I have a self-made rule in golf that says “You cannot hit a golf ball to not do something.” Seems obvious, but I can’t tell you how many times I have done, or heard others do this. Standing over a shot with some sort of trouble – water, a bunker, a long carry – and we say “Ok, ball don’t go there.” I’ve never compiled stats, but I’d be willing to bet over half time and probably a lot more than that, that’s exactly where the ball goes.

On my home course, we have a short par three over water which is a very common place to hear comments like this. The focus of the thought, therefore the statement, is the water, not the green, which is really where we want the ball to land. As soon as I hear “water”, I’m expecting the next sound to be “splash.”

An interesting observation, however, is that in the winter, that particular green being the lowest point of the golf course and next to water, freezes. We have contests trying to hit the ball and bounce it off the frozen green onto the tee box for the next hole, which sits behind the green because we know the green can’t hold the ball. Almost never do any of us miss the green. Why? I contend that it’s because that’s what we’re thinking and talking about. The water is irrelevant, it’s usually frozen also, so there’s no perceived trouble. Seriously, it’s just as wet as ever and it’s right there in front of us, just in frozen form. But our minds tell us the threat is less, we accept that and our results nearly all of the time prove us correct.

So, what’s really happening? If I’m analyzing it correctly, in many situations where we have the ability to exercise a degree of control in it, we can dictate the outcome by what we allow in our thought lives. The things we set ourselves up to expect, when we can direct our actions toward them, very often come to pass. If we cannot dictate the outcome, we can seriously influence it. I’m talking about situations where it’s just us. We cannot control people, weather and lots of other factors, but we can control our thoughts, and when the result comes down to our perceptions, beliefs and expectations the large majority of time, what we think is what we do.

The Bible backs this up – Proverbs 15:7 says out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. In Luke 6:45, Jesus says that a good man, out of the goodness of his heart brings forth what is good. The same for the evil. I’m not here to debate good or evil, I am here to say that if we have the ability to exercise such control, then the results of the things we care about most would be greatly aided by our purposed doing of them.

We’ve all read stories of people who perform at high levels who talk about the vision they have for the thing they are doing or creating. They imagine it, they dream it, they plan for it, they get consumed by it and from intangibles on the inside, they produce something tangible on the outside, be it sport, art, design, music and the like. Creative internal thinking produces created external beauty and achievement. You won’t hear them talking about what they don’t want to accomplish, or hope doesn’t happen.

A grave mistake I think we make as a society is to see or perceive these as “special ones”. Those who have a gift from the cosmos, or some external source of inspiration that allows them to function as they do. We don’t see ourselves in the same category, having the same abilities or opportunities. We see the end result and marvel only at the product. We completely ignore the process. We understand this in the world of computing – garbage in, garbage out – yet we exempt ourselves from the same truth and wrongly assume others have something we do not.

Tiger Woods didn’t become Tiger Woods because the cosmos favored him. Sure, he had natural talent, but he still had to do something with it. He had to grind his craft on a daily basis. I once read an article where he talked about his daily routine when he was at his prime on tour. With the exception of a break for lunch, it was eight to ten hours of gym, hit balls, putt, chip, hit more balls and play 18 holes. It might have even been 36. Every. Single. Day. His belief fueled his daily regimen.

I read another article that when he won a major tournament, his wife wanted to throw a party to celebrate, which he declined. “We expect to win,” was his reason. Any shocker he is tied for 1^st in career wins on Tour and sits 2^nd in major wins? He expects to win, and so he does. Age, injury and physical limitations are realities he has to face now and those are things outside of his control. But what he could control, he did and it came from the inside and showed itself on the outside.

Another mistake we can make is overthinking a thing. We can take in too much data, focus on too many variables, and in the soup of information get lost. Paralysis by over-analysis. We don’t really focus on anything as much as we try to focus on everything. It’s not possible. For me, a lot of the everything I am focusing are things I cannot control.

The disciplined mind learns to sift through and weed out each thought. Again, from the Bible in 2^nd Corinthians 10:5 – take every thought captive. The biblical purpose is to focus on Christ, but the truth of the exercise holds true for any endeavor that requires our minds. Take our thoughts captive, weed out the unnecessary and what is outside of our control, focus on the things we can control, formulate a vision, execute on the goal. Ironically, when we slow down, we are better able to achieve.

Athletes talk about being in the zone, performers about being present in the moment. Neuroscience refers to it as flow. Steven Kotler’s excellent book, The Art Of Impossible is a masterwork of thirty years of brain research and high performance correlation.

Oftentimes we need to let go of things to better take hold of other, more needful things. Just like the fist in the candy jar; if you grab all the candies tightly in your fist, you can’t pull it or the candies out. But letting go, grabbing one at a time, you can have all the candies you want. You are making use of what you can actually handle in the moment. Execute on one part, move on to the next and so on.

Another mistake we can make with our thinking, and this one can sneak in once we’ve done the weeding out process, is second guessing ourselves. It’s a form of overthinking. What it really is, is going back and picking up some of those discarded thoughts. It’s self-doubt.

Once we’ve settled on a direction, we need to commit to it and if, in the process, we discover we have made a mistake, accept that this too is part of the process. It’s perfectly fine to pause and regroup, to re-evaluate our process and choices. But we must come back to the sifting, weeding and commitment once again.

In time, experience can aid us and we’ll need to make those adjustments less frequently. Of course, in new efforts, they are to be expected, and should be welcomed. This is how the human brain learns and how we arrive at achievement. But whether we’re attempting something new, or doing something we’ve done many times before, clarity of thought and expressed purpose, with minimized distractions will always lead us to desired results.

Are there things that we’ve been trying to accomplish that feel like we’ve been running into a wall over and over about? Do we start down a path expecting to end in one place, only to find we end up somewhere else? Do we have great ideas and plans at the start that slowly fizzle out and die, never arriving at completion? Do we have a trail of those kinds of things in our lives? I’m honest enough with myself to say there’s been a bunch in my lifetime.

I don’t believe the answer is to give up or quit. I don’t believe the answer is that we’re unable, untalented, not educated enough or ungifted. William Arthur Ward said if you can imagine it, you can achieve it, if you can dream it, you can become it. All of us have God-given imaginations for a reason. All of us dream of more for a reason. Those are seeds that are in us waiting to be nurtured, cared for, fertilized and watered.

That entire process starts and remains in our minds until the end result shows up on the outside. True for the athlete, true for the dancer, true for the artist, writer, businessman or woman and politician. True regardless of gender, race, age and education. True because this is what we were born for, this is what we were born to do, this is who we were born to become.

Our thoughts will qualify or disqualify us based on what we allow to happen there. No one will ever know what we could have done or could have become. But we will. I’m challenging us to dream our dreams, do our work and become who we were destined to become. It can be big like writing the next bestseller and it can be small like organizing a neighborhood block party. Don’t think to avoid what could go wrong, purpose to achieve what will become. It’s in us all. Let’s get to work!