I was playing in a golf tournament with a partner – my favorite tournament of the golf season. We had played a round robin match and come out on top in our flight. We faced the winners of the other seven flights on a playoff hole, and now it was down to the last two teams. We faced off on the 2^nd playoff hole, a short Par 3 over water. All tournament long, it had played from 135-145 yards. But there in the playoff, with everything on the line, they had moved the tee box up and the hole was playing at 118 yards. In an alternative shot format, it was my turn to hit the tee shot. I was very comfortable hitting from 135-145, it’s number I like and had played the hole well all weekend. We’d planned that my partner would take the tee shot on playoff hole #1, and I’d take #2 if we got there.

118 yards was not a number I liked. It was in between two clubs, and there in the pressure of the moment and the sudden realization of the changed tee box, I simply couldn’t decide whether to hit a less club hard, or a bigger club soft. In my indecision I picked a club and choked, hitting my ball in the water. We lost the playoff hole, finishing second. Second’s not bad, but winning is better. Especially when it’s in your grasp.

I’ve thought back on that day, a year or two before COVID was a reality. We had played confidently all tournament; my partner and I were a very effective team. Why did I suddenly tense up and choke? It wasn’t the pressure of the tournament; my partner and I had competed well together all season in many tournaments. It really wasn’t the distance of the shot. I have a 118-yard shot; I’m less confident in it than other numbers, but I have it.

No, the reason I choked in that moment is because I wasn’t in it.

My body was in it, but my emotions, my thoughts, my swagger and confidence were gone. They were back on the other tee box, earlier in the weekend. They were in a previous moment. The one that required a 135–145-yard shot. That was not this moment. My result was inevitable.

Would we have won if I was in the moment? That’s a question that can’t be answered, but we would have had a better chance. I would have hit that shot with the same confidence I’d been hitting all weekend. I didn’t hit it with anything but fear, confusion, worry and hope. If I have learned anything in golf, it’s that you can never hit a golf shot to NOT do something. Every single shot must be for a purpose. It must have a reason for being executed. Hope is simply not a strategy in golf, the same as in life. It’s needful but it won’t carry the day. Hope leads to and requires decisive action to come to fruition. Decisive action requires purposeful thought. Purposeful thought leads to purposeful action. None of that was present in that particular golf shot.

I’m discovering how important it is to revert to the present moment when I am challenged by anything in life. The unexpected. Bad news. A change of plans. Not getting my way. A broken promise, bad service, poor drivers on the road…the list is literally endless.

I can’t go back and repair that mistake obviously, but I can learn from it. If I could go back, I would close my eyes, take a few deep, cleansing breaths and ignore everything outside of myself. I would settle my mind on the number and accept that the tees got moved up. I’d let go of what used to be – how I thought it would continue to be – and accept what actually was. I’d accept that what I had planned for and envisioned just got blown up. I’d revert to the present moment and look at my options for the shot. I’d make my choice, commit to it, practice swing it and rip it. My focus would not be – as it was in that moment – on the result. My focus would be on what it had been on all weekend, and should have remained on in that moment. The shot. Nothing else matters in golf except THIS SHOT NOW. The present moment.

I’m discovering this is a metaphor for life. I can’t live it to NOT achieve things or to avoid things. Life must be lived to do things, to accomplish. Yes, there are evils that I must consciously and actively avoid – but those tend to be anomalies in my path, not norms.

The power of reverting to the present moment is more powerful than I have ever realized. Currently in my life I am facing emotional distresses, business challenges, economic challenges, pressures of responsibility – the same as anyone reading this. So, allow me to bring you into my moment. This one right now as I am typing this out on my laptop.

I am currently in my home, heated to 72 degrees. I am sitting in my comfortable chair in my office with my feet up. I have on my headphones, listening to music that helps me focus on what I want to write. I have a full stomach and comfortable clothes. My family is safe, no one is sick, everyone’s home. I have a Pellegrino and lime in a 30-ounce Yeti sitting chilled next to me. The power is on, the water is hot, the bills are paid. The Huns are not beating a path to my door, the police are not actively working a crime scene in my proximity, Russia hasn’t lobbed a nuke my way.

I am safe. In this moment. Right now. That is my norm 99.99% of my moments so far for nearly 57 years. There is no crisis. I am learning I can choose to revert to THIS moment, and others like it when life starts to get tough. Because that’s what most of my problems are. Life being tough. Not crises, not even close to crises. We jokingly say first world problems, and we’re not too far off when we say it.

I am discovering that I have the power to choose my thoughts at all times. I am also discovering that life seems to feel obliged to push me toward negative ones in times of inconvenience and annoyance masked as crisis. The wisdom is seeing the obstacle for what it actually is, not what the flight or fright part of my brain tells me it is. I’ve found no better way for navigating the immediate and visceral emotion and panic than to choose to revert to the present moment in my mind in the midst of provocation and disappointment. By training myself – purposely choosing my thoughts – I believe that if and when an actual crisis does come, I will have better tools for handling and managing it effectively, with purpose and to move it more rapidly toward resolution. And if I cannot change the circumstance, I can maintain control of myself in it. Better control of myself is better control of my decision-making processes. Self-control is mastery. It is attainable. It takes effort, and it is hard. But it is possible. I am doing it. For me, that’s all I need to know to get up and try again.

Tournament season starts this Saturday. Bring it. I’ve never been more mentally ready.

I recently took up Qi-Gong, a Korean form of martial art that includes elements of yoga and tai-chi. It incorporates breathing, balance, calmness and stillness. It encourages purposeful thinking and mental quietness through meditation by focusing your thoughts on your body and breathing during the exercises. Through it, I have learned what I think of as “relaxing into the pain”.

All exercise must have pain if it is to be transformative. Pain is the part that is currently not natural strength that the exercise is training to become natural by way of “stretching”. This makes pain both progressive and constant for the individual who chooses growth as a lifestyle, be it physical, emotional, mental or spiritual. The pain is a going beyond. The obstacle becomes the way, says Ryan Holiday.

I learned to relax into the physical pain by controlled deep breathing. Purposely relaxing my muscles while stretching is the key to Qi-Gong. Controlled breathing aids the relaxation allowing me to better accept the pain as part of the process, not tensing up in anticipation of it. Letting it happen and controlling it through breathing and thoughtful purpose, not physical exertion alone. It is a form of resistance exercise. Relaxing into the pain. I like that phrase.

Through this physical discipline, I’m learning to translate the same process to other parts of my life. It is good to stretch myself beyond who I am today. Jesus taught that unless a seed falls into the ground and dies, it always stays a seed. It only grows if it gets planted, dies and becomes something else – a plant, a flower, a bush, a tree. All of life is about becoming. Physical strength, emotional strength, mental strength and spiritual strength.

In the beginning of any endeavor, not being natural, the pain is greater, the challenge is harder and the temptation to forget the whole thing is at its highest. This is not the place to entertain doubts and quit, but the place from which to commit to purpose and push beyond. By pushing beyond that initial pain point I have experienced increases in strength and flexibility. The pain that I was tempted to avoid has turned out to be the primary path to the growth I’ve attained to. Such pain will also be the path for any future growth I seek.

When I go too far beyond my current limitations in Qi-Gong, I stretch beyond what I am physically capable of. This results in more pain but brings with it potential damage. It can serve as a source of delay toward achieving my goal, because now I have to take time out from growing to heal. It happens because I stop relaxing into the pain, and instead try to force my way through it. I cannot make my body do what it physically cannot do. It cannot give what it does not have to give.

This is true in the emotional, mental and spiritual disciplines as well.

A part of growth is the art of learning when to let go, learning when to recognize the end of myself. I cannot give what I do not have in the emotional, mental and spiritual disciplines either. In relationships, growth is also accepting the limitations of others in these same disciplines. This is also part of relaxing into the pain. Just as physical strength and dexterity take time to build, so it is with the emotional, mental and spiritual. Sometimes it feels like two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes it just feels like three steps back.

I’m having to learn the difference between quitting and resting. I’m not finding it easy. Learning to recognize and accept my physical limitations is a good starting place. Rather than bull my way through, determined to reach the solution or objective, I’m starting to understand the value of rest and pacing myself. I’m learning to not just see the things my instructor is able to do, but I’m coming to understand the value of the 15 years of work they’ve put into their discipline that enables me to see it. I cannot mimic in a few months what’s taken fifteen years for them to master.

Relaxing into the pain can look and feel like quitting sometimes. But it is not quitting when it is done with wisdom. Wisdom knows its limitations, but it also believes in its capabilities. Wisdom knows that if it remains patient and doesn’t quit, it will win. Wisdom understands that taking things slowly in the beginning and perfecting its craft will yield better results later, more often than not more quickly too. Today we might say short term pain, long term gain; playing the long game. Determination and wisdom can and must walk hand in hand.

I see relaxing into the pain as acceptance of what is and working with it, rather than fighting it. I find that a little harder to do in the emotional, mental and spiritual world, but I needn’t. The application is the same. No growth in those areas happens all at once. Resistance is the signal that I am about to go beyond capabilities. It’s true in my body, it’s true in my mind, it’s true in my heart. Relaxing into the pain and accepting my limitations is part of the path. Acceptance is the path to becoming. I don’t know how some of my story is going to end. I’m grateful to be learning tools that help keep it going. I’m still writing.

What do you think about? With what is your mind preoccupied? Right now? Take a moment, a deep breath, close your eyes and see.

I’ve realized that I have spent a lot of my thought life being preoccupied about things I didn’t want in my life. Things about myself I hated. People I didn’t like, reasons why I didn’t like them. My sports teams that chronically underperformed. My sports team that consistently overperformed, just didn’t win it all. The condition of the economy, the current politician or party in power. The list of those things can be endless in me. Many of them things I couldn’t even do anything about, like a sports team or the weather.

Some of them are things I actually could do something about and didn’t realize it. I already had all the tools and was even using them, but in the wrong way. I was frustrated and not getting the results I wanted.

Take a person I’m angry with, for example. When I begin to think about what angers or hurts me, and I revolve that person and their actions – or lack of actions – in my mind with consistency. I begin to create a grievance narrative in my mind. I am telling myself a story. I focus on what is wrong, what I don’t like, what isn’t that should be and what is that shouldn’t. I zero in on negative things. I focus on the problem and if I do it long enough, I come to do it to the exclusion of anything else. I become “joyously preoccupied” with my negative line of thinking, and I become “absentminded” to anything positive or redemptive about myself, the person or situation I am dealing with. Followed to its conclusion this scenario is going to end in hurt, hopelessness and broken relationship. The opposite of all that I am wanting or intending to achieve.

There is no question that we need to look at, be aware of and respond to the negatives in our lives. Not just our lives but the lives of others and even circumstances. But the point of looking at them is to diagnose them and treat them, not to become preoccupied and overly focused on them. Doctors study diseases for the purpose of preventing them and their effects. Their ultimate goal is to cure, then eradicate the disease. Not to get caught up in the awfulness of both it and its effects. The awfulness of the disease is, in fact, the motivation to do something to resolve it to begin with.

We cross the line of appropriateness in our minds, when we misplace our joyous preoccupations. The Bible counsels us to think on things that are true, honest, just, pure, lovely, of good report and if there be any virtue or praise in them. It counsels us to “take every thought captive”, to examine them – not just the thought, but it’s motivational source. It is the second part of that statement, where I believe we largely fail in our preoccupations.

When we don’t consider the source, we don’t look at the becoming part of our lives. We don’t have a compass to tell us what direction the source is pointing us.

I think we should analyze preoccupations from time to time and ask who and what am I becoming? Put another way, am I becoming who and what I want(ed) to? Am I being on the outside who I have convinced myself I am on the inside? Then, ask what am I becoming joyously preoccupied with, and what am I being absentminded to? Then, compare the results. It’s a brain check. It can become habitual and it should be. It requires weapons grade honesty and self assessment. It leads to healing, hope and peace with ourselves, with others and circumstances, even the ones out of our control. Joyous preoccupation with the possible, the hopeful, the doable – regardless of difficulty – is the path that will lead us to them. Viktor Frankl said, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I love my little dog, Sherlock. He’ll be 17 this year. We don’t have many more years together and I can see the deterioration slowly advancing. I caught myself focusing on that deterioration. I googled many things about aging dogs and their activities. I especially wanted to know how to know when it’s time to let him die with dignity, the dog way. All good things to do and know. But I found myself getting very dialed into his dying, which he will certainly do, and I lost sight of his living. I became joyously preoccupied with his death and absentminded of his life.

I have the rest of his life to show him how much I love him, and receive all the love he has to give until that time comes. The result of my becoming joyously preoccupied with the rest of his life is more peace and less anxiousness. I can live in the now and not have fear of the tomorrow. One day, I will have all the happy yesterdays. That will be the time to grieve. Today is the day to be joyously preoccupied with our lives together. If I can purpose to do this with my dog, I can purpose to do this with myself, any person, any situation.

Intentional Living, The Purpose Filled Life, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. These books and others like them remind us that the joy of life is purpose. Purpose is looking for a bright future we want to see, doing it in the right now and being joyously preoccupied with that goal. Absentminded of things that run contrary, and eagerly receiving that which harmonizes and synergizes with our purpose.

Purpose is the becoming of life. My purpose is to become as joyfully preoccupied as I can with anything and everything that will aid me in becoming who and what I want to be, leaving me free to be absentminded with all the worries and problems that life is going to bring. When they do come, I will learn how to joyfully preoccupy myself with how to best respond to them in a manner that is consistent with who it is I am intending to become. I can be defined by my life, or I can define it by writing the story of my life. My pen is my mind, the words are my choices and actions.

This is my blog about becoming. I am chronicling my path. I am hopeful someday, someone will be helped by how I walked it, who I became and what I overcame to do it. All of us are writing our stories. I hope to inspire you to join me and start writing a good one for yourself today.