Golfers and Their B.S. (Belief Systems)
While many beliefs are quickly evident sometimes they don’t become glaringly obvious until you’re way down the rabbit hole (or in the rough).
I worked with a 20-something golfer one time who was attempting to take his play to the next level (to the extent of having parents who flew him in from out-of-state to work with the golf professional who brought me in to see if I could help).
We were out on the putting green and he was telling me about the tournament he had played in on the weekend. He bombed. “You should have seen the grass – the greenskeepers should lose their jobs the grass was so bad – like really dry”. I let him go on (and on) for a bit and then asked him “were there other people playing that day?” He gave me that “b*tch you are crazy” look (which I’ve been given before so I’m OK with it). “Yes of course there were, it was a tournament”. He had missed my point.
“So, other players in the tournament played the same grass?”, he scowled at me and spit out “yes, it was the same sh*t straw everywhere”. He had missed my point a second time.
“So, other players at the tournament played on the same grass and someone still won and others placed in the top 10 on the leader board?” He paused. His facial expression was telling me there was a chance he was getting ready to take a swing at me with his club. I’m short and he was very tall so I figured I could duck successfully if I needed to.
Then a lightbulb moment.
He threw his head back with an exasperated huff and let out a sigh.
He got it. It wasn’t the grass.
He had been playing the entire day with a belief that his play was so bad because of the grass. It was him against the grass. He wasn’t just fighting a losing battle; he was fighting an imaginary battle because the enemy wasn’t the grass. It was his belief it was the grass.
Since he couldn’t do anything about the grass in the moment, he had nothing to draw from internally to change what he was doing. He was only focused on controlling the uncontrollable – the grass (something outside of him).
Where in your business are you attempting to control the uncontrollable because “if only ‘it’ would change” then you could achieve your goal? Is it an invisible obstacle that you’ve made up in your mind because of what you believe about the circumstances?
Write out a current challenge, then list everything you believe about the situation and what’s causing or contributing to it. From there, be ruthless in your survey of self while asking “am I the one making this true?” It may be time to bust some of that B.S. 😉
I think Mark Twain said it best “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
And as a reminder to my golfing friends – it’s really not your 9-iron either. Just sayin’.
