The Road To Success Is Always Under Construction
I’m not such a big fan of the purveyors of self-help mantras.
Most of it, pure guff. Playing on insecurities with quasi-religious brainwashing akin to internet marketing fraudsters.
Yet, as a friend of mine almost once remarked, among the fields of dung a rose doth grow.
The motto above is I learn the favourite saying of Peter Cowen. A golfing consultant who’s raked up more major winners than any other.
Maiden US Open champion just gone, Gary Woodland, and currently unstoppable Brooks Koepka among his many clients.
Basking in such light, I heard him recount how he recently switched the mindset around of Koepka immediately prior to one of his four-from-eight Grand Slam victories.
Such words are unlikely to be jaw-droppingly fresh wonder for any of us. Here’s just a random quartet selection you can probably say who said;
whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right
to be a champion you must act like one
what you think is what you become
believe to achieve
I’m sure you get the idea.
He’s coached hundreds of Tour professionals over the years. Including ten players who’ve won the top crowns over past nine years. He consults to them. Pays his own expenses. Only getting a cut of any resultant prize money. He thinks there are very many good hitters of a golf ball, yet only a very small number of good players of golf. Once he feels he’s happy with the former technically, he addresses the latter with his clients.
I heard him cite his favourite phrase from his five-decade career – the road to success is always under construction – interestingly mangled for laughs by his interviewer to ‘the road is always under a 50mph average speed limit’.
Then reveal how a bad attitude of shoulders down “poor me poor me” will always fail.
Before the fascinating insight of why not only most social players give up the game, thinking it too hard, but also pros get disconsolate through overthinking.
The ball is an irrelevance to the swing. It’s something that happens to be in the way. Don’t focus on striking it. Instead, those that succeed think only of getting the action right, and the desired result will duly follow naturally.
Such a lovely secret. Echoes of classic process versus outcomes misalignment. Or cart before horse. I hope on deals your sales process knows which is the ball, and which is the swing.