. . . And wished I’d known earlier
As a kid growing up in South East London, I was always eager to get out and get ‘stuff done’.
I certainly haven’t always followed a conventional path, with the exception of going to school then having a long career in international shipping.
My shipping career turned out to be far from conventional and deciding to take a right turn out of the industry and doing something for myself, when most people are looking forward to having more of a relaxed role and eventually pottering around the garden looking for something to do with the new-found time on their hands. That’s never been my style and so I thought I’d share some lessons in life in through playing the game of golf.
Life like golf isn’t perfect. As kids we aren’t aware of the problems and challenges that life will throw at us and nor should we be…. we’re kids after all. We plod along merrily doing what kids do. It happens on the course, but at some point, and it differs for everyone, those challenges come a little too frequently and we stop being the happy go lucky person we once were and get caught up in ‘life’ and all its problems. It’s not the size nor frequency of the challenges, but how we get through them that matters.
Intention: Hoping things would get better instead of making a concerted effort about what I wanted to happen and going after it intentionally.
Fear: First tee nerves or being afraid to hit a 3-wood over water on the 18th are challenges designed to test us. Fears are nasty little things. We don’t always know where they’ve actually come from, but very few are there to really protect us. It’s more about fear of what people will say or think about us. Not looking silly or failing. They go away with experience.
Once you’ve played the first tee dozens of times, you don’t think anything about it. As for the 3-wood, experience will also tell you to go for it or lay-up and good judgement comes from experience. But if you decide to keep on making the same mistake, then Einstein’s theory comes into play, “To keep doing the same thing over and over and to expect a different result is the sure sign of madness”.
Responsibility: Take responsibility for everything. There’s no point in blaming the rough, the greens for being too slow, the weather, your clubs or your new putter for your lousy scores. The same applies in our lives; take responsibility for everything and it will help you decide where you need to focus, rather than waste time, energy and emotions on blaming everything and everyone else. It’s very empowering to release such negative rubbish.
Resilience: Being able to bounce back after a bad hole and not taking it on to the next 2-3 holes and ruining your whole round. Learning to leave things behind and move on is a skill that will help develop mental strength.
Acceptance: Learning to accept certain things brings far less anxiety and stress. Change what you can change: your thoughts, feelings, language, actions or your job and leave what you can’t: the weather, your opponent, the scoreboard, haters, competition or your boss!
Patience: I was very impatient as a kid and it’s taken me more years than I care to admit, to learn to be patient. Ok, it’s 50 years. I wanted to get down to single figures in a very short time, which only caused me to rush things and cause anxiety.
Process: Everything is a process and cutting corners only leads to problems. You can’t go from the 8th tee to the 17th and cut in just because you haven’t got time to finish. Trying to build a meaningful business or relationships in business doesn’t take 5 minutes. It’s a process.
Trust yourself and your ability. Standing over a ball and not trusting yourself is a recipe for trouble. As Suzie Kassem said, “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever did”. Like fear, doubt can be difficult to overcome. It takes time to build and can be lost in an instant.
Have a Team: Golf may appear to be an individual game, but we can have a team of people behind us. Who repairs your clubs?, your swing coach, someone who knows your game. Having someone we know, like and trust that we can really talk to, is vital for success and well-being.
Learn from the best: As the saying goes, “Good judgement comes from experience, and well, experience that comes from bad judgement”. I’ve made mistakes and expensive ones. Find good mentors and people who can really help you and pay them well. See it as an investment in your most prized asset – you!
Focus: If you’re focusing on the hazards, don’t be surprised when you end up there. Focus on where you want to go and navigate your way there. You can’t ski downhill with uphill thoughts.
Confidence: That comes from a number of things: experience, how we see ourselves, how we speak to ourselves and the results we get. Quietening the ego and having a strong mental game yields great results.
Success: I had a misaligned view of what success really is, ie. material things. Enjoy the game, the journey, the ups and downs. Don’t be in a rush to get to the finishing line. Success can take on a new meaning. As the late Wayne Dyer said, “When you change the way you look at something, the thing you look at changes”.
Etiquette or ethics: There is no difference between how you are on the golf course, in life or business. P.G. Wodehouse summed it up beautifully when he said, “To see the true character of a man, play golf with him”.
Belief: It’s amazing what you can do when you believe in yourself. But often, we need someone to believe in us first, that’s where the magic happens.
Fun: We start out because we love the game but somewhere along the line, we get frustrated, anxious or even depressed if we don’t get the results we want (this part never happened to me but many others). Focus on why you started doing it in the first place and work on bringing the fun back into it all.
Even if you don’t play golf, I hope you can relate to some of these in your life.
I’d be interested to hear.
