#Perspective December 9

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This is not the first time I have written about PERSPECTIVE.

I did a post in 2019 and another on June 5th of this year on PERSPECTIVE. I attempt to write unique posts each day but sometimes a life lesson reminds me to revisit a topic. That happened twice in one day last week on PERSPECTIVE. One involved being asked to provide counsel to a friend and the other was my self-evaluation of poor play on the golf course.

I had a close friend that was involved in interviewing for a new leadership position. The process took place over several months but in the end someone else was chosen. The position he was involved in was prestigious and very prominent. My friend is a very talented and accomplished leader but not being chosen caused him some self doubts. The counsel I provided for the disappointment and self doubt was below:

Sometimes in life, we become so focused on what we haven’t achieved that we lose sight of what we have.

My friend has bounced back quick from the professional disappointment. He possesses the ability to put into PERSPECTIVE the opportunities he already has. He epitomizes the quote by Rabbi Hyman Schachtel “Happiness is not having what you want. It is wanting what you have.”

For me personally I had to go back and revisit PERSPECTIVE on a much smaller stage. That challenge was having PERSPECTIVE on the golf course.

When I drove home from my golf round last week I was consumed by my overall poor score. I then attempted to practice what I had preached about PERSPECTIVE. Despite the poor score I did something exceptional.

I have been hoping to master hitting my 3 wood on a par 5 holes for weeks. Well on this day I did it. I hit that club long and straight exceeding my expectations. In fact I hit into a sand trap that I clearly thought was beyond my range. It left me with a very difficult sand shot I did not execute. That shot led to a double bogey and that is all I could think of until I put the entire round into PERSPECTIVE. In fact later in the round I replicated that 3 wood shot as I birdied a par 5. I began to focus on the improvement and not the score.

One concept from the 2019 post on PERSPECTIVE I referenced earlier is really important to reflect on:

There is someone in the world who would love to have one of our bad days. One of our bad days does not mean we have a bad life. That is a point of PERSPECTIVE.

My friend has a job that many others would covet and he knows that. I may be playing bad golf but I am blessed to be playing golf. That is PERSPECTIVE.