It was a perfect day on the golf course.
I was hitting great shots and making some putts. That leads to good scoring and smiles.
I’m not a professional golfer, but I am pretty good at it some days. On this day things were going well.
That was until I hit a great shot on the last hole only to see it hit something on the edge of the fairway that shot it way out into the rough.
That something turned out to be a sprinkler.
A sprinkler. They’re on every golf course, but they’re the size of a small Frisbee. What are the chances of hitting a sprinkler with a drive? Not very good.
But on this day the golf gods decided it was time for me to hit a sprinkler.
I couldn’t believe my luck. I thought about the bad luck as I prepared to hit the next shot and that shot didn’t turn out very good. I think I made a double bogey and there went the good round.
Bad Breaks
You’re going to get bad breaks in life.
They might happen while you’re on the job. Maybe you lose a big prospective client because there was one thing they liked about the competition that you didn’t have at that moment.
Maybe you planned some great marketing campaigns for the new year only to see Facebook and Twitter change their rules on how you can promote to your followers.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong in life. It’s not fair, but in the end, that’s how life works.
Good Breaks Vs. Bad Breaks
In golf I’ve found there are times when I get some really bad breaks. I hit great shots only to see them end up in horrible locations. That’s the example above.
But there are other times when I hit really bad shots (I’m talking really bad) and the ball ends up in a great location; sometimes even in the hole.
In the past I’ve kind of focused on the bad breaks more. I would make a stink about the bad breaks as if someone was going to care.
But when good breaks would happen I’d kind of brush it off. I would think that maybe I was owed that good break for some reason.
But now what I’ve learned is that good and bad breaks are just part of golf.
And they’re part of life as well.
You can control only a few things in life and one of them is how you respond to the breaks you get.
Keeping The Right Attitude
These days when I’m on the course I try to keep a positive attitude as much as I can. I practice and when I go to the course I trust my practice. I try to be confident in every shot. When bad breaks happen I shake it off as part of the game.
And I do the same when good breaks happen. I try to keep it on the level and assess how my game is in spite of the good and bad breaks I’m getting.
I think in life you’re going to find that you’ll get an equal amount of good and bad breaks. It might not seem that way, but you have control over your perception of the breaks you get in life.
If you focus on the positive breaks you’ll find that you’re a pretty lucky person and that you’re good at what you do. That can lead to self-encouragement and from there you can accomplish great things.
And even if that doesn’t work out all the way at least you’ll be happier every day.
It’s worked for me on the course and I’m trying to do it in life and in business.
So far so good.