Life will through wrenches into your plans and learning to control what you can and letting go of what you can't will allow you to move on and become a beyond average person.
Zac Jones a NCAA golfer at BYU recalled a recent tournament at University of New Mexico South Golf Course where he was “seven under par for the first 13 holes and had a two-shot lead in the tournament.” In which his opportunity for glory slipped.
A “hole that was supposed to be pretty easy and should make birdie or par on” came up.
The 23-year-old athlete explained that he “made a double bogy” due to many mistakes costing him his two-shot lead and through a massive wrench into his focus.
The following hole he “kept that negative emotion going and made another double bogy” causing him to fall out of the lead.
After the tournament ended “hindsight was 20/20” and learned “its very easy to spiral out of control and hit the next shot bad and get out of your routine”.
He explained that falling out his routine was a factor in the consecutive bad holes claiming that being able to create and lock into a routine “is the easiest way to take your mind of the negative and focus on the present and the things that you can control”.
The following days Zac looked back and explained “even though I was very mad and frustrated with myself” on the first double bogy “I was still leading the tournament and was in a really good spot had I not made the next double bogy and just kept going” he would have kept the lead and won the tournament.
He stated that when playing golf “no matter how well you play or how good you are at golf mistakes will happen and sometimes it’s not even your fault you’ll get a bad break at the most inopportune moment. learning how to forget, move on and focus on the next shot” is imperative.
The cougar athlete stated that sometimes in life for example “you have a test, and you don’t do very well on even though you prepared, and it doesn’t do a whole lot of good thinking of how it’s going to affect your grades”
Instead, you should “focus on the things you can control. Can I get the notes from the test, can I look at the questions I got wrong, can I figure out what I need to do next time in my studies to improve, how can I improve my study routine?”
“If you can apply the mindset of controlling the things you can control and not worry about the things you can’t, you save so much energy.” Zac explained.
The golfer explained from there you then “build routines off of what you can control” which in turn will lead to success not only in golf but in life.