Gravity, Got to, & Get to
“Fear is gravity, always telling you to take the easier path, and always downhill. Walk uphill; it is the door into awe and freedom.”
- Banksy
What keeps people from becoming the best version of themselves? Is it lack of skills, desire, or motivation? Last week’s PGA Championship at Bethpage provides a familiar environment to examine these questions. While Brooks Koepka went wire to wire for his second PGA Championship and 4th Major title, my inspiration for this email comes from my peers, the twenty PGA Professionals who played in the event. For them, the opportunity to play in front of the world and potentially exposing their flaws could have crippled them with fear, but instead, they embraced it on the biggest stage possible.
Were those twenty supremely confident in their skill? Did the simply decide not to care what others thought of their performance? Or did they simply make a choice to categorize an opportunity as something they “Get To” do rather than something they “Won’t Do” or “Got-to” do. An examination of the differences between the three options and the relationship each has with fear reaches the following conclusions.
Won’t Do: Fear wins, resulting in inaction.
Got To Do: Fear lingers and affects performance.
Get To Do: Fear be damned, you are going to do this.
Let’s be perfectly clear, the fear you feel is real…that is never the question. The better question is ‘what are you going to do about it?’. You can choose to walk the “downhill path” that Banksy references, or you can choose to walk through the door into “awe and freedom”. You can choose “Won’t Do”, “Got To”, or “Get To”.
Once you have made the choice, the world is yours. Start a new hobby, launch a project at work, take on a new responsibility, start a blog, build an online course. Not everyone is going to like or appreciate your work, but that is OK. You didn’t do it for them. You did it because you believed it would make a positive difference in the lives of those you touch; and did it because you made a different (and better) choice about how to handle your fear.
Finally, this email was almost titled “Words, Wits End, & Writers (block)”, which would have been followed by a blank page. I love writing these emails and hope you can provide inspiration for future topics. If you have a favorite quote, topic you would like to hear about, or question that I can answer, please send me an email with your thoughts.
Always walking towards awe and freedom,
Jason Boaz
Jason Boaz, PGA
PGA Certified Golf Professional
PGA Career Consultant
Illinois and Wisconsin Sections of the PGA of America
608.318.5355