The Games We Play

A simple framework to understand our programming.

Last week, I was on the phone with my father when I felt my body flood with a wave of heaviness. I had asked him for advice. He’s quite brilliant at looking at a business situation and spotting the one or two levers that can shift everything else. But as I was walking among the trees of my local park, I suddenly noticed how negative I sounded. It was downright depressing. And yet, I felt like I couldn’t stop, like I was talking on autopilot.

Dad did his best to help but I just wanted to hang up. I wanted to flee the gravity vortex that seemed to pull me into the pavement. And I kept thinking, wait, you asked for this! Later, I realized that I had been playing an unconscious game as described in the book The Games People Play, Eric Berne’s 1960s classic on transactional analysis.

According to Berne, people satisfy their hunger for stimulus and recognition by playing unconscious games “which form the most important aspect of social life all over the world.” The unhealthy ones lead to the therapist’s office or worse. His framework also made me reflect on the game of investing. A lack of awareness can wreck not just relationships but torpedo our success in markets.