There are games that matter, and games that don’t. The ones that matter are few. The ones that don’t are many.
I’m instinctively competitive, so the above doesn’t come naturally to me.
I want to win. All the time.
Today I played my first round of golf in almost 10 years. On the first few holes, I felt the competitiveness bubble up, along with the frustration of being a terrible hit.
It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth hole that I realised getting overly competitive was futile. This “game” didn’t matter.
Ironically, the less I tried and the less I cared, the more I relaxed I became, and my shots slowly started to improve.
I chuckled to myself as I reflected on my lessons for the day: (1) to only care about the few games that really matter, and (2) the inverse relationship between trying too hard and successful outcomes—a calm, poised, confident, and relaxed approach often carry us to better results.