Jack Nicklaus is arguably the best golfer of all time.
One of my favorite things about Jack is that he passed his personal goal of golf majors relatively early in his career. He wanted to pass Bobby Jones in that category, which was measured differently in that era, and he did.
Then Jack continued winning majors for many more years.
Jack had sustained success. He had early success. He had dominant stretches. He wasn’t solely focused on golf. He grew up playing all kinds of sports and he continued to be active in other areas of life throughout his career.
There is another interesting thing about Jack Nicklaus, he had very selective memory about his golf game.
One of the craziest things about golf is that you’re more likely to remember your bad shots than your good shots. And that actually makes sense when you think about the human condition.
Humans generally have Negativity Bias.
If you think about our ancestors, it makes sense. They needed to focus on the negative in the world in order to survive. Not all the time, but they needed to be aware of things that were threatening. It makes me think of deer hunting. Deer are prey in the animal kingdom. They go about their lives switching between calm and stressed.
When a deer notices something unusual, thanks to their negativity bias, they are able to switch to stress or flight or fight mode and quickly decide if they need to get out of the situation. A branch out of place. A blob in the woods that looks like a coyote or a hunter.
Ancient humans were prey. They needed negativity bias to survive.
Today, we’re at the top of the food chain. We don’t need to think like prey all the time.
One of the unique things, though, is that many people believe that you need to learn from your mistakes. And obviously that seems to be true.
But when it comes to people that actually succeed at what they do best, people like Jack Nicklaus, they often tend to have selective memory.
Jack Nicklaus knows that he’s hit a lot of bad shots in his career. But he doesn’t like talking about them. He almost seems to purposefully forget them all together. He prefers to focus on the good shots he’s hit.
Another successful golfer, Tiger Woods, is very similar in this regard. Of course Tiger knows that he’s hit a number of poor shots in his career. But if you listen to him talk about how he plays he will often cite some of his best shots. And when he’s thinking about playing shots he will talk about how he thinks about past shots he’s hit as well as great shots that others have hit.
This is a skill that requires honing.
Because humans are prone to the negative, it’s an advantage to be able to train your brain to think about the positive. Not just the everyday positive things around you, but the positive things you’ve done in the past. For work. For family. For everything.
Yes, you can learn from your mistakes. But based on the success of Jack Nicklaus and countless others, it’s better to focus more on the good things you’ve done in the past and to use that to fuel your future success.