Lifestyle Blog Writing Sample--The Life Lessons Of Golf

4 Pathways Golf Offers to a Fully Realized Life.

 OK, I admit it.  I’m obsessed with golf.  Probably for the same reasons most of you reading this post are.  I’ve flushed enough drives, pured enough irons and run in enough putts to think that I juuuust might be able to become good.  Maybe damn good.

 But after thirty years of hard work, I realize that my 11.8 index is probably as good as I’m going to get.  Not bad—but certainly not damn good.

 However, I’ve come to understand there is something else about this beautiful game that is more intoxicating, more compelling, more fulfilling than seeing my index drop or taking beer money from my buddies.

 Golf has taught me how to be better at life.  The same might be true for you.

 You may not ever become damn good at golf, but you can certainly use golf to become damn good at life.

Golf Teaches You To Be Present.

 Many experts say that learning to be present, mindful, engaged in the here and now and not distracted, can change your life dramatically.  Presence can make you feel in tune with yourself and your source, can lead to richer relationships, can even boost memory and reduce stress.

 All athletes strive to play without thinking, but most sports depend on continuous movement and motion that keep the mind engaged in the moment. 

 Golf, on the other hand, has long periods of downtime between shots that can take you out of the moment, downtime where you will often fixate on both past and future.

 You might stew over a missed putt or a chunked chip, beat yourself up for making the same mistake two holes in a row, or obsess with why you are blocking your drives that day. 

 At the same time (irony intended), you might think too far ahead, calculating, now that you’ve taken two doubles, what you will need to score on the remaining holes to finish with a score that won’t increase your index.

 To succeed, you must learn there is only one thing that matters in golf:  the shot you are about to play.  You must forget what has happened and what might happen.  Finding a mindfulness routine—breathing, looking around at the beauty of the day, putting a mint in your mouth—settles you into the moment, which is a powerful place to be. 

 Golf affords you a four-hour opportunity to practice being mindful in a way that is not drudgery the way your daily meditation may be.

 And if you are fully present, you might even find yourself dropping into the zone—an unconscious, mystical state of being every athlete desires.

 Golf Teaches You Acceptance

 Dr Phil says you’re never weaker, you’re never more a victim than when you are angry.

 Eckhart Tolle says that anger creates an inner resistance that closes you off from the universe.

 But, Tolle says, when you learn to surrender and accept things as they are, your actions will be in alignment with the whole and supported by creative intelligence.  Coincidences will happen. 

 Accepting things as they are without anger brings freedom--freedom to your swing, freedom to your life.

 You might flush a drive that hits a sprinkler head and bounds into the trees.   You might roll a perfect putt that spins out of the cup because someone has stepped too close and collapsed an edge. You might land in a trap at your local muni and blade one thirty yards over the green because the grounds crew hasn’t put sand in the traps for over a year.

 Now you get to practice the ultimate code of the universe put forward by Dr. Bob Rotella: Play it as it lies.  Whining, cheating or anger do no good. 

 The trick is to be the Watcher, not the Wanter.  Wanting is crippling—in golf and in life.  If you can be the Watcher in the background, you learn not to mind what happens.  You accept the fact that crud happens and move onto the next shot with joy.

 You get to learn about human potential when you accept what is presented to you, when you don’t mind what happens. 

Golf Teaches You To Embrace Curiosity.

 Todd Kashdan argues that when you are curious, you see things differently.  You sense what is happening in the present moment.  You are alive and engaged, capable of embracing opportunity, experiencing insight and meaning.

 Curiosity is the secret sauce to playing good golf—maybe even to life itself. 

 A ball that has found a juicy lie or a trap without sand offers opportunity, a chance at creativity and curiosity how to play it.  Shot making, particularly shots that lead to escape, demands creativity beyond the struggle to drop the club inside consistently and is one of the most satisfying aspects of the game.  Even when they don’t come off, missed shots should cause you to be curious, not upset, and wonder how to change the approach next time. 

 The same is true when struggling with the swing in general. When you are struggling with your game, you should be curious, not upset, interested in the swing itself, not the result.  The pursuit of the repeating swing should never cause anguish.  The fun is in playing like a child plays—in the moment and full of curiosity.

 You should strive to connect each shot to curiosity and to the joy of giving form to your creativity.

 Golf Teaches You To Trust Your Authentic Self

 Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

 Emerson was talking about your authentic self, the intuitive self that operates beneath the level of consciousness.  Emerson didn’t trust the rational mind and taught that you can transcend to a higher level of living if you learn to listen to your intuition.

 You’ve had those magical days where you feel as if you are unconscious while playing, where everything just flows, so you know that if you let go, Emerson’s ideas have some merit.  You have to give up control to get control.  But it’s hard to trust that it’s that easy. And when things start to go wrong, you return to your notions of how to swing correctly, trying to catalogue everything you know about the swing and control it.  You return to your rational mind because you don’t trust your body to do what you want it to do—and the next thing you know, you are tortured by self-doubt.

 Timothy Gallway makes this idea accessible in his book The Inner Game of Golf.  He says you are comprised of two selves: Self 1 and Self 2.  Self 1 is obsessed with correctness, the judgmental self that barks commands in your head like a drill sergeant, usually about what NOT to do.  Self 2 is the confident, intuitive self that never operates from fear.  It knows what to do if you can just let go and trust. It’s the authentic self, connected to an empowering creative intelligence.

 Gallway suggests the way to tap into Self 2 is through the art of relaxed concentration and says that he doesn’t write about the inner game to improve people’s golf game.  He argues it’s much more important to explore how golf can improve people’s lives. “Proficiency in golf” he writes, “is far less important an achievement that proficiency in the art of relaxed concentration.”

 You might just find that by adjusting your approach to a better game, you will find your way to a better self.

 Over to you.  What Life Lessons have you learned from golf?  Leave a comment and let us know.