Recently I have started playing golf again. I used to play when I was younger, and after a 15 year hiatus I decided to start swinging a club again. For anyone reading who hasn’t played golf before, what you won’t realise is that golf is a sport in which you spend 50% of your time thinking it’s the greatest game ever, and the other 50% asking why some folks in Scotland decided it was a good idea to try and hit a tiny white ball 400 yards into a tiny little hole.
Practicalities of golf aside, the other thing I love about the sport is that it teaches you SO MANY life lessons. The venn diagram of things that cause problems in golf and things that cause problems in real life has a pretty decent cross over. One of my favourite, is about controlling the controllables and the false level of control that golf, and life, gives you.
In golf, all you can control is your own process. Just this morning, I hit one of my best shots of the round. The feeling off the tee, the flight of the ball through the air. Then it takes a crappy bounce and somehow ends up in a bunker (a big hole filled with sand for the uninitiated). I’d got everything right. The pre-shot, the target, the setup, the swing. And still, the outcome wasn’t the outcome that I hoped for.
I’m sure reading that, many of you can relate that to things that have happened in your life. You got everything right, and the outcome wasn’t the outcome you wanted. This is where, sometimes, the game of golf can start to differ from life though. I’m slowly realising that golf is 80% mental. Yes, you might physically swing a club but it’s what between your ears that has a huge impact on how you play.
In a round of golf, it’s tough shit. You have two options here:
- Complain about being in the bunker, and the tricky shot you’ve got out of the sand. Get yourself in a mental tangle and beat yourself up OR
- Understand that you got everything right. Your setup, your swing, your strike - everything was perfect. Just not the outcome you wanted.
Replace the world golf and bunker with life and challenge, and you can see that the dichotomy of control applies to life in the same way. Day to day, all you can control is yourself. As much as you might like to think otherwise, the only thing you have real agency over is yourself and your decisions. Everything else is out of your control. So be ready for it.
When things don’t go your way, ask yourself did I do everything in my power? Was I the best I can be? If you consistently answer yes to that question, I promise you the outcome will take care of itself.
James