This is probably a nice reminder.
Of something we’ve heard across our entire lives, something eternally true.
It’s also something that we can lose connection with, where we don’t believe it will be enough.
“Just do your best”.
Re-connecting to Truth
I’ve always found it fascinating how personal insights are so simple on the surface, when spoken, or heard by others, but the new meaning generated is so powerful for the person.
Back in 2007 I met with a colleague in Perth. She was describing a situation which had many moving parts, and that she wanted to get the best outcome for. A thoughtful, reflective person, who had experience in the game, she was at a stage of development where she was clear about what could, and couldn’t, be done, within her control. She finished telling her story, breathed out, and let go.
“It just is what it is”.
She heard herself and laughed. The laugh that comes from feeling deep, inescapable truth. She knew the expression, had always understood what it meant intellectually, but now had new connection to it. A new meaning.
Philosophical Golf
I have a client* who runs a global online golf coaching business out of Queensland. One of his unique offerings is his philosophical approach to the game. For him at a deeper level, golf has been a vehicle for self-understanding and growth of consciousness. All this within a game of hitting a ball! Brilliant.
He’s a super creative, entrepreneurial type who takes a lot on. Among other things, he gets me to help him stay focussed on what’s important to him, and optimising his mindset to best get after all the things he wants to do.
One of his core golfing principles is Trust.
Trusting your ability to play the game, hit the shot, learn from it, and over time evolve towards golf mastery. Trust in our learning capacity as humans. And trust in our ability to be ok with non-preferred outcomes – valuable learning can be extracted if we can include curiosity in our approach.
Or more distilled, have an intention, get settled, give it a go and see what happens.
Note, frequently intervening to make changes after non-ideal shots, is NOT automatically part of the process in the first instance. I’m paraphrasing, but ideally, he wants his golfers to keep playing, and allow the subtle adjustments to come to them over time.
Importantly here, this approach starkly contrasts to typical golf coaching, with implicit promises of a guarantee via a swing instruction approach.
Opportunity and Fear
Because he’s definitely a person who puts himself “in the arena”**, he also runs a construction business doing premium golf greens and mini-golf courses. A few years ago he wanted to do it, started the business, and has learned his way to the present day. From what he tells me, he’s certainly earnt his progress. A lot of blood, sweat and tears.
The other day he said he was in new territory.
A quote for a $1.7 million dollar job.
He hadn’t been in this level of financial ballpark before, and in his words, was “hatching” on it. (Avoiding moving into action and dithering around – all based on fears and concerns).
But when we explored it, he said the figure was simply what it was going to cost. “It was, what it was”.
We then discussed his biggest concern about the quote. The very worst case scenario.
Say, if the client was outraged about the price, and decided to mount a Clive Palmer funded, public takedown campaign, replete with marauding dinosaurs*** against him?
Would he be able to bounce back? To learn, to adjust or correct (or just let it be) and continue? To field another enquiry from new clients?
The answer was yes.
Golf as a Vehicle and Tool
Golf has been a powerful learning vehicle for this client. Complexity in his business world is always simplified when we can find the golfing analogy.
And in the case of this quote, it was like making a golf shot (that’s obviously important), with some uncertainty (water on the left side, sand traps in front of the green etc. etc.).
In the end, we have no idea where the ball will go.
We have no idea if the quote will be accepted…. Or even if it’s constructed “correctly”. Sometimes we might not even feel like we’ve covered all our bases to give ourselves the best chance of success.
But if we’ve chosen to be in the arena, then we are there to play the game. To play a shot, to make the proposal, to supply the quote.
Choose the intention, make the play, observe, learn, adjust/ intervene (maybe), and go again, time and time again.
What’s Really at Stake?
We all know there are times when we’d like to be able to plan forever, in an attempt to guarantee the result and create certainty, but this usually only works in situations that are known, previously experienced and comfortably familiar. Where we know more of the variables, and planning helps us optimise them.
But new, exciting, emerging opportunities, or even just natural growth situations, are different. There’s no guarantee, we’re not sure of the variables. There’s no certainty. Things are uncertain.
What do we rely on?
Prepare well (being mindful when we’re allowing fear or anxiety to inform us), play our shot, see how it goes. Repeat.
Faced with uncertainty, our brain can look to create it, with over analysis, “catastrophising”, and hyper-thinking.
And of course this has its place.
But on the flip-side, sometimes we can forget our capacity to deal with adversity or non-preferred outcomes, in the moment, when they happen.
And most times, these situations we’re concerned about, aren’t immediate life and death. It’s not we’re like fighting a Viking, and our sword breaks, leaving us totally exposed. No. So often they happen over extended time periods with plenty of opportunity to respond, correct and adjust on the go.
Arrival
The client stated what I was thinking.
We’d been talking about his golf and construction business opportunities, linking back to his golf learning experience. Themes of presence, curiosity, learning, trust. And full potential.
“This is like life, isn’t it? You just gotta have a go. See what happens. You’ll be ok.”
And when humans know they’re ok; that they actually do have psychological and physical safety, they begin to move into their naturally creative state.
They “do their best”.
They expand into their potential. They get shit done and they live their life.
* The client’s permission was granted to share his story here
** Look up the Roosevelt quote if you’re not familiar with it
*** Self-indulgent Sunshine Coast, golf construction gag
One of the things I do, is help people see how they may be getting in their own way. I’m happy to have a casual chat about what it might be for you or your team. Get in touch and we can make a time. Don’t worry, there’s no obligation – I do it all the time.