“You are thinking WAY too much,” I told myself as I stood frozen over my ball during a recent round of golf.
I wasn’t playing particularly well (no surprise there) and the worse I played, the more frantically I tried to exorcise the demons in my golf game. Every time I was about to hit a shot, my brain started recounting every golf tip I’d ever heard – “check your grip…make sure your stance is correct…keep your head still…keep your left elbow straight…” and on and on.
At the same time, at some barely conscious level, I was imagining all the bad things that might happen when I hit the ball – I could chunk it, shank it, hook it, slice it, lose it in the woods, or drown it in a water hazard.
Exhausted from these mental gymnastics, I determined somewhere around the 11th hole that my only hope for salvaging this round was to dial down my brain. I was suffering from “paralysis of analysis,” as they say. I determined to forget all the tips and focus on a few simple basics, like relentlessly keeping my eye on the ball, consciously relaxing my muscles and following through.
Guess what? It helped.
I’ve never taken golf lessons because if I invest too much money in learning how to play the sport, I’m sure I’ll feel like I should know what I’m doing. Then, when I play like I don’t know what I’m doing, I’ll lament the money spent on lessons and exponentially raise my frustration level.
The golf books and magazines I read, however, do typically advise that as one prepares to hit a shot, one should try to clear one’s mind and simply let muscle memory take over. (It helps, I’m sure, if one’s muscles have created some happy golfing memories, but sadly, I don’t have that advantage.)
It’s beneficial to focus on mechanics on the practice range, but when one is out on the golf course, one’s muscles need to be relaxed in order to execute a good shot. And I surely can’t relax when I’m consciously trying to remind my body to do 500 doggone things at the same time in perfect sync.
Hitting a golf ball shouldn’t be as complicated a launching the Space Shuttle, but if you were inside my head, you’d think it was. And all I usually get for my mental overexertion is a total on my scorecard that I’d be thrilled to claim as my weight, but never as my golf score.
So, that’s why my new golfing strategy is to stop thinking so much, and to simply put myself in the right position, keep watching the ball, and follow through.
It occurs to me that this philosophy might also serve me well beyond the golf course in my everyday life.
Putting myself in the right position, staying focused but relaxed, and always following through seems like a pretty good formula for a life that works.
The right position? Totally yielded to the loving lordship of Jesus Christ.
Focused upon what? Loving God and others with all my heart, mind, soul and strength.
How to relax? Simply trust Him.
How to follow through? Remain faithful to Him, even when it’s hard, uncomfortable and inconvenient.
The Bible talks about the “simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ” (2 Corinthians 11:3). I have an unfortunate knack for complicating things – anything – and that’s not usually good. “Simplicity and purity” sounds quite refreshing to me.
Works on the golf course. Works in life.