Jim Saying # 7 – Golf and Life

Golf teaches us so many lessons about life.  That book "Chasing Daylight" talks about playing golf at the end of the day and trying to get the most of daylight as a metaphor for dying.  Stephen has a blog talking about this book.  However, for me, the key lesson is taking responsibility for where you find yourself on the course rather than blaming the weather, the course, the clubs, or playing partners.   In life, we got ourselves to the place we find ourselves and must deal with the next step rather than complaining about how we got here.   If only we all could learn that lesson, we would much better at asking "What to do next?" than "Why?" 

Once I became aware of this, I find it really humorous how people complain about things on the course.  It reminds me of a programmer I worked with many years ago.  His observation was you can tell if a programmer is self-actualized when a bug appears in his program.  He asks "What did I do?"  Often people say "It worked last time and I did not change a thing!"  How many of us when something goes wrong with our computer blame Windows, the internet, the computer, or a virus.  Really in the end it is something we did because all the other stuff is what it is and we must cope.  So next time you have a problem, stop blaming the world and ask "What did I do?" or "What is the next step?"

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