Many years ago, my husband, Rick, started an annual
miniature golf outing with his sons.
When Rick and I married, I joined.
When Scott married Shannon, she joined.
When Robert married Laura in 2009, she joined. There has been a traveling trophy for the
winner for years. When Laura joined, a
couple’s trophy was added. We generally
play 145 holes in one day. (For those of
you doing the math, one course has 19 holes.)
It’s silly and fun.
This year, we had our competition in May. Some interesting things happened that can be
life lessons for all of us.
The men have always come in first, second, and third, and
the ranking varies. I want to talk about
the women, though. Laura has always come
in fourth, I have come in fifth, and Shannon sixth. Until this year.
In 2011 we started saving everyone’s scores. That year there was a 25 point difference
between Laura and Shannon. In 2012 the
difference was the same, as neither Laura nor Shannon improved. I, however, improved by 14 strokes. This year, I improved by another 14 strokes,
Laura improved by 5, and Shannon improved by a whopping 27 strokes! I placed first for the women, Laura second,
and Shannon third. There was only 5
strokes difference between our scores.
So what lessons can we learn?
From Laura’s experience, an important lesson is that no
matter how good you are, and no matter how long you have been the best, there
is always the possibility that someone will be better than you. It is important not to get complacent. (Not that Laura did; her goal was to move to
third place.) It is important to
continually improve, and perhaps improve at a faster rate than is comfortable
for you. Keeping this in mind can keep
you in front.
From Shannon’s experience, one lesson is to never give up. Another is to decide how you are going to
define success. In my opinion, Shannon
is the real winner in this match because she improved so much. Another lesson is to always focus. Shannon always played well in the morning,
but fizzled in the afternoon. She stayed
focus all day this time.
From my experience, the most important lesson is to
continually analyze what is happening, why, and then implement appropriate
changes. A problem I have is my
eyesight. I have bifocal contacts for
office and everyday work. I wear
prescription glasses, with sunglass clips over them, for driving and to see far
away. In 2011, I realized that by taking
my glasses on and off, it affected how I aimed.
In 2012 I just took the sunglass clip off. It helped.
In 2013 I tried just wearing ordinary sunglasses when I needed
them. It helped more!
Whenever we can learn lessons from the little things in life
(like miniature golf) and apply those lessons to the big things in life (like career
and personal pursuits), we can be more successful.
Are there things you have learned that you can apply to
other areas of you life?