Let's visit a football game in a large stadium. There are people sitting in the stands and people on the field. Everyone is talking, but the conversations in the two locations are very different. In the stands, people are talking about the game—judging, evaluating, assessing, making excuses for their team, or saying what their team did right, or rationalizing. There is little at stake, little at risk, and their conversations have virtually no impact on the action of the game.

And then there are the conversations the players are having on the field. These conversations not only affect the game, they are the game. Someone may say, "Give me the ball and I'll score!" and the next play is begun. Throughout the game, people are communicating in such a way that the team is focused on winning.

The question is, what type of conversations are you having? On the field, or in the stands?

You leave the stands when you stop assessing and judging and instead put something at risk. Communicate in a way that drives action. Make yourself accountable for winning the game.

Having read this book, you are ready to take to the field. So we ask, are you in the game? If not, what are you waiting for? If you are in the game, how can you get others to join you?

Imagine that those areas in which you want to elevate performance are all games. A game starts when some influential person uses future-based language and says that something is more important than something else. The inventor of soccer said that scoring more goals is better than scoring fewer goals. The originator of golf said the opposite—making fewer strokes is better than making more strokes.

You make a new game when you declare that something is important. This is what you're putting at stake, and it is what you're holding yourself accountable to. When others commit to the game with you, they join you on the field.

So use future-based language and declare what's important. Say what's not important. Who said you could do this? You did.

We recently heard a salesperson say, "Clients are slow to make decisions—I could sell more if they were faster." She was making the conditions of the game—selling—an obstacle.

This is as absurd as a team that constantly failed to score saying, "We would have won if the field were only ninety yards long instead of a hundred." Or team members complaining, "We would have won if the players on the other side weren't so strong."

If something occurs to you and others as an obstacle, you'll push back by playing on the obstacle's terms. Instead, make the obstacles conditions of the game.

Like it or not, you are playing on a field that is one hundred yards long, against strong players, with clients slow to make decisions. Given these conditions, what will you do to win?

Breakthrough performance becomes possible when you engage others in the insights from the Three Laws by sharing about them.

Sharing is allowing another to participate in what you're experiencing. Some of us have an aversion to sharing that comes from childhood. This probably began with our mothers telling us to share our candy bar with a friend. Then we noticed that we were left with only half a candy bar—not a good deal. We end up holding on to what is important to us so as to not lose any of it.

That may be what happens in world of candy bars, but it's not what happens with experience and commitment. The more you share your experience, and the more you make your commitments public, the more you get back.

If you share your love for another person, your love isn't lessened, it increases. The same is true with your experience of the Three Laws. The more you share it, the more your experience deepens, your insights take hold, and your capacity to achieve breakthrough results increases. Ideas shared grow and spread.

Further, the more you share, the more the environment around you is shaped by the Three Laws, and elevated performance takes hold.

So who do you share with? The people who matter to you and who you need to win the performance game.

It's really simple, but not necessarily easy. All there is to do is to share your experience. What impact is this book making on you? What do you see that you didn't see before?

When you share, other people take on performance challenges with you and form a network. In this community, everyone is learning and working together to achieve what once looked impossible.

On the field, there is another role: the coach. The coach isn't in the stands, and he doesn't play the game, either. Still, he risks as much as anyone who takes to the field.

What does the coach do? From the Three Laws, great coaching alters how the situation of the game occurs for the players, especially at the critical moments. The coach will say and do whatever is necessary to win the game. He may motivate or inspire or give information or tell the players exactly what to do. Regardless, every action alters how the game occurs for the players, so that their actions correlate with winning.

As you create a network that takes on breakthrough performance challenges, you will find yourself coaching. So who coaches you? Our advice is to make this book your coach. We promise that if you get stuck, or knocked off your game, somewhere in this book is an insight that will get you back in the game.

If that doesn't work, seek out great coaching by creating and engaging in a community of people who, like you, are playing the performance game.

We need to get the future and the past straightened out, once and for all.

Human beings make a very simple and far-reaching mistake—one that you must not make if you're going to elevate performance. It's really a filing error.

Imagine two filing cabinets, labeled "The Past" and "The Future." From time to time stressful, difficult, or dangerous things happen. When they do, and we survive, we note what worked, taking a photograph of our actions and keeping it on file in case that situation happens again. So you'll have it in the future, you put it in The Future cabinet.

After you've lived through enough of those incidents, the filing cabinet of The Future is full. The irony is that you no longer have a real future. You may find that you're repeating the past, and you are. When something happens, you dip into The Future file and do what your record tells you to do. You do the same things over and over because you've put those files in your future.

So let's get beyond the filing error.

If we emptied everything out from The Future filing cabinet—all the decisions we placed there to deal with what may happen—what would be left in that filing cabinet?

Nothing.

That's the nature of the real future: there's nothing there. What will happen in the real future is uncertain. Tomorrow will become today, but when it does, it will no longer be tomorrow. Tomorrow, as tomorrow, has nothing in it. It's empty, uncertain, unwritten.

As you look into the real future, you see—nothing.

So the bad news is, you're standing in front of nothingness. Certainty is unavailable.

The good news is, you're standing in front of nothingness. You can only create into nothing. A painter can only paint on a blank canvas. You can create a future into nothingness.

As a way of creating this future, speculate about possible futures that are compelling to you, futures that inspire you. The future to be invented, not figured out. It's not a future designed to fix or solve your current problems. It's a future designed to make a difference for you and others.

You have to look into nothingness and declare what can be and what you actually commit to. If you stay in this conversation, you'll never confuse the future and the past again.

Begin the coaching by starting with yourself. Overturn your life sentence. Create a powerful future to live into. Don't fall into the reality illusion. See occurring as what it is. Experiment with altering the network of conversations that is your company.

You can't mess this up. You're just having a conversation. In basketball, when the ball goes through the hoop, notice what works. When you feel somewhat conversant, look for people who would be willing to create a network of conversations for performance. Ask them if they'd be interested in building a discussion group for new ideas to resolve difficult issues. With the ones who are interested in playing, create a common future together, one that compels and inspires everyone.

People will resist you, because people resist new ideas all the time. Remember, it was the same for Galileo. Don't take it personally. Resistance is like a thunderstorm: when it rains on you, you get wet—but it isn't personal.

You may find yourself resisting your own commitments, making others wrong, and not creating what you know can be. Remember that you can give up anything that doesn't serve you.

When something stops you, ask whether what is happening is "wrong" or "bad." If that is how it is occurring for you, alter the question from "What is wrong?" to "What is missing?" Treat it as a part of the field on which you're playing. Your job is to win in those conditions. There are no obstacles; there are merely conditions of the game.

Now you are back in the game.

Here is our last word. There are no circumstances in business or in life that you can't handle from the Three Laws. No matter what hurdles you have to jump, challenges you have to face, unfamiliar territory you have to cross, you're ready for it.

Play the game passionately, intensely, and fearlessly. But don't make it significant. It's just a game.