Fresh Squeezed Disappointment
Last week I played in the LPGA Teaching & Club Pro Division National Championship at Reunion Resort just south of Orlando, Florida.
At the end of the event, I was really disappointed because I didn’t score as well as I wanted. I basically had two or three holes per round where I made a few mistakes. Well, I could attribute it to it being my first tournament of the year. Or say I haven’t played or practiced much. I could say that the warm weather got to me.
It would all be excuses. A made up story in my head why something happened a certain way.
Then I came across this from Wayne Dyer on Facebook:
"I was preparing to speak at an I Can Do It conference and I decided to bring an orange on stage with me as a prop for my lecture. I opened a conversation with a bright young fellow of about twelve who was sitting in the front row.
“If I were to squeeze this orange as hard as I could, what would come out?” I asked him.
He looked at me like I was a little crazy and said, “Juice, of course.”
“Do you think apple juice could come out of it?”
“No!” he laughed.
“What about grapefruit juice?”
“No!”
“What would come out of it?”
“Orange juice, of course.”
“Why? Why when you squeeze an orange does orange juice come out?”
He may have been getting a little exasperated with me at this point.
“Well, it’s an orange and that’s what’s inside.”
I nodded. “Let’s assume that this orange isn’t an orange, but it’s you. And someone squeezes you, puts pressure on you, says something you don’t like, offends you. And out of you comes anger, hatred, bitterness, fear. Why? The answer, as our young friend has told us, is because that’s what’s inside.”
It’s one of the great lessons of life. What comes out when life squeezes you?
When someone puts the pressure on you and out of you comes anything other than love, it’s because that’s what you’ve allowed to be inside. Once you take away all those negative things you don’t want in your life and replace them with love, you’ll find yourself living a highly functioning life."
I read that, and I thought to myself: “Wow!” If I have allowed disappointment to fester outwardly when my score isn’t what I think it should be, it is also on the inside. And to get to the core of that, I have to look even deeper. I started to think about what other things in my life has been disappointing to me. And you know what, I would lie if I said there hasn’t been quite a few!
I asked myself: how can I move through this disappointment and let go of it? Is disappointment even necessary? Well, perhaps I need to change my model of the world.
In my old model of the world, making mistakes was not allowed because I needed to make progress quickly. I didn’t have time to make mistakes. But the learner in me realized that I needed to sometimes make mistakes to learn.
But what if I change this model to:
Mistakes are not always necessary. I can also learn from being successful.
Or how about:
Failure can’t exist, if you are willing to redefine success.
What rules do you live by? Do powerful emotions like disappointment, anger and frustration rule your golfing life? Where do these emotions show up? And why?
How can you nurture more love, gratitude and kindness towards yourself and others?
Lots to ponder this wonderful Labor Day weekend!
All the best to you,
Rebecka