How are you?
That’s always a loaded question, right?
And lately, my answer has been: I’m fine. Mostly.
Except for my golf game.
Which has become a bigger issue than it should be.
I know. I know. First world problems. But there is something deeper here.
I started playing two years ago after tennis started taking a toll on my body. I figured golf would be a nice, gentle alternative.
It was not.
I was terrible.
So I took lessons. I practiced. I played. A lot.
And eventually, something clicked.
I even won the women’s Ace of the Month (low net) twice in the past year.
I was getting better. I was having fun. And somewhere along the way, I got hooked.
And then, about two months ago, something changed.
My golf game fell apart.
Suddenly, I couldn’t remember how to grip the club. I couldn’t figure out what I was doing with my feet. My swing felt completely foreign.
And the more I tried to fix it, the worse it seemed to get.
I started questioning myself.
And then I realized: this wasn’t really about golf.
We all have something like this.
We put time and energy into something because we care about it. We work at it. We believe we’re getting somewhere.
We want evidence that it’s working.
We want the business to grow, the relationship to deepen, the friendship to feel reciprocal.
We want the job to lead somewhere, the number on the scale to move, the bank account to increase.
We want the thing we’re investing ourselves in to give something back.
And when it doesn’t, we start asking:
What did I do wrong?
Why isn’t this working?
Am I not good enough?
Should I walk away?
Sometimes something stops working.
And our first instinct is to assume that we have stopped working.
That’s where I was with golf.
Until a friend’s husband asked me a question when we were playing a round together.
As I was setting up my ball, he asked, “Where’s your target?”
I pointed about 150 yards away.
He said, “No. Where’s your immediate target?”
I didn’t understand.
He pointed to a spot about two feet in front of me.
“That’s your target.”
So, I lined it up and took a swing.
And somehow, I hit a perfect shot.
It was almost ridiculous.
Because I had been standing there trying to figure out how to hit a golf ball 150 yards, when all I really needed to do was hit it over the spot two feet in front of me.
We spend so much time looking at the big target or goal.
The five-year plan.
The finish line.
The number on the scale or the bank account.
And sometimes the big target is so far away that we can’t see what we’re supposed to do next.
Maybe the target is two feet in front of us.
The next conversation.
The next application.
The next workout.
Maybe we don’t need to know exactly how we’ll get there.
Maybe we just need to know what we’re aiming at right now.
Sometimes when we loosen our grip, keep our heads down, and swing freely… good things are bound to happen.
Happy Wednesday!
Jackie
