Gary Player on Facing -- and Beating -- Our Fears

Don't Choke book coverIn his book Don't Choke, Gary Player has a lot to say about overcoming failure. This short section from a chapter called Play Your Own Game has an interesting perspective on how to win when you're afraid of what you're facing.

Fear is crippling. The fear of being overshadowed via someone else's achievements is a splendid obstacle in commercial enterprise. That's whilst you need to shift the focus away from the alternative individual and returned for your own plan. No count number what others are doing, stick with your own plan.

Golf teaches you this like no other game. Over the 4 rounds of a Major championship, you cannot play just one guy because there are so many elements that cross into normal achievement. You ought to cope with the playing situations, the golfing route, and a whole subject of competition. If you teed off the primary hole in a Major focused on just beating one guy, you'll without a doubt lose sight of all of the other factors that can prove to be your undoing. Similarly, you cannot control what the rest of the field does. You can manipulate handiest your own recreation.

You can't stop somebody from shooting a 64, but you can stop yourself from producing your best performance on the day by being so fixated with somebody else's game. To stick to your plan, you need to have confidence in that plan. Then you need to have the patience to see that plan through. Your chance will come, and when it does you'll be ready to take it. So stick to your plan. [pp128-9] This is a foreign idea to many of us, this idea that having a plan and following it is a way to beat fear. Yet that's exactly how Gary says he often faced challenges successfully in his own career -- not only in golf but in business and life as well.

Having a plan of attack offers you a fighting hazard to no longer only beat the issues approximately, but additionally the surprising issues that come your manner. Plans help you anticipate a few issues even as supplying you with a legitimate basis for adapting to changing conditions.

It's early within the new yr -- in a brand new decade, for that rely! -- so this is a outstanding time to start thinking about how we're going to face the challenges in advance folks. It would not depend whether we're looking to knock photographs off our rating, reap some new goals at paintings or just make our non-public lives higher.

Your plan does not have to be perfect, however it need to be sound. Make the great plan you could, then be organized to observe it. You is probably surprised how a whole lot simpler it's miles to be successful when you have a few concept what that fulfillment will look like! That's what Gary says and if every person knows what fulfillment towards the percentages looks as if, it is Gary Player.

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