Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect

So much awesomeness there.

First: Are you a shrink or an expander?

When others come to you with their bring dreams how do you respond?

And… When YOU come to yourself with big dreams, how do you respond?

I LOVE Bob’s response.

Reminds me of Joseph Campbell. In The Power of Myth (see Notes) he shares this: “When I taught in a boy’s prep school, I used to talk to the boys who were trying to make up their minds as to what their careers were going to be. A boy would come to me and ask, ‘Do you think I can do this? Do you think I can do that? Do you think I can be a writer?’ ‘Oh,’ I would say, ‘I don’t know. Can you endure ten years of disappointment with nobody responding to you, or are you thinking that you are going to write a best seller the first crack? If you have the guts to stay with the thing you really want, no matter what happens, well, go ahead.’”

← That’s one of my absolute favorite passages. Remember that Campbell instructed us to follow our bliss AND to follow our grunt. :)

So… What do you REALLY want?

Are you willing to keep that dream in front of you for the next 10+ years?

P.S. Remember John Eliot’s wisdom from Overachievement

+ An incredible tenacity to stick with it through the inevitable ups and downs. :)

P.P.S. Robert Greene’s Mastery is a must read. Chew on this: “The road to mastery requires patience. You will have to keep your focus on five or ten years down the road, when you will reap the rewards of your efforts… In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their Life’s Task.”

→ “People by and large become what they think about themselves.”

That’s some wisdom from William James Bob picked up early in his career.

James also said: “The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.”

Both of those gems are so simple that they’re easy to dismiss.

NOTE TO YOURSELF: Our self-image is HUGE.

What do YOU think of yourself?

Can you see how this is either helping or hindering your process?

We become what we think of ourselves.

Let us expand our vision of ourselves and live in integrity with that ideal.

P.S. Another gem: In The Science of Being Great (see Notes), Wallace Wattles puts it this way: “There is, as Emerson says, some central idea or conception of yourself by which all the facts of your life are arranged and classified. Change this central idea and you change the arrangement or classification of all the fact and circumstances of your life.”

Rule #1 of golf: Take dead aim.

The smaller the target, the sharper the focus.

Meditation teachers agree. Leading motivational psychologists agree.

Notice how much better your days are when you have clear targets.

What’s YOUR target for your life? For today? For THIS moment?

Get super clear. And rock it.

All serious golfers know that scoring is all about the short game.

“Drive for show. Putt for dough.”

Yet…

It’s the rare golfer who actually focuses the bulk of his practice time on his or her short game. It’s so much more fun (yay!) to hit the ball long. (hah.)

Bob tells us: “All I can say is that if you want to score well, attach your ego to how well you think, how well you manage your game, how well you hit your wedges, how well you putt. The long-drive swing won’t be in the slot every day. But you can always think well, manage your game well, and play the short game well.”

Guess what?

It’s the EXACT same thing with life.

We’re not going to have the “long-drive swing” in the slot every day. Aka: We’re not always going to wake up on fire and feeling ready to simply crush it.

Only the amateurs wait for inspiration though.

The Pros? We know it’s all about our short game. We get up, get our minds right and do the little things that put us in the best position to get the most out of that day we can.

We meditate. We eat well. We exercise. We identify our most important task and resist the urge to hop online. We do our 5-minute takeoff when we feel stuck and shut-down early to make sure we get a good night of sleep and give ourselves the best shot at coming back strong the next day.

That’s significantly less sexy than just simply letting it rip when (/if) we feel super inspired.

But, we know (!) that, as Darren Hardy says: our “only path to success is through a continuum of mundane, unsexy, unexciting, and sometimes difficult daily disciplines compounded over time. Know, too, that the results, the life, and the lifestyle of your dreams can be yours when you put the Compound Effect to work for you. If you use the principles outlined in the The Compound Effect, you will create your fairy-tale ending.”

#shortgame

← How’s yours?

P.S. Eknath Easwaran is one of my favorite spiritual teachers. Here’s a great line from Passage Meditation that comes to mind: “As systematically as a professional athlete, I worked on my daily life, building it around the regular daily practice of meditation.”

Fear vs. nervousness. It’s all about how we PERCEIVE our physiological arousal.

Here’s how John Eliot puts it in Overachievement: “The physical symptoms of fight-or-flight are what the human body has learned over thousands of years to operate more efficiently and at the highest level. Anxiety is a cognitive interpretation of that physical response.”

John tells us to eat that stress LIKE AN ENERGY BAR. Use it!

Gold-medal winning Lanny Bassham puts it this way in With Winning in Mind (see Notes): “Recognize that pressure is positive and something that you can control. … pressure is not in your imagination. It is real, a good thing and you can use it to your advantage. You must accept that it is normal to feel something in a pressure situation. This is your body saying, ‘This is important. Pay attention.’”

Plus: “Focus on what you want to see happen, not on what is stressing you.”

My favorite approach to nerves these days?

“I’m excited.”

Here’s how Amy Cuddy describes it in Presence (see Notes): “As most of us know, stage fright can feel like a paralyzing overdose of anxiety. And what do people tell us to do when we’re anxious? They tell us, with good intentions, to calm down.

As it turns out, that might just be the very worst thing they can say. You see, anxiety is what psychologists describe as a high-arousal emotion. As I’ve explained, when we’re anxious, we occupy a heightened state of psychological vigilance. We’re hyperalert. Our hearts race, we break out into a sweat, our cortisol may spike—all of these reactions are controlled automatically by our nervous system. And it’s virtually impossible for most people to shut off that kind of automatic arousal, to abruptly de-escalate it. Not only can we not calm it down, but when someone tells us to calm down, it also reminds us of how calm we are not, which stokes our anxiety even more.

But there’s another high-arousal emotion that’s not so negative. In fact, it’s quite positive— excitement. Brooks predicted that we may not be able to extinguish arousal, but we should be able to change the way we interpret it. So rather than fruitlessly trying to change the arousal level of our emotional states from high to low, what if we try to change them from negative to positive? From anxiety to excitement?”

Remember that nerves are part of the deal.

Accept that. Recognize how excited you are to crush it. Focus on your target and let it rip.

Hah. Imagine that: Hiring a caddie to follow you around and BERATE you after every poor shot. Then, follow you to your hotel/house after the round to remind you of all the mistakes you made.

That’s nuts. And, it’s precisely what we do to ourselves with an untrained mind.

Reminds me of Michael Singer’s great metaphor in The Untethered Soul (see Notes). He tells us we have two aspects to our inner being: the part of us that watches what’s going on and the part of us that never.shuts.up—talking incessantly about all its likes and dislikes.

He compares that voice to a super annoying roommate and says: “How would you feel if someone outside really started talking to you the way your inner voice does? How would you relate to a person who opened their mouth to say everything your mental voice says? After a very short period of time, you would tell them to leave and never come back. But when your inner friend continuously speaks up, you don’t ever tell it to leave. No matter how much trouble it causes, you listen.”

It’s time to give that crazy voice the boot. Let’s quit paying our caddie to berate us.

(Check out the Notes on What to Say When You Talk to Yourself by Shad Helmstetter for another great perspective on cultivating positive self-talk.)

Expectations.

They’re GREAT if you confine them to long-term goals.

Not so good if you become attached to immediate-term performance.

Keep this in mind: “If you must have expectations about results, expect to make some mistakes. Walter Hagen once said that he expected to make seven mistakes per round. When he hit a bad shot, he wasn’t bothered. It was just one of the expected seven.” ← :)

Here’s to dreaming BIG and living baby step by baby step. KNOWING we’ll continue to improve over the long run if we show up diligently, patiently, and persistently, while letting go of the manic need to achieve.it.all.right.this.second.

Golf is not a game of perfect. Neither is life. Let’s embrace that reality and have one heck of a good time on this preciously brief round of ours! :)