I’ve been trying to figure this game out for more than 30 years. And it always seems to get the best of me. And, even after taking a few lessons to try to conquer this bewitching game (and my bad swing habits!) and seeing some progress and improvement, rarely does the end result line up with the intended outcome. This is a case of unmet expectations, it appeared. Which started me thinking…maybe I’m looking at this game all wrong. What is the purpose of playing a round of golf, anyway? On the surface, it’s pretty obvious – to score low and win. And, there’s no denying that golf is a very measurable game. As an aside, this is the one point of separation between golf and life that challenges the comparison and which we’ll visit later – golf has a defined, measurable standard to strive for success and by which you are sized up and evaluated accordingly, and usually found wanting. Life, on the other hand, is a bit more relative and abstract and individual when it comes to measuring whether a “round” of life was a “successful round” or not. That, and the fact that a round of golf takes less than 5 hours and a round of life takes…well, a lifetime. However, this is where my world view about life starts to come into play regarding my world view about golf. For me, life is far more about whether it was well played than whether or not I“won”. After all, life is loaded with variables and wild cards and things beyond your control that can and do strongly influence the events and outcomes that many use to define whether you are a “winner”. And, there are too many examples to mention of those who have “won” at life when looking at their scorecard, but who played the game with bad form and/or missed the journey grinding for the W, and really could be viewed as losers for that very reason. Contrastingly, there are also terrific examples of those who have played life well but have relatively little to show for it on their “scorecards” (materialistically speaking) , and yet all of us look to those people as “winners”. This really begins to drive right back to the point about tying life and golf together for insights and lessons that are transferable between these two mysterious “games”. Golf, like life, is loaded with variables and wild cards and things beyond your control that can and do strongly influence the events and outcomes that are ultimately used to establish whether or not you “won”. Not to say that in golf (or in life) you’re nothing but a victim of things outside your control. Obviously, hard work, commitment, passion, practice, adaptation, and focus affect both games and are significant drivers as to the final outcome. The point is, however, that in both cases, no matter how hard you work or practice or prepare, things are going to happen that you have no influence over and those things are going to affect the final score. And maybe…just maybe, the secret to both games lies in knowing this and shifting your paradigm. The wild cards don’t become reasons why you “lost” (and therefore sources of great frustration)…they become part of the game itself. The good shot gone bad is part of the game that you have to anticipate and expect and reconcile and overcome. And, the game, both in golf and life, becomes fun again, because it starts to be defined more by the journey and how you handle yourself in it than the score you shot. Conversely, for those focused on winning “the prize” in life, as measured by how the world’s materialistic scorecard defines winning, an entire life time can be a life of regret at the 19th hole. That’s tragic – missing the joy of the journey chasing a score. Golf offers you another crack at it. Life doesn’t. Both can go from frustrating futility to fun when the journey takes its rightful place in the game.