In my recent post about what separates the best from the rest, HappyRock asked me what I’m doing to achieve my goals. I addressed it in a follow-up comment, but it really deserves a post of its own.

The stock answer is that I’m working on my fitness, weight loss, and practicing the various aspects of the game. But that’s not enough. If I lose all the weight I want to lose, get reasonably fit, and play to scratch, I’m still not going to be good enough.

My basic premise in what separates the best from the rest is that mental game is the biggest factor once a player gets to a certain point. I listed out a bunch of aspects of the mental game that I feel are factors. The question is, what am I doing to develop those things?

Right now, this blog is my biggest vessel for mental development. It sounds strange, but when you find a way to be totally honest with yourself and expose your deepest, darkest, inner flaws in front of the world, it’s an experience that starts to change you.

One of the biggest issues that many people, including myself, suffer from, is a lack of honesty with oneself regarding where we stand, whether it’s golf or anything else. It’s that lack of honesty that keeps us in the same ruts, doing the same things over and over. We can’t know how to improve our lives if our mental defense mechanisms hide our problems from us.

This blog lets me air out all my problems so that they’re right there in black and white, in my face. Then, I must deal with them if I want to achieve my goals.

I also have the benefit of people in my life who are very supportive, but don’t let me cop out. They’re family, friends, and co-workers. They’re also total strangers here whose input I value greatly. They help me to see things that I don’t (or won’t) see for myself.

But that’s only half the issue. Knowing what’s wrong is important, but having a specific plan to reach goals is just as important. A while back, I lamented that I lack discipline. That’s great, but if I don’t do anything about it, then I’ve accomplished nothing toward reaching my goals.

With all that in mind, here are some problem areas for me, and specific steps I’m performing to fix them.

• Discipline. As I said, this is a sore spot. In virtually every aspect of fitness, proper diet, and golf, I know what to do. I know how to get the job done. Working on discipline is the easiest, because it comes down to a simple choice. Am I going to eat fast food tonight? Am I going to be too lazy to line up an aim club at the driving range? Am I going to give up after a bad hole and call it a practice round? With each and every choice I make, I am striving to make what I feel are the best choices for achieving my goals. I know I don’t have all the answers, but too often I do and still make poor choices.
• Fear. Sometimes I fear failure. Also, while I’m not afraid to lose, sometimes I’m afraid of being a loser (if that makes sense). To deal with fear, I’m trying to evaluate everything that happens with a “so what?” attitude. Nothing I’m doing will ultimately have a negative effect on my life. So what if I don’t win a tournament, or play a bad round, or have atrocious stats, or top the ball in front of a bunch of strangers? In the end, these individual events won’t define success or failure for me. Part of the reason I stopped keeping stats as regularly was out of embarrassment because I felt like they were way worse than they should be. Why should that worry me? The problem is that the stats are where they should be. But I was worried about people’s perception of me. Why? I don’t know, but I’m getting over that.
• Pressure. In some aspects of my life, I deal with pressure well. At work, when there’s a crunch, I dig inside myself and excel. On the golf course, I’m not so good in that area, especially since I’ve never really faced any real pressure. What I need to do to deal with the pressure is break down each and every shot into a single, atomic action. It’s one shot. I need to form a plan, go through my routine, absolutely commit to the plan, and execute. I can’t worry about the big picture.

In addition to addressing those specific problems, there are some things I’m doing to improve every area of my life.

• Evaluate every action. I try to evaluate each and every thing I do to determine if I’m doing what I can to meet my goals. Whether it’s a decision to watch TV, a decision to eat something, a decision to stay up late, a decision to read a book, a decision to take a nap, I ask myself “how does this fit in with my goals?” If it doesn’t or if I feel a little twinge of guilt, I then have to decide, “is it worth it?” Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t. The point isn’t to make sure every single detail of your life fits in with your goals, the point is to be sure that you’re making a conscious decision about every detail in your life.
• Do something each day. One of my main short-term goals is to do something every single day to further my overall goals. That doesn’t have to mean a round of golf or a driving range session. It can mean reading a book or doing some stretching, or making good eating choices or uncovering another truth about myself.
• Write a blog post each day. I really make an effort to make a post every day. I’ve probably missed 4 or 5 days in the last couple of months. On the surface, you might think, “how does that really help?” Well, in two ways. First, when I write technical articles, I go through a process where I lay out what I know. Then I do research to fill in the blanks and to fact-check myself. This is an amazing source of learning for me. While I might have 80 or 90% of an article coming out of my brain, there are still little details that I’ve forgotten or never knew in the first place. That fills in the gaps for me. Secondly, writing these posts is where I discover probably half of the shortcomings I’ve found out about myself. When I write an article saying that you should do this or that, sometimes I’ll think, “wait a second…” and realize that I need to improve in that area.
• Put time frames on goals wherever possible. HappyRock pointed out to me that when we don’t put time frames on goals, we give ourselves an out. When we give ourselves an out, we generally will take advantage of it and don’t attend to those goals in a timely fashion. Before we know it, years have passed and we’re still not able to reach specific goals.
• Gain knowledge. Practice on the range only takes a person so far. I feel that I need to absorb all the golf knowledge I can get my hands on. This includes reading books, talking to people, experimentation. I need to understand everything there is to understand about the game. I also need to absorb information about fitness, diet, etc.
• Develop confidence. My confidence is generally good when I’m in a comfort zone. Most people can say the same. The problem comes when I’m not hitting the ball well or when I’m faced with some adversity. When I get out of my comfort zone, I lose confidence and it affects what I’m trying accomplish. To gain more confidence, I need to make sure I’m properly prepared for the task at hand. If I never practice hitting a ball from a plugged lie in a bunker, how can I expect to be confident as I prepare for the shot on the course? Dealing with the items mentioned above (fear, pressure, discipline) will also help breed confidence.

Finally, in addition to those more general changes, I’m going to achieve the following specific goals in the time frames listed.

• Update my to-do list to include due dates where applicable. (June 18, 2007)
• Develop a detailed fitness plan. (July 1, 2007)
• Develop a detailed diet plan. (July 1, 2007)
• Develop a detailed practice plan. (July 1, 2007)
• On the first tee of every round, declare whether the round is going to be practice or for a score, then stick to it. This includes regular stat-keeping again. (Immediate)

That’s pretty much it. Once again, I’m lain bare before you. That’s OK, though. It’s what I need to do.

Maybe you can apply some of these things to your own goals and we can attack them at the same time.

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