Believe In Yourself

One of the seemingly smallest aspects to overlook in the process of improvement is whether or not you believe success is achievable. Everyone has a story to tell others about themselves that may or may not be completely true or honest, but my focus is the story that runs on a loop in our own minds everyday about self belief.

Our general outlook on the world and ourselves is a combination of nature, nuture, and divinity. The story can be viewed as a program that can and will change over time. Golf is a basic program for most who engage. However, even a basic program can provide an opportunity for immense growth that isn't limited to the game itself.

Golf is also a story. It's a story that pulls you in after only reading the first page. The first time you step on the grounds of your local golf course, it's a state of excitement, curiousity, and inspiration. The first time you feel solid contact, like it was effortless, captivates you for a lifetime. It's just as exciting as your first love, your first car, your first house or your first job.

We only experience so many firsts in our lifetime. What usually follows is a rollercoaster of success and failure. If failure is persistent, we can easily slip into believing it's inevitable.

The story of Self-Belief is a story anyone can tell. We all have moments of confidence and moments of fear. Fear is resistance to something in front of you, maybe something coming from behind you, or something along the path. The distinction of practical fear, such as a lion chasing you, and irrational fear, such as being harmed by rain, can be challenging to explore, especially if you have been sold a story that the rain is out to get you.

Can you think of an irrational fear story that you've been told, and later in life found not to be true?

Confidence, on the other hand, is assurance in yourself to overcome the challenge in front of you, to use what's behind you as motivation and strength to propel forward, and excitement for what's about to happen next.

If you knew that you have the ability to program yourself, your thoughts, your emotions, every aspect of your life, how would you choose to write the code?

See, golf is the perfect game to open your heart and your mind to its own reflection. Golf will test your resilience, your patience, your pride, and ego.

Think about what you say to yourself after you miss a 3 Foot Putt for Par on the last hole... Whether it's out loud or to yourself, those words or thoughts stay with you if you don't replace them consistently. You wouldn't accept your home to be wired in a hazardous way so don't allow your mind to be wired hazardously either.

The power of words is nothing short of amazing. If you curse your game, or more consequentially your life, you're affectivly hexing your game.

The beautiful and graceful part of life and the game of golf is that you can recover. You can rewrite the program, if you believe in yourself.

Limitations exist in our reality. Some limitations are fixed and some are maluable. Gravity is fixed. If you don't accept that gravity is fixed, the game of golf would be chaos, just as a small example. Your golf game, your swing, your knowledge, the quality and quantity of your practice, your belief in your ability, are all maluable.

Take good care of your thoughts and words. Believe in yourself, even if your environment gives you every reason not to. Golf is a great opportunity to challenge yourself regardless of who you are or where you come from.

Thank you for reading 🙏

Go do your best, have fun, and believe in yourself 🙂