Failing and Expectation

The people who are still in mental management and the people who are selling “reprogramming your brain” and mental chewing gum as the know-all and end-all will tell you that all you have to do is learn how to think and you’re going to be a champion. And nothing can be further from the truth. One goes with the other.

However, you need to go through the college of hard knocks. You need to shoot well enough on the first day so you can win on the second day, then get there and try too hard and get careful.

You need to have done that enough times to where you realize when that voice comes in and says: “Hey, let’s be sure and get careful and check the lead,” and you listen to it and fail. Until you’ve been there enough times and failed, it’s hard to summon the courage, regardless of how logical it is.

You’ve got to say not only “no” but “hell no!”

“I’m not going to do that, because the last seven times I’ve done that in this position on the second day I haven’t finished. I’m just going to let it all go.”

It’s hard to summon the courage to turn your back on that voice that says, “Hey, you know, we need to win this thing. I want to make sure that the gun is in front. I want to make sure that the gun gets to your face. I want to make sure that you have soft hands. I want to make your sure their eyes are still. I want to make sure that we don’t miss anything in front.”

That little voice that talks to you about swing mechanics and lead is hard to turn off until you’ve at least listened to him two or three times and failed. And then, even after you’ve listened to him two or three times and failed, you have to get to the point to where you’ve been there enough times and tried it and it doesn’t work.

Yes, you can be taught how to think; but even if somebody taught you how to think and you went and won the U.S. Open, the chances of you winning three more big shoots right behind it would be slim to none, simply because you haven’t failed.

Like it or not, it’s the failures that enable you to have the courage to not listen to that doubtful voice. It’s about having failed with expectation.

 

This is an excerpt from the May 2011 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.