Accept where you are now

There are two sides to acceptance when it comes to wanting to do better with some aspect in your life. First you need to accept the current state of where you are, then accept the challenge to make it better.

We need to accept where we are in order to move forward in a different direction. We need that moment where reality strikes and you can't ignore it. You are faced with the hard core facts - kind of like stepping on the scale or reviewing a spreadsheet of your finances. There it is, no getting around those numbers! You see where you are!

I have seen this with my patients in Physical Therapy. I can say that the patients who are willing to acknowledge and accept their deficits, for example after a stroke, are by far the patients that tend to get better faster. I don’t have any hard evidence with this, just empirical evidence that I have seen this repeat itself over the years. I think acceptance is key to moving forward in recovery to change the things that you don't like.

The patients that are focused more on what they used to be able to do and are unable to stop and live in the moment, in the current state of their condition, are often times unable to focus their energy on the things they need to do to get a full recovery.

To help clarify this point, here’s an example with a patient who had a stroke leaving him with left sided weakness, decreased insight to his deficits, impaired awareness to the left side of his body, and impaired coordination and control of his leg.

In order to walk normally, he needed to control his leg and improve his awareness of what it was doing while walking. This particular patient was solely focused on walking faster and farther. He was not interested in slowing down and working on controlling the leg and walking at a pace that allowed his brain to process and coordinate the movement properly. So, as you can probably imagine, his walking looked terrible. He was unsteady and he was neurologically feeding his system with poor input which only perpetuated the problems and prolonged his ability to not look like he had a stroke when walking.

If this patient would have stopped for a moment, really looked at his deficits and was willing to accept that this was his current physical state, he probably would have done better and gotten to where he wanted to be sooner. This state of acknowledgment and acceptance can lead to focusing on improvement and what things need to be done to move forward and recover.

Now, take another patient with the same set of circumstances that is able to although painful, see what isn't working after the stroke and accept that this is where they are. They don’t have to like it, just have to acknowledge their current state. They sit with the facts. They acknowledge and accept the things that aren't right so they can now focus on making them better and/or back to normal. Now, they are much more willing to focus on doing the things that are necessary to move forward and recover.

Well guess what, we all need a reality check when comes to acknowledging the real state of our game, not just the one we think we have. You can think you are a lousy putter, but are you? What do the stats tell you about this? If all of your approach shots are within 20 ft and you are 3 putting a lot, then yes, maybe you are a lousy putter. More likely, your approach shots are well outside 20 ft and you just need to work on your shots getting closer to the hole and your lag putting skills. You might think that your driver is costing you too many strokes when in reality it may be that you are losing most of your strokes around the green. What are your green in regulation and up/down percentages telling you? You really won’t know for sure what is hurting you, or what is actually helping you and certainly won’t know what part of your game you should be focusing your energy on without the facts of statistics.

For me with golf, my reality check usually happens after I played particularly bad in a tournament. I know that I don't ever want to feel like that again in a tournament. That is the moment I have to really evaluate what happened, figure out where my game is, decide where I want to be and figure out a way to get there. It really is painful to face the music, but it is such an important part of the process. It's time to use statistics to figure out where are you now.

Once you gather your statistics for your game, now you can really see what part or parts of your game are costing you strokes. What can you discover about yourself or your game that is keeping you from being the player you want to be? What insight can you get from the statistics? Assess and evaluate what the numbers are telling you. Sit with it for a minute. Decide to change the things you don't like. Celebrate the things that you are doing well.

Accept the truth in the numbers and formulate a plan of attack.

Accept the challenge to work on your game.

If you want a step by step guide to game improvement including collecting specific statistics, check out the Break 70 Roadmap.

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