Professional golfers play in televised tournaments. What are they doing outside of those events?

Practicing. Six to eight hours a day ... on the course, on the driving range, on the putting green. Practicing.

Even with all that practice, pro golfers are not perfect. They still make errant shots. Despite having developed superior skills, they can’t eliminate risk and uncertainty from the game.

Knowing all of this, it’s amusing to see a casual weekend golfer become irate after missing a shot.

On one hand, the professional (who trains constantly) expects to make mistakes. On the other, the hobbyist (who practices infrequently if at all) expects perfection.

The point is not to lower our expectations — but to align our expectations with our preparation and effort.

Professionals can and should expect professional results. Hobbyists should expect to have some fun along with hobbyist results.

* * *

If we want to be exceptional in our fields of study, we don’t begin with performance. We begin with practice.

Consider your limits. Professionally, creatively, personally ...

What defines those boundaries? Is it the culture? Your circumstances? Your innate abilities?

Possibly.

But it’s also possible that over time, you’ve invented some false limits. Or maybe someone has invented them for you.

Go to the edge and gently test its substance. Poke your finger through. Then your arm.

You may find that the boundary is one you’ve invented ... and not a boundary at all.

It may be time for you to leap.

During the early stages of the pandemic, when my town was on stay-at-home orders, I started cutting my own hair. In figuring out how to do that, I read some advice from a stylist: 95 percent of what you see is from the front.

The statement prompted me to think of how this is true in a more general sense. We mostly see one angle. One perspective.

How valuable, then, are those who can help us to see what we cannot see on our own? Those who prompt us to turn our head a few degrees? Those who see our blind spots?

When we’re open to listening and learning from others, we get a much better perspective of the world as it is — not just what we see from the front.

When we falter, the “because” that we communicate can help others to understand what happened.

But it doesn’t turn back the clock and it doesn’t make things right.

When we say, “This happened because … “ what we’re really saying is, “There was a reason I made a mistake. A good reason. I’m asking for your understanding.”

Were you a victim of what you could not control? Maybe. After all, we’re all at the mercy of what we cannot control.

But instead of clinging to the “because” we might try saying, “I know why I screwed up. I understand how it happened and why. Here’s what I’m going to do next … ”

We don’t always have the perfect answer.

Sometimes, we only have an answer. It may be imperfect. It may be forming slowly. It might even be wrong.

But we move forward by beginning with an assertion — or an admitted best guess.

If we wait until we have the perfect answer, we can get stuck waiting.

We start with the best answer we have … and we iterate in the direction of better.

It might be that in order to get what you want ... you don’t need more. It may be that you need less.

We often get so caught up in thinking about what we can add — and the things that we lack — that we forget about the effectiveness of removing, discarding, and deleting.

Can you find a way to have some self-compassion? Of course you can.

And it doesn’t have to be at the expense of being a high-achiever. It doesn’t mean you’ve let yourself off the hook.

It means that amidst all the meaningful (often challenging) work you do, you can be nice to yourself. You can be an encouraging self-coach instead of a harsh critic.

Give yourself some grace. Let it work within you.

A thoughtful question can open a door.

Does our reply pull that door shut again? Or does it invite someone to cross the threshold?

* * *

May we choose more often to be door-openers and threshold-crossers.

They said, “We have a problem and we need your help.”

“What’s the issue and what are the requirements?” I asked.

The reply was, “We don’t know. We just need to know all the options.”

This is a challenging way to solve a problem. When you don’t know what’s needed or what’s desired, it’s hard to clarify viable paths.

Through some investigation, I learned that the “problem” was actually a potential problem. What the group needed was a contingency plan in case a few circumstances changed.

The learning here is that there’s a big difference between “we have a problem” and “we might have a problem if ... ”

And if we’re not careful, we might waste a lot of energy solving problems that don’t exist.

Sometimes, the thing to do is to pause.

(No, not permanently, or even for a long time. Just for a few minutes. Or ten.)

To pause and to be.

Not to change how we are, but to feel how we are. To know and to experience how we are.

That pause is like a deep breath. A moment of conscious rest.

And at its end, we can begin again. Perhaps on the same path ... or maybe in a new direction.

The pause gives visibility to our options and a renewed connection to our intentions.

In her book The Writing Life, Annie Dillard beautifully reveals that a schedule is like a safe haven within “the wreck of time.” She says, “How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”

How true.

If our days are somewhat messy and without much direction, it’s quite likely that those days will string together to form a life that is much the same.

To lead a life of meaning and consequence — that life that we’re called to live — we begin with one day ... or perhaps one hour. Or even this very moment.

(H/T Jason for introducing me to Annie Dillard’s work.)

The story we tell ourselves about “the one that got away” conveniently omits the struggles and hardships, the flaws, and the imperfections. That is, when we imagine the one that got away, it’s rooted more in fantasy than reality.

Whether it’s a big client, or a job, or a career, or a partner, or a property, or an opportunity ... the one that got away is often perfect in our minds. We only consider the good that was not ours to hold.

But that also means it’s not worthwhile lamenting the loss. What we’d be mourning is something that never really existed in the way we think.

When my sons play games, the younger of the two will often shout, “Hey! That’s not fair!”

What he means is that he’s unhappy with an outcome. It doesn’t usually involve fairness at all.

As adults, we don’t need an explanation about the difference between fairness and fortune. But it’s still a good idea for us to keep our emotions in check. It’s quite possible for us to feel like we’ve been treated unfairly, when really we just don’t like a particular outcome.

Fair means fair, usually in the form of impartiality or equal opportunity. It doesn’t mean that we’re guaranteed the outcome we desire.

I took thirty minutes to sit in the shade and read yesterday. In walking back to my office, I paused to recognize: there is gift and blessing in every moment.

Time to read. The warmth of the sun. The ability to breathe, and to physically move, and to make choices. As I walked, my mental list continued to grow.

But one thing was clear: in the best of times and in the worst of times, there are gifts and blessings. And it seemed like a gift, too, to experience a moment when this was so evident.

Choose the difficult path. Choose to face fear. Choose to play the rival. Choose the hard work that’s worth doing.

Once you’ve crossed a finish line you thought you’d never see, you realize not all wins are the same. The best victories are victories hard-won.

Choose challenging.

Wishing does not make it so.

But sometimes, doing makes it so.

If you want to be a writer, write. If you want to be a baker, bake. If you want to be a painter, paint.

Sometimes the barrier to entry is merely making the choice to do something.

You won’t debut as number one in your new field ... but if you don’t participate in that field, you’ll be left wanting and wishing.

Said another way: you can grant some of your own wishes if you’re brave enough to leap.

In generalizing large groups of people as closed-minded idealogues, we ought to be careful that we ourselves are not acting as closed-minded idealogues.

By labeling, deriding, and vilifying, we choke off opportunity for civil discourse.

“Better” does not begin with shutting down and digging in. It begins with opening up, listening, and seeking to understand.

Every success is temporary.

But every failure is temporary, too.

What endures is the story we tell ourselves about those moments. And that story ... we can write it using the language of our failures, or the language of our successes. It’s totally up to us.

You might get lucky; some people do.

At some point, the planets may align and the right things will happen at just the right time ... and your endeavors will get a supernatural boost.

But you can’t wait on your lucky break. You can’t sit idly until that luck arrives. After all, it might not.

The only thing to do is to put in the work. Small step by small step.

Let’s hope you get lucky. But if you don’t, you’ll have taken countless steps along your journey — and that’s significant.

In drawing, the contrast between light and dark creates beauty.

In our lives, it’s not so different.

That we experience pain and suffering at all — not just joy and elation — simply means that we are alive.