Lucky people know what they want.
When you know what you want you have something to guide you in life.
Something to guide your decision-making. When faced with a choice you can lean on what you want and what’s important to you and determine what the best course of action is.
But even with an idea of what we want we still rarely end up exactly where we thought we would. This aspect of life can be especially frustrating if you have Type A tendencies: organized, anxious, ambitious, etc.
I’ve enjoyed golfing for a large part of my life now. It’s weird, but I keep finding lessons from the game that apply to others areas of life. Maybe it’s like that with a lot of things. I probably see it with golf more because that’s what I spend some of my free time doing.
But here’s another one…
A Lesson From Jackie
Jackie Burke Jr. is one of the greatest golfers to ever live. One of the lessons he’s taught over the years about golf is that it doesn’t make sense to aim at most hole locations. Especially if they’re near the edge of the green with trouble lurking nearby.
Jackie has said that if you’re standing in the fairway, 150 yards from the hole, holding a rifle with a scope that you would be extremely lucky to hit the flagstick.
Yet as golfers, especially those with some skill, we aim at that flag thinking we’re going to hit it. And when we miss, especially on the side of the flag with the most trouble, we act surprised. We seem shocked when we find ourselves losing shots because of poor decision-making.
Even the great Ben Hogan said that if he hit three perfect shots a round that he was doing very well. This is the man that is perhaps the greatest ball striker to ever live.
Scott Fawcett is a very good golfer and he’s seen this is many of the best golfers of all time. He saw that they recognized that golf is a game of misses. They know that their aim isn’t so much like a rifle as it is like a shotgun.
With a rifle, the shooter is firing a single bullet at a very specific target. Rifles are designed to be very accurate.
Shotguns, on the other hand, are usually loaded with a couple hundred little round balls. The shot is fired and the balls spread out to cover a wide area. They generally go where you point, but they don’t necessarily hit an exact target.
Scott has spent a good deal of time studying Tiger Woods. He’s discovered that Tiger aims conservatively relative to many other golfers. He aims far enough away from a flag so that if he misses left, right, short or long that he has pretty good odds of not being in big trouble.
Tiger plays like he has a shotgun with one pellet. One pellet that could go anywhere within a certain spread. Not a rifle that will go to an exact target.
How To Point Your Shotgun In Life
It’s good to have goals in life.
The point of this piece, though, is to watch out for disappointment when you don’t necessarily reach your goal exactly as you planned or imagined. It rarely happens exactly how we think it will.
We can’t predict the future. We can point ourselves in a good direction. We might hit something that works out better than we imagined. Or we might fall somewhat short. Or maybe even somewhere off to the left or to the right.
Tiger Woods is a great example of someone that seems to have a great understanding of this. He supposedly set out to win more major golf events than Jack Nicklaus, who had 18. Tiger is currently at 15. His career has been one of the best of all time. He might still win 19 or maybe even more.
Even Jack Nicklaus had his sights on Bobby Jones. He passed Bobby’s mark and then surpassed it by quite a few.
Both players pointed themselves in a direction. They didn’t end up exactly where they thought. Sometimes that was better than they thought. Sometimes not.
Point yourself in good directions. Don’t let the disappointments get you down or discourage you from continuing to reach for goals.
We’re not as accurate as we often think we are.