Permission to Fail
by Josh Nichols
The Struggle
Why do we play scared? Why do we make tight, guidey, steery swings? Why do we tense up and play worse when the pressure is higher?
It almost always comes down to a deeper level of fear. Fear of people’s opinions. Fear of embarrassment. Fear of our hard work being for nothing. Fear of failure.
For the majority of my golf life I’ve played with some version of this fear. I think mine was in the realm of fear of not being good enough. Which led to over-practicing, panic practicing, trying too hard, forcing things, imposter syndrome, being inauthentic, and playing scared.
The Breakthrough
But I didn’t stay there. What I would call the biggest breakthrough of my golf career can be distilled down to three words: permission to fail.
I got to a point in my life when I realized that results weren’t everything, and golf itself wasn’t everything. There’s more to life than golf.
Alright sure, but how does that help?
When golf isn’t all there is, then golf can be bad, but you are still ok. You might be disappointed and frustrated and angry, in the same way you’d be all of those things if your car breaks down. But this perspective gives you permission to fail. Things don’t have to go perfectly smooth for you to be ok.
In our 📚 2025 Book Club we’ve been reading Golf Beneath the Surface by Raymond Prior, and on p. 161 Prior says what might be my favorite line of the book so far:
“Let me be very clear: it’s the permission to fail that allows us to take risks and pursue the things we really want more freely.”¹
When we’re allowed to fail, and we know we’ll be ok if/when we do, then failure doesn’t scare us. And if it doesn’t scare us, then there’s no reason to play scared, or guide the ball away from a mistake, or worry about someone else’s opinion of us. A mistake or someone’s opinion can be bad but we’ll be ok.
One thing for you to work on this week:
The best part is, you can work on this. You can give yourself permission to fail. And once you do it’ll lead to some incredible freedom on the course.
To-do: Find your credible source of permission to fail.