Writing and playing golf

I believe that many skills require some lateral thinking for you to be successful at them. Take writing for example. At one point I was scared about writing, I believed it to be difficult and that it required some super special talent. It does not.

A mentor of mine changed my thinking completely. He said writing is just communication, “If you can talk you can write…write like you talk. Stop trying to be so formal and doing it correctly….just write”. This was a revelation for me. Instead of thinking about sentence structure, paragraph forming and all the other rules and regulations I thought I needed to obey, I started writing.

A wonderful thing happened. My writing flowed and it was fun. Ideas came into my head and when I read other writing I could see, hear and feel their communication. No longer was writing a barrier for me. I’m not claiming to be the best writer, but it is now something I enjoy and continually get better at.

It is interesting to learn that my mentor (a journalist, writer and amazing thinker) disagrees with conventional writing teaching. “Too many rules and regulations”, he says. When he spoke to his son about writing with passion and finding his own unique voice, his son responded with, “But our teacher at school says we have to do it another way”. My mentor believes that we all have an inner talent to write, but if we focus on HOW to write we never can do it. Much better to break some rules and be you.

The belief that you must try hard and be perfect disrupts the learning process. Playing golf is no different than putting pen to paper. It requires you find your unique game first. After that it becomes easy to make changes and develop your skills. Doing it the other way around is messy, boring and rarely leads to success.

So be daring. Break some rules and go against convention. Open your stance if it feels good and swing quickly if that is your thing. And it really doesn’t matter if your grip is too strong. Play golf, have fun and write to me to tell me you experience. I would love to hear your story.

Good golfing,

Cameron Strachan