results.
Mindfulness apps and social media have raised the profile of mindfulness, but often with scepticism from the mainstream mindfulness organisations. There is some penetration into the education sector, but not wholesale embracing of mindfulness. There are pockets of mindfulness practice supported by individual teachers on a regular basis, but the training of teachers does not fully embrace ongoing practice after a course finishes. There are post MBSR (or derivative) courses, but these are hard for a novice to find and engage with.
To survive as players in the infinite game of mindfulness, mindfulness organisations will have to broaden their awareness of the contexts within which they operate. Training organisations will find it difficult to subsist on entry-level teacher training. There is much to be learnt from other infinite games where mindfulness intersects. Mindfulness will continue, but some of the organisations that are fully in the mindfulness training space will need to adapt.