The FIFA World Cup concludes this week. It feels like Canada’s Men’s National Soccer Team has been out of the tournament for months. Even though we lost badly to Morocco, the experience was rewarding because results do not always tell the whole story. I saw something fantastic emerging on the pitch: a team learning to play without fear.

Playing without fear is easy to admire and hard to practice. It means choosing possibility over protection. It means playing to win, not simply playing to avoid losing. In sport, business, leadership, and life, that difference can change everything. As I’ve written before, sometimes losing is winning.

Researchers Geir Jordet and Esther Hartman studied penalty shootouts in major soccer tournaments and found that players performed better when the kick had a positive consequence, like when scoring could immediately win the match, than when a miss would immediately mean losing or when it wouldn’t significantly impact the game: “…the results support the existence of historical dependency effects for performance on important and dramatic high-pressure tasks and they are in part consistent with a view of choking under pressure as a function of threatened egotism and self-regulation failure.” Their research also showed that players in loss-avoidance situations were more likely to rush or look away, signs of wanting to escape the pressure rather than step into it.

The lesson goes well beyond soccer. When people focus only on avoiding failure, they often shrink the field of play. They choose what is safe, familiar, and defensible. When they focus on what is possible, they may still feel pressure, but that pressure can become fuel.

Netflix offers a strong example of playing without fear in business. The company was built on a successful DVD-by-mail model, but leaders saw that streaming would eventually change how people consumed entertainment. Rather than protect the business that was working, Netflix invested in the model that could disrupt it. The shift was not flawless, but the willingness to cannibalize its own DVD business helped position Netflix for the streaming era.

Kids play without fear way more than adults do. I’m reading Cas Holman’s awesome book Playful: How Play Shifts Our Thinking, Inspires Connection, and Sparks Creativityand she makes a compelling case that play is not only about the space we create, but the mindset we bring into it. I love the way she defines play and its purpose:

What Does it Mean to Play?

It is Free and Open-Ended: True “free play” lacks instructions, rules, and predetermined right-or-wrong answers. It relies on internal curiosity and intrinsic motivation rather than working toward an external reward (like winning, a score, or maximizing productivity).

It is How We Learn and Adapt: Play is how we learn to be human. It is an exploratory state where we tinker, experiment with failure, and learn to navigate the unknown safely.

It is a Mindset: For Holman, play is not defined by the specific toys you use, but by your mindset. It is about following your joy and trusting your instincts without fear of judgment.

It is an Act of Rebellion: She views play as a form of “radical play” or “playful rebellion” because it defies societal norms that tell adults to constantly be productive, efficient, and serious.

Holman believes that she could design a beautiful adult playground and still talk ourselves out of using it. Our adult voice might say play is not productive, that we will look silly, or that we will not be taken seriously. That feels both funny and surprisingly true. Playing without fear asks us to shift that voice: to over-value the benefits of play – the creativity, connection, experimentation, and learning – and focus less on the imagined consequences of getting something wrong. That feels like an act of rebellion (because rebels don’t play not to lose).

Seth Godin underscores the importance of separating fear from tension. Fear freezes us. It can make us hold our breath, play small, and wait for permission. Tension is different. Tension often shows up when we are learning, growing, or crossing a threshold. It is the feeling of “this might work” and “this might not work” living side by side. Just because something is hard doesn’t mean it should scare us.

Most meaningful progress includes tension. So do new skills and ideas, having difficult conversations, and adapting to the chaos and complexity of constant change. The goal is not to eliminate tension. The goal is to recognize it, work with it, and not mistake it for fear.

One of my favourite songs is Chris Stapleton’s “Startin’ Over”. It came out in the summer of 2021, which was when our family made a big change and moved from Vancouver to our new community on Vancouver Island. This lyric has stuck with me:

But nobody wins, afraid of losing.

And the hard roads are the ones worth choosing.

Someday we’ll look back and smile.

And know it was worth every mile.

That is the long view. The hard road may not feel like a victory while we are on it. The risk may feel uncomfortable. The setback may sting. But growth often looks like this before it looks like success: a brave choice, a difficult lesson, a little more resilience, and the decision to keep going.

Egypt, Cabo Verde, Paraguay, and Norway’s Men’s National Teams, like Canada’s, played without fear at the World Cup progress that is being built through moments like this. And the same is true in our work lives. Some failures feel like wins because they stretch us, teach us, and prepare us for what comes next. You will turn the growth from those moments into fuel for the next victory.