I like playing golf. I’m not great, but I’m working on it. It’s a game where you never reach perfection, but you have shots you can enjoy and relive over and over. Yesterday was a day of golf at a great club in Austin, playing with close friends. My kind of day, even when it was over 100 degrees again. It was not a day when my golf swing was great. I was out of balance, physically and mentally. One plays off the other.
I love a golf course. The designer has the talent and creativity to carve a perfect lawn out of the trees, and hills, and granite outcroppings. There is a perfect balance, no matter how sophisticated the course is. The beauty of a course is spectacular and if I stop to appreciate it, it can put me in a good place mentally. Yesterday wasn’t that day, and that was on me.
I was playing rather poorly, and I was frustrated. I was out of balance. Not off balance, but out of balance. I hit poor shot after poor shot. Then I went as far as (accidentally) hitting myself in the face with my club. No major damage, but I split my lip and I had swelling. All I could think of was “I deserved it.”
I was working out last week with my friend Ali, and I was telling her that I was working out, intensely, five to six times a week. I shared I was punishing myself for not being extremely busy at work. She asked a simple question that hit home. “Why do you think you need to punish yourself?” It was a great question, and one that came back to me after I hit myself in the face. When my thought was “I deserved it.”
Resiliency is a key to any great salesperson. We can face rejection a lot. Negative conversations with yourself don’t help, but here I was, having those conversations. Why did I feel like I needed to be punished for playing poorly? Why did I view a difficult workout schedule as punishment? I tied it back to my business. I have a new solution that I’m building a pipeline for and that takes time. If it’s not fast enough, I’m frustrated and challenged. Again, it’s out of balance.
As you work in your business, are you in balance? Do you focus on the challenge and not the enjoyment of the journey? Building in milestones to celebrate can help you balance the tough days with the great days. Each morning my wife and I share our schedules for the day, then we list what we are grateful for. It helps us stay balanced.
Yesterday was not a great day for golf, for me, but I did hit a 12-foot put on 18 to close the day out with a positive and now I’ll be back on the course, holding onto that as I focus on aligning my shoulders…