Change things up

A few years ago I had the dream of becoming a professional golfer. I wasn’t really sure if I wanted the lifestyle of a golf pro but I knew that I wanted to be able to shoot under par golf. A few years earlier I had been introduced to the Player family on a trip to South Africa. I met Gary Player and his son Wayne and we quickly became friends. I asked Wayne if he would be willing to mentor me and coach me to my dream. He agreed and we launched into a friendship that I am sure will last a lifetime.

Wayne proceeded to break me down take me from shooting around 82 to 102 in about 3 months. I was out of my mind and incredible frustrated with our results to say the least. He told me to keep working on it and keep trusting him and that eventually things would sink in and the results would come fast and furious.

One day we were down in Phoenix Arizona working on my game and watching Gary play in the US Senior Open. We were warming up on the driving range and suddenly I noticed a man out of periphery. I looked up and was amazed to see the greatest golfer of all time, Jack Nicklaus. Gary stopped what he was doing and chatted a bit with his old friend and then asked Jack a question. He said “Jackie, my friend Brad here is working to be a professional golfer what would you say is the single most important key to being a great professional.” Jack said that hard work and trusting yourself are the keys to doing what you need to do when you need to do it! Being in complete awe I let this experience settle deep into my memory banks and those words ring through my head to this day.

A few days later I was on my way to the airport and those words kept ringing through me head. Suddenly an epiphany hit me and I drove straight to the driving range. I grabbed my clubs and ran straight to the tee box. I thought about all the hard work I had put in, I settled down and decided to trust what I had been taught and freely swing like I had never before. Right down the middle again and again as my confidence grew with every strike of the ball. It wasn’t much later that I was shooting in the 60s, in fact I had 6 rounds in a row in the 60s at one point.

I learned some incredible lessons through this process that have reshaped nearly every aspect of my life. First of all if you want to get better you may have to get worse first. Secondly, hard work always pays off, as long as you have good coaching that is helping you make adjustments. Thirdly, if I am willing to change things up and trust the process of my mentors I can accomplish anything I set my mind to.

What do you need to change? Is there a process that you have been doing for a long time that is not working? Maybe you need to change it up a bit? Have you hit a wall? Change your routine and mix things up. Be creative and find ways to do things differently and see what happens. If you lift weights and are stuck, change your routine and then come back to it. If your stuck at an athletic level, change who you train with. Find someone way better than you and let their excellence drive you. If you are a distance runner, do some speed work. If you are in a marketing industry, change your approach completely. Use multi media or a unique presentation tactic. If you play an instrument, try blind folding yourself for 3o minutes and see what you can do. Hang in there with it and trust that a breakthrough is coming. Change of your routines and turbo charge your passion into a whole new level of velocity.

Don’t settle for gradual progress! Look for an explosion and pursue your dreams with everything you’ve got! Change it up, you might find a way that changes the world!