Recharging the Battery

With the frantic pace that we get into, we often forget to find time to recharge our battery. Last week I attended the quarterly conference of one of the companies that I am affiliated with. Even though I facilitated two sessions of my peers, which is always energy draining, I came away with a renewed sense of purpose and drive for my business.

When I step back and examine why there is this positive energy, several thougths come to mind. The first is that I got to see and interact with colleagues that I had not seen in a while. It's great to be around bright people who provide encouragement and reinforcement to me. I have always found that positive energy creates more positive energy.

Secondly, having to prepare to present to and lead a group my peers always creates focus for me. The process of organizing my thoughts and ideas to share with others focred me to make that I was apllying those same principles to my business.

Finally, it was great to hear about and share the successes of others. With so much doom and gloom in the business news today, it's nice to know that people can be successful in these times. It was amzing to hear some colleagues say that this was their best year ever. While I am not a that point, this year hasn't been terrible but I realize that it's about me and not the economy. More than ever there is a need for what I do.

Golf Lesson

It is easy to get in a rut playing golf. We may play the same course with the same people time after time. Our pregame warmup on the practice tee may be the same for very round.

Now there is a lot to be said for consistent routines in becoming a better golfer. However, sometimes we need to mix it up to recharge our battery. I enjoy occasionally playing a different course instead of my home course.

Why Plan?

To borrow the title from one of sports psychologist Bob Rotella's book, "Like is not a game of perfect". Rarely do all of our plans work out exactly as we plan them. Just when we seem to have everything under control, something totally unexpected happens.

Some people use this as an excuse to do no planning at all. Their rationale is that it does no good to plan because stuff is always going to happen anyway to mess up their plans, particularly as it relates to their personal lives. They prefer to lead a life dictated by events that come along and just go with the flow. They let others and life's events determine what they accomplish.

The problem with this is that people with no plans develop what I call the "victim mindset". Because they have chosen not to make commitments to themselves through goal setting and planning, they can easily blame others for their lack of success and their misery. Everything that happens to them is someone else's fault.

High achievers do two things well. One is that they have established goals and developed plans to achieve those goals. The goals provide a sense of direction for their lives. The more specific the goal, the greater the sense of direction that they have.

The second thing that they do well is accept the fact that surprises will happen. We cannot control what happens to us, but we always control our response to the situation. High achievers understand that uncertainty is part of life. They learn to overcome uncertainty and stay focused on the goal.

GOLF LESSON

There is an interesting dynamic that I observe with golfers. The worse the golfer, the more that they let a bad shot bother them. Professional golfers understand that they are going to hit some bad shots. The great ones recover from the adversity.

A few years ago Tom Kite and Davis Love were tied for the lead going to the last hole at Bay Hill, Arnold Palmer's tournament in Orlando. After Davis flew his second shot over the green, it looked like all that Tom Kite needed to do was put the ball on the green to win or at worst be in a playoff. Instead, he hit the ball into the water next to the green.

Kite then hit his next approach shot close to the hole and made a bogey. He eventually won the tournament in a playoff. His ability to forget the bad shot was key to his win. While the the television announcers were critical of Kite's decision not to play it safe, he viewed it as one of his best wins.

Clarity and Focus

I believe that success in any endeavor comes down to two things - clarity and focus. Clarity means to have a clear sense of what you want to accomplish. It means creating a vision of the future. Every great accomplishment begins with vision.

Goal setting creates clarity. People with written personal and professional goals achieve much greater success than those who do not have them. While most people agree that goal setting is important, very few actually put it into practice.

The reason that most people don't have written personal goals comes down to one word - fear. Our inherent fear of failure prevents us from making a commitment to ourselves to achieve something worthwhile. If we don't make a commitment, then we can't fail.

The ability to focus comes from clarity. Focus is the ability to do the important things that lead to achievement of our goals, and not to be distracted by unimportant or trivial activities. When I work with clients on time management, they quickly realize that time management is really not the issue. It usually comes down to lack of clarity or lack of focus. We always have the time to do what we perceive as most important at the time.

For more on my Peaking For Success© model for creating clarity and focus, click on this link:
http://www.lead-strat-assoc.com/peaking_for_success.pdf

Golf Lesson

When it comes to clarity and focus in golf, two names come to mind - Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Both had a single minded vision of what they wanted to accomplish in competitive golf. It is to win major championships.

In some ways, Tiger has had it easier in creating clarity of his goals. Nicklaus was there as a target. Clearly his vision is to be the greatest golfer of all time, and his measuring stick is the accomplishments of Jack Nicklaus.

What I find interesting is that Tiger established this as a goal, and publicly said so, prior to winning his first major. Talk about setting yourself up for failure. I can't remember any other golfer before or after Tiger talking about becoming the greatest golfer ever. I'm sure other good players have goals, but none have set such a lofty one as Tiger. And maybe this is why he is dominating like no one else. He has greater clarity.

So how do we amateur golfers achieve clarity and focus. I'll suggest we take it down to the micro level meaning that we apply it to each shot. Clarity is visualizing the shot before you hit it. I fully realize that the reason that we are amateurs is because the ball rarely goes where we aim it. But, I believe you'll hit a higher percentage of good shots with better clarity.

Focus is blocking out everything else, the just focusing on hitting the shot as we visualize it. It means forgetting about the previous hole, or worrying about what score we are going to shoot. Over the past couple of months, I have been working on this and the results show. I've dropped my handicap by three strokes.