The game is always won or lost in the second half. Irrespective of the sport, or the score in the first half, the win always comes after half-time.

The win comes after the team huddle, after the frantic consumption of quartered oranges, after the Coach’s review of what went well, of where the ball was dropped, of where to shift the focus or strategy to finish strong in the second half. I have played a lot of sport, at a range of representative levels, and not once did the Coach sit us down at half-time and say “Well lads, you are down. Give up now. Don’t go out and play the second-half”.

The half-time break represents a significant portion of the overall game. Consider an average game of football, soccer, rugby, netball, or similar: most of these have two 30-40 minute halves, with a 10 or so minute break in between. As a proportion of the game, the half-time break occupies around 11% of total game time. And it is often in this 11% of non-play time that the game is won or lost.

The win, or loss, is of course not caused by the half-time break itself, but rather by the objective, external guidance that comes from the Coach, and the players’ ability to absorb this guidance exactly because they are taking a break. Yelling the same advice from the sidelines, without the team breaking for a regroup, rarely has the same impact on the team’s performance. Ask any over excited parent screaming helpful tips at their kid’s Saturday morning school hockey game for confirmation.

We extrapolate from sport into life on a daily basis. We look for people who play team sports as they will be better players in the workplace or in the boardroom. We make the assumption that Iron Man triathletes and Olympians are likely to have more grit and determination, and we consider these factors, both consciously and subconsciously, when we choose our next hire, date or person to include in our friendship circle. Curiously, our extrapolation from sport to life misses one of the most important facets, the break at half-time. The 11% portion when the game is reviewed, reflected on, reset, and either lost, or won.

In my work with people approaching middle age, I have not once met someone who took stock of their life in the same way they would a game of football. I have never met someone who took the deliberate action to insert a half-time break, a 11% gap into their life, to allow themselves to outperform and win the game in the second half.

In fact, the norm is quite the opposite. The human species slides into The Mid Life Crisis with the unquestionable certainty of gravity. We ignore what we see around us – that we get more adept with practice and time; that we get more insights, experience, and (in some cases) wisdom, with time. We are blind to the fact that a deliberate moment of reflection on how we did in the first half, could serve to change our trajectory in the second half.

Strictly speaking, there are no wins in life the way that there are in a game of football, but there certainly are losses. Subconsciously, most people have lower expectations for the second half of their life than they do for the first. They expect that their health will decline, their relationships will become duller, their adventures will fade into days trapped shopping on trans-Pacific cruises at indistinguishable destinations. These declining thoughts lead to declining actions. These actions lead to declining habits, and our acceptance of these declined habits are what leads to the slide in the second half of life. Hardly anyone considers that the second half of their life could actually be better, richer and more rewarding than the first half.

Imagine what might be possible if you were to pause the mid-life slide, take a deliberate half-time break, seek out guidance, and give yourself permission to reflect and learn. Imagine if you could challenge the perception that life loses relevance, and instead acquire the strategies to profoundly improve the quality of the second half of your life.

And then, allow yourself to imagine what your life could be like if you were to become truly relevant, not like you were in the glory days, but in a way that far exceeds them.