About Life (and Golf)
I recently took up the sport of Golf. I’m not very good at it yet (some would say terrible would be a more apt description) though constant practise is helping me improve slowly.
I’m writing this today as the similarities between Golf and Life have been playing on my mind and I thought I’d share some of my musings.
For those of you unfamiliar with the sport, it consists of 9 or 18 hole games with the objective of hitting the ball into each hole within a limited number of strokes (par). 18 hole courses are usually designed to be completed in 72 strokes, though the average human tends to take 10–20 extra (this is called your handicap).
The eventual goal of every golfer is to get closer and closer to 72 (or even below!)
Headspace
Arnold Palmer, one of the world’s greatest golfers, famously said “Golf is predominantly played in the six inches between the ears”.
This took on a new meaning for me when I realized a simple fact, the game is stationary. The ground isn’t moving (if it is you have a whole different problem on your hands), the ball is stationary, everything is down to me, my connection with my body and my swing.
When I finally felt this connection happen, it felt very similar to ‘Flow’, that wonderous state where you feel your mind and body come together to execute any task, be it a complex excel model or lifting your personal best in the gym.
The key to accessing this is letting go. Let go of fear, doubts, ifs, buts, maybes and focus entirely on the task at hand. If you’ve never experienced Flow before, try a light meditation before working on something tough (like a 30 day writing challenge), it feels like the words want to leap out onto the screen.
Consistency
The game of golf is uniquely frustrating. If any golfers are reading this, you’re probably smiling at this point. I have tried several sports across the years and generally feel my skills rose fairly consistently. They also maintained themselves consistently and my performance rarely varied too much in the short term from game to game.
Golf is a different animal. Every game is unique and I have had some amazing days, some average ones and those terrible days when I felt like I hadn’t even understood the sport. That’s when I realized the key to Golf wasn’t about hitting a few exceptional shots each game, the real secret is consistency.
Tony Robbins, one of the most well known motivational speakers of our time, sums it up here, “It’s not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives. It’s what we do consistently”.
I started obsessively watching Youtube videos of the great golfers and one thing stuck out. In every practise session, knocking out hundreds of balls, these professionals were chasing one thing, the perfect swing. Their mastery was born of constant refinements, changing the angle of the wrist a few degrees, a slight tilt of the shoulder and thousands of other minute changes till they could achieve that goal.
In Golf and Life, consistency is like bricklaying, building a solid foundation on which you can rise to the stars.
Want to keep fit? Build a routine and stick to it. Want to get rich? Start saving regularly. It sounds like the simplest (and most obvious) path to getting what you wish for but it’s the hardest struggle we face, to build habits and stick to them.
Resetting
The most important lesson I have learnt playing Golf is the Reset.
In the beginning, whenever I started a game with a fantastic shot, that day generally went well. My confidence was high, I strutted across the course feeling like a million bucks and sent those balls flying straight and high.
When my drive (the first shot of a hole) was bad, I sank into a funk. The simplest shots were messed up, I sent balls flying in every direction except towards the hole and felt like abandoning the sport altogether.
An older golfer on a course observed me sinking into this funk once and came up to me. He took me aside, asked me to breathe, let go of the last shot and relax. Walked me up to the ball, asked me to forget everything, forget the last shot, forget the score, forget the game and just focus on this one singular shot.
I took a swing and sent the ball flying, falling to a stop on the green just beside the hole.
That’s when it hit me-
I realized that in taking the game too seriously, I had stopped enjoying the beauty of the course, the breeze, the simple joy of being out in the sun whacking a ball towards a hole (the noblest of pursuits!).
We all end up taking Life very seriously, worrying about the bills to pay, that person we are too shy to ask out, the sick family member we’re praying for.
In all this, do try and take the time to reset. Let go of the baggage that we carry on our shoulders and breathe.
Thanks for reading so far! This was more touchy-feely that my posts till now and I felt a need to share this with you. These are some of the thoughts that crossed my mind the first time I played on a course (and built further with every visit), clearing my head and making me happy to be here, be alive.
