I was golfing the other day and had the opportunity to see a player throw his club farther that he hit the ball. We all got a chuckle out of it, except him. Did that mean that he was good at throwing clubs or was he a really bad golfer? Probably neither. Even though he only hit the ball a few feet.

Each golfer experienced different feelings from the same event. The person closest to the player took cover. He experienced fear. The rest of us felt empathy for the poor golf shot.

Some personalities might even analyze the shot and propose a solution. In the world of golf, unless you are asked for your opinion, it is best not to offer it. Remember, he just thru his club.

Most players have had a bad shot before and know how it feels. Disappointment. Embarrassment. Defeat. You would wonder why we spend so much time on the course and call it fun.

It proves the old theory that you have to be bad at something before you get good at it. We spend 18 holes trying to get good at it. If we sink a putt on the last hole, it’s guaranteed we will be back. If we have a bad last hole, we just figure an excuse to come back again…trying to get better.

Getting back to the guy who thru the club, we all have days when we “throw the club.” I’ve been golfing a long time and very few golfers actually throw their clubs. It still happens but not often. Most golfers realize that it not the club’s fault. It’s the guy swinging the club that hit the bad shot

How would you feel if someone came to you and said, “I’ve never been disappointed, never been embarrassed, and never been defeated?” You would expect him to say, “but I lie a lot.”

We all have those days. Golfers learn from every shot. They learn from the bad shots and try to duplicate the good shots. It’s no different in our daily lives. We want to duplicate the events that help us grow. We want to learn from the events that slow us down

In surgery, when we were placing wires to stabilize the bones in the face, my surgical residents would ask, “Dr L, how do you know how tight to twist the wires?” I’d reply, “A quarter turn before it breaks.”

“How do you know when it’s going to break?”

“You have to break a lot of wires and start over again,” I replied.

I broke a lot of wires over the years. Never thru my clubs…felt like it! But I can say that as bad as any disappointment seemed, I knew I couldn’t reverse it. I had to move on. It was the tuition I had to pay to grow and get better.

In my book, “it’s not what I know…it’s how I learned it,” you will see how I learned from every broken wire. At first, it was tough to set the discipline to learn from mistakes rather than seek excuses for failure. I still broke a wire or two. But the more I learned, the fewer I broke.

There are a lot of metaphors to show how adversities or challenges can make us stronger. If we accept the idea that challenges will make us better; if we see them not as barriers to stop us but as opportunities to move forward; we will be on the fast track to achieving success.

So when that moment comes and you are ready to throw your club, step back, take a breath, and see if this is just part of getting better. If you decide, you just want to get good at throwing your clubs, then this is the opportunity you have been looking for.

Remember, people tend to shy away from people who throw clubs. Golfers who throw clubs tend to golf alone.

Make it a great day.

Dr L