How golf applies itself to my life.
Are you too good for your home ball?
You have to fix your own mistakes.
I, probably more than others, understand how bad a round of golf can truly get. It seems like no matter how good I am doing on the course, I will always have that hole. The hole where everything goes wrong. The hole where I completely forget how to swing a golf club and I end up with a score way worse than what I should have had. This is more than true for anything I have yet to figure out in my own life/career. Bad things are going to happen. But it’s up to you and you alone to take care of those bad things. If you want to get other people to help you, that's a choice, but it’s still on you to take that step. More importantly in business practices, and with me trying to start my own company, I have realized that it’s all on me. If I make a mistake there is nobody for me to call and try to have them come fix it. It’s on me. If I mess something up in a video or photo shoot, I have to fix it. Nobody else. Me. Just like being on a golf course. If I miss a shot, it was my fault. So now it’s my job to work harder so that mistake becomes less and less significant to my overall success. When I make a bad shot on the course, or a mistake in life, the hardest thing to do is to let it go. It’s definitely not something easy to do, but it’s necessary. If you let that mistake cling onto you for the rest of your project, or life, or round, it will only make everything else worse.
Sometimes it’s hard.
Golf is hard. Life is hard. Business is hard. Everything is hard. That’s just a fact. Nothing really worth doing is going to be easy. Trying to start a new company, and trying to get a golf score that doesn't suck, are both very worth doing, but very very hard as well. Nothing is going to be given to you. There are no handouts in golf. Nobody is going to pick your ball up, walk over to the hole, and drop your ball in. It’s not that easy, and it’s never going to happen. So if you are living your life waiting for handouts, you are going to be waiting for a very long time. The other thing that is going to happen, is that you are going to make some bad choices along the way. Buying or investing in something maybe you shouldn’t, or using the wrong club off the tee on the 18th hole. Either way that was your mistake. Other people can try to persuade you to do something, but after all is said and done, it is still your decision to make. You have to decide what you are going to do with the things you have, and if that decision is going to help you in the future. And if it doesn’t, then that was a mistake. But it’s a mistake that, as we talked about earlier, you have to fix. These mistakes are going to happen though. There is nothing you can do about that. Try your best at everything you do, and when you make the mistake it won't be very hard to handle; as long as you have made every effort you can. If you are lazy and unmotivated, then that is going to change your course. Lazy people make more mistakes than anybody else in the world, and when they make a mistake, that mistake is very hard to fix. That being said, there is a lot that goes into the decisions you make. It doesn't matter what it is. If you are stepping up to the tee box, you have to factor in wind, distance, shot type, path, shape, swing temp, speed, and that’s all before you even get to your bag, look at your clubs, and then completely change everything you just told yourself you were going to do. But this happens in business and life as well. No matter what you are doing, there is always going to be a moment where you have to make a decision and that decision is going to be made by making a lot of other littler decisions.
It’s always worth doing as long as it’s worth doing.
If you are doing something it better be worth your time. And by your time. I mean YOUR time. I really love to golf, and I really love to get better at golf. For me, every time I play I am trying to learn something new. I am going out on the course with an objective. It might be that I am trying to get to a certain score, or take a certain amount of putts, or hit a certain amount of fairways. The same thing happens in my professional life. When I am making a new video, or design, or taking some sort of photograph, I am doing it for a purpose. The nicest purpose is to make some good money, but in all reality it's about more than that. It’s about being good at what I do. It’s about being as good as I can be. Which should theoretically never stop. There is no reason to say, “Okay, this is good enough.” I can always learn a new technique or learn how to light something different, or learn different buttons on different cameras, it’s going to be very hard to truly never have something else to learn. And I brought that into my golf game. I realized that there are a lot of ways to get better at golf. And none of the ones I thought of were the traditional ways. There will always be practice. There will always be instruction. But what I wanted to make it go faster. I wanted to get better quicker than everyone else. Because that's just me. So that’s what I did. I immediately went on youtube and on the internet and looked up countless things. I watched an entire series from Phil Mickelson on chipping. I watched countless videos from Butch Harmon on driver swings. I read a million articles on the mental part of the game, and the ideas that go beyond shots, versus just physically hitting them. I found myself getting just as involved in learning about the golf game and swing as I was with my own work. I can’t tell you how many times I have been on the internet looking for new video ideas, or techniques, or researching new technology. I can usually tell you about everything that comes out in the industry. I research things until I know it. I do it in my professional life, and I do it in my golf life. Both of which help the other to discover new ways to discover new ways. The best part is that there is always going to be another round. There is always going to be another project. As long as everything is worth your time, there will always be another chance to get better.
So what was the point?
The entire purpose of this was to show you that things in your life connect, even if you do not realize it. Something like video production has a ton of similarities to golf. They both can be used to support the same ideas of perseverance, hard work, and dedication. I try to be as perfect in my golf life as I do in my professional life. (wonder what would happen if I applied this to school…) Everyone should realize that there is a reason you are good at the things you are good at, and there is a reason you are bad at the things you are bad at. Most likely there are very big similarities between the things that you are good at. Try everything you can, and if you don't like it stop doing it and find something else that you enjoy and will work hard to be great at it.
Till Next Time,
Jake Matthew Morrow
@jmorrow020