Throughout my teens and now in my twenties, I have had a burning passion and curiosity for world class performance. Be it in sport, business or anything else in life, I have always been intrigued by the day to day habits that lead someone to reach the pinnacle of their field. Now, I am lucky enough to be on that journey myself as a coach to many aspiring, young golfers who also find themselves in the formative years of that long, winding road.
In a recent session with a successful, competitive junior, he talked about his long term goal of playing top level college golf in USA. I loved his clarity of what he wanted to achieve. He was specific on exactly what college he wanted to play for and he knew all about them. Wanting to know more, I asked him some more questions. They all started with: “When you reach that goal…”
“…How would you go about your morning?”
“…How would you walk?”
“…How would you communicate with and treat your team?”
“…What would your practice look like?”
The answers to these questions weren’t that clear. So I gave him a simple challenge for the next week’s session. Think about these questions until you are crystal clear on what the answers look like. Write your own story.
The majority of us have a longing to achieve something that exceeds our current reality, including myself. What I have learned from veraciously studying high performers is that they are super clear and specific on how their story ends. They are crystal clear on how they, as the main character, look every day at the end of that story.
Your life is made up of a series of stories that you contribute to every day. The tiny, mostly sub conscious actions that you carry out every day make up another story in your book. That’s the way I urged the ambitious junior to think about it. How would that Division 1 college golfer go about those tiny details every day?
The challenge for all of us is to firstly be pretty much certain of what the end of your story looks like. And then live out the day to day actions today that the character at the end of the story lives. As you will find out, most of those actions and traits can be implemented into your life right now. It’s not easy but it’s simple, do this consistently well over a long period and it’ll inevitably compound into the story you have written.
So, if you aspire to be the best golfer you can be, write your own script. How would a good day in that golfer’s life look like? What are the daily actions that you can do today that set you on your way?
Know your ending in incredible detail, write it down and live it every day. If you don’t write your story, it’ll probably end up writing itself.
Thanks for reading,
Chris.
