ARE YOU A REPEAT OFFENDER?

More than fifty years ago now a young man was hired away from a research company to head up an important research project at another company.  Within 18 months the young man, now project director, made a crucial decision and it so dramatically affected the project that within a short period of time it crashed and burned.  It also cost the company millions of dollars (some say up to 20 million).  Soon thereafter the man was called into the president’s office.  As he walked out of his office he told his assistant to ‘pack up my things for I am on my way to being fired.’  With great resolve he entered the president’s office.  The president was standing behind a long table that was covered with papers.  He looked up and said, ‘Smith, you really blew this one didn’t you!’  ‘Smith’ said that indeed he had really blown it.  The president continued with, ‘Smith, do you know why I asked you to come up here this morning?’  ‘Smith’ quickly replied, ‘Because you are going to fire my . . . !’  The president looked down at the papers and then looked up.  He then continued with, ‘Smith, that’s what I thought you would think. Why would I want to fire you, I just spent millions educating you.’  Pause: ‘I want to know what you have learned?’  Pause: ‘I will also tell you when I will fire you.  I will fire you, Smith, if you ever make another mistake like this again and I will fire you if you stop taking risks.’  Pause: ‘Now, let’s sit down and talk about what you have learned.’  Thirty years later this young man became the president of this prestigious organization and he successfully guided them through a very difficult time.

Too often I am a repeat offender; perhaps, you gentle reader, have also been a repeat offender.  There are many others who are also repeat offenders.  I also find it easier to observe others do so and I also find it easy to judge them.  Why do I choose to do so?  Because I am a fallible human being?  Because I have developed certain habits?  Because I convince myself that ‘this time’ it will be different?  Because I am fearful of succeeding?  Because I am just full of fear?  Because I am self-destructive?  Because I am pride-full or because I am full of that Greek pride of hubris?  For me, all of these come into play.

I learned to play golf more than 57 years ago.  I quickly learned that practice does not make perfect; practice simply makes permanent.  Over the years I have known many golfers who know they have integrated a ‘bad habit’ into their swing and yet they don’t take the time to ‘correct’ it AND each time they play they complain about the shot they hit; the one that was a direct result of their integrated bad habit.  Aristotle suggested that we become our habits.  Now, golf is perhaps the most difficult of sports.  It is played counter-intuitively — for example, the harder one tries or the harder one swings the worse it gets.  It requires at minimum good eye-hand coordination.  It requires patience.  It requires forgetting about the last bad shot.  It is 90% mental and 10% physical; although one must develop specific physical skills in order to play well.  It requires ’emptying the mind’ and yet it also requires a ‘pre-shot’ routine.  Although the ball is just sitting there — inviting you and mocking you at the same time — the player must continue to have movement of some sort (this pre-shot routine helps) for standing still causes the muscles to tighten and this always contributes to a bad shot.  One holds the club lightly and softly in the hands for bad things happen when one tightens one’s grip on the club.  The swing itself is also counter-intuitive; the body, it seems, is not meant to contort in the way a good swing requires it to contort.  To state it bluntly: Golf is not only difficult it is the home of repeat offenders.

I-You-We know that we are to learn from ‘failure’ — we don’ go through life walking the talk; we go through life stumbling the mumble.  I-You-We know that ‘success’ involves facing life’s dilemmas and then learning from them.  I-You-We know that life is lived incrementally, gradually — moment to moment, choice to choice, now to now.  I-You-We know that in order not to be a repeat offender we must reflect upon our experience, then learn from it, then discern what we might do in order to obtain a different result/response/outcome and then we need to choose to act differently.  But like the millions of golfers in the world we strive to get a different result by engaging the same choices and habits AND it drives us and others crazy (didn’t Einstein tell us this?).