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HOW, NOT WHAT

Contrary to what Aristotle (there weren’t that many people back then so you could go by one name more easily); you are not what you do. Actually, Lao Tsu said precisely that 4500 years before Aristotle made his now famous utterance. I just finished watching the Accenture Match Play Championship, won by Henrik Stenson. He defeated Geoff Ogilvy 2 & 1 in a 36 hole match. In the post mortem interview, Ogilvy said he lost his golf swing and his putting stroke didn’t work. Stenson said “I did this….and I did that.” Olgilvy sounded as if “his golf swing and his putting stroke” had lives of their own.

No one has a golf swing or a putting stroke. Swinging is something you do, not something you have.

The same applies to your putting stroke. Where do you keep your golf swing when you’re not using it? What color is it? How much does it weight? “It” is something you do, not something you have.

If you think what goes on, on a golf course is something that happens instead of something you do, you are in trouble, if you can call what goes on, on a golf course trouble. You are responsible for what you do out there. That is the good news. Now your responsibility may have started before you ever got to the golf course. Maybe you didn’t eat breakfast. Maybe you didn’t warm up before you went out to play. You have a lot more to “say” about what goes on out there than you might think. How you go about your business has at least as much to do with “what” happens out there as what you think you are doing at the moment. You can change the way you go about your business and it will change the results you get. Learn how you function. There is plenty of evidence out there to teach you how to operate. It isn’t by trying to think your way through your golf swing. When you hit a shot it’s what not how. The rest of the time maybe it’s how not what.