WHEN I WAS 16, I was an accomplished junior golfer…

 

I had played in many tournaments throughout my home state as well as in the United States Junior Amateur.  My goal in life was to play professional golf.

 

At one point, I participated in a state-level tournament and was favored to win.  However, although I played well early on, I choked in the last round and ended up well behind the leaders.  I was devastated.

 

I came home and broke down in from of my mother.  She consoled me, which is what mothers do.  I realize now that I didn’t really need a mother’s tender consolation.  I needed a hard-nosed coach to yank me out of my trough of self-pity and say, “Every competitor goes through failure!  Learn a lesson from it and keep going!”

 

Because I didn’t have that kind of coaching, I didn’t know that getting nervous and tense during a competition was a common affliction in competitive sports.  I didn’t know I could overcome it.  Instead, that one failure made me see myself as a failure–someone who couldn’t handle the heat of competition.  

 

I played in other tournaments and often jumped out to an early lead, only to tighten up and fall back in the pack as the pressure mounted.  My self-esteem was based on my performance–and I was performing terribly!  I went on to land a scholarship and become a club professional for three years, but I never fulfilled my potential as a golfer.

 

Years later, I learned to loosen up, have fun and let go of the tension–and I won a local club championship.  If I had learned that lesson earlier in life, who knows how far I might have gone as a golfer.

 

THOUGHT:  Failure hurts.  Whether you fail in marriage, business or golf, failure undermines your self-esteem as few other experiences can.  But failure isn’t the final word on your life.  It’s just one of the raw ingredients God uses to manufacture success.  Os Hillman, “Confronting the Fear of Failure,” The Upside of Adversity, 194-195

 

“Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 3.13-14 

Mike Benson