No Excuses
by Josh Nichols
The Struggle
I had all the excuses in the book when I was a kid. I didn’t have enough money. I didn’t have a country club membership. I couldn’t play in all the big tournaments. I didn’t have the latest equipment.
But instead of embracing those as facts of my life, instead I harbored them and used them to let my ego down easy.
In the book Paper Tiger, Tom Coyne is trying to give golf everything he’s got to try to play professionally. But he wasn’t always that way. Up until his mid-twenties he went at it halfway, never actually leaning into the pursuit.
And he said something that struck me to the core. From p. 22:
“There is safety in sitting around and wondering, imagining your successes and blaming cruel circumstance—I always win that game, with nothing put to risk.”¹
I know this safety. When you know you have an excuse for playing bad, then you let yourself go halfway.
But Coyne brings the point home:
“When you take away all your excuses, funny how lonely your ego can become.”²
That lonely ego is the thing we don’t want to risk. It sucks to actually try, and realize you’re not actually good enough.
The Solution
But what’s the use in trying something halfway? I’m simultaneously reading another book titled Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield (the sequel to his book The War of Art—if anyone knows him I’d love to have him on The Mental Golf Show!) and he talks a lot about, well, turning pro. As opposed to doing something as an amateur would. A pro actually tries. An amateur pretends to try.
What’s stopping you from giving golf everything you’ve got? And by “everything you’ve got” that doesn’t have to mean all your time, money, and energy. It could be as simple as all of your focus on as many shots in a round as you can. Or prioritizing mindful quality in your practice rather than mindless quantity.
Only you know if you’re actually giving it all you got.
One thing for you to work on this week:
Look yourself in the mirror (metaphorically, or physically if you’re into that sorta thing) and ask yourself “Am I going halfway? Why?” If it’s some sort of protection, ask the followup question “What am I protecting against?”
You’ll probably start to dissolve some of the “Resistance” Pressfield talks about.
To-do: Ask yourself honestly if you’re actually giving it everything you’ve got.
Sources:
- Paper Tiger by Tom Coyne, p. 22
- Ibid.