PAR Excellence

I love the game of golf.

It is a tireless pursuit to better yourself - one stroke at a time.

There is a term in golf called par - or in other words the standard. I use the word par as an acronym and mantra for my life.

I want my life to be lived PAR Excellence! The standard is excellence - not perfection.

PAR I break down further to represent a method of living:

Plan
Act
Review

This is how every golf game is played - one shot at a time. As should our lives be lived one day at a time. First you PLAN your shot given your course, the lay of the ball, the conditions, the current score and your desired result. Then you ACT. You simply get out of your own way and play the ball. Lastly, once you've acted you REVIEW. Where did I end up? Is it where I wanted to? What's my next move? And the process starts all over again.

Now the process is simple but the game isn't easy. The difficulty usually comes in the ACT, which I further breakdown to:

Action
Creativity
Transformation

You must do. If you don't do you'll have nothing to review. Your ACTION must be different and CREATIVE and must have the intention of TRANSFORMATION. This space between Plan and Review is where the new world is created.

If you follow this simple process daily - you can drill up or drill down depending on your approach - you could PAR every task, or spread it through the day - Plan in the morning, Act during the day, Review at night. Or spread it through the week Plan on a Sunday, Act during the week, Review again on a Sunday. I recommend all of the above.

Success in golf and life comes from the discipline in practising the method. And then going out onto the course and having fun with it.

Excellent!

Slay the Dragon

I love Shrek. Not your typical knight in shining armour on the outside, but on the inside he had the right stuff. All he knew was that he had a job to do - go and get the Princess.

The difficulty in all fairy tale quests usually involves a dragon guarding something. Either the dragon is stopping the hero from rescuing the Princess or he is stopping the Princess from escaping.

We all have a dragon - and our dragon is the one that has many heads. Each head represents an obstacle that we have to overcome. One head could be "fear of failure" while another could be "my parents" or "that one time this one thing happened to me at this one place and I've never gotten over it".

Our job is to slay the dragon so that we can have our fairytale ending. The ending is written. You just have to get past the dragon.

Imagine how boring a story it would be if we had Prince Charming - standing at the edge of the clearing, debating his next move. He wants to go - but he is afraid that if he slays the dragon and rescues the Princess - will his friends like her? What about her parents? What if she doesn't like the way he kisses or his cologne?

None of those thoughts entered his mind (or it never made it to the final draft). If it had - we wouldn't have any fairytales worth telling. He knew this was his dragon (obstacle/resistance), his tower (life) and his fair maiden in distress (destiny).

Be the knight in shining armour of your own life.

Slay the dragon. Free your destiny. Live happily ever after....

Finding the Wisdom Inside You

Is wisdom something always found outside ourselves? Is it only in the hands of those older?

We were born with an inherent wisdom - but we have these "other" things that we allow to muddy our wisdom channel. We would rather borrow someone elses "wisdom" - than trust our own.

Heard of "not invented here"?

If it comes from outside then it must be better.

It is what we have done with God too. God is inside. God is manifested outside but exists on the inside. We intellectualise God - and that externalises the idea of God in religion and institutions, - as opposed to the original idea of it all being part of our make up.

Actually - God is at the core of our make up.

When will we wise up?