Acting on the call to adventure from the depths of his subconscious mind Tiger Woods at the age of 12 put Jack Nicklaus’s record in the Majors on his wall and aimed at being the world’s number one golfer.
All great athletes have done similar things. What I know from studying sports narratives, great athletes think great things. They have visions of changing history, and they have these thoughts, all the time.
I stumbled on this wisdom through my experience as an applied sports psychologist working on the PGA golf tour. I was a psychologist for many of the world’s great golfers. I was also the psychologist for many golfers that we’re not so great. Through observation and reflection, I learned there are two types of golfers. Those who think of doing great things and those who don’t.
My first client on the PGA Tour was Darren Clarke. When I worked with Darren, he had not won a Major, but he was an established player and Ryder Cup star. His vision was to win the British Open. It was on his mind, all the time. He would have dreams about it, and he would visualize himself winning the Open every day. He worked tirelessly on the things he thought would help him win. He would talk about it daily and seek advice from many of the world’s top coaches on how to get better and achieve this goal. After many years of striving, his vision manifested itself, at the 2011 British Open at the infamous Royal St Georges golf club. He won that event by 3 shots in the worse weather conditions imaginable. It was an extraordinary achievement.
The wisdom I gained from working with Darren was great people think of achieving big goals. They have intentions that are aimed at changing human history and they spend their lives making it happen.
Doing something great and valuable with our lives is one of the most significant needs of mankind. Humanistic psychologists such as Martin Seligman, call this the need to self-actualize. Self-actualization is the self-fulfillment of your human potential. To achieve your human potential, you need to know your purpose and engage in meaningful behaviours. To know your true purpose, you have, to have a clear vision of what you want to be and what you want to achieve in your life. You need to know what gives your life meaning and then you need to aim at that goal.
When I worked on the PGA golf tour, my office was the practice grounds of some of the finest golf courses in the world. There were some places exceptionally special. St Andrews, for example, was exceptionally special.
St Andrews has an eerie presence. A soul. You have to go there to understand what I am talking about. When I worked with my clients at St Andrew’s, I felt I was in heaven, and I was walking the fairways with gods. It was both inspirational and transformational. I walked with many gods during my time on the tour. I met all the great golfers, Tiger, Rory, Seve, Faldo, Nicklaus, Watson and many more. I also met people from other sports such as football, and icons from fashion and film.
This experience reached its zenith when I was asked by Stephen Gallacher to join him at the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles in Scotland. The event always stays with me. I had been to many tournaments before the Ryder Cup, the Majors for instance we’re always on my schedule, but I had never encountered anything like this. At most tournaments, even at the Majors, the crowds are quiet and subdued, but at this event, they were vocal, passionate, patriotic, and tribal.
The crowds lined the banks and slopes surrounding the greens, they sat patiently waiting for their team to come through. The roar of the crowds vibrated through my body like music passing through an amplified speaker. It was a spiritual vibration, an emotion difficult to describe, but all of this had come about through a vision. A vision of a magnificent tournament to be played between The United States of America and Europe. A vision of a “Hero’s Journey”.
People and societies need heroes. If you can’t be a hero yourself, you may vicariously experience it through watching others. My mother who was crippled with Multiple Sclerosis constantly watched sports to feed her need to satisfy her inborn impulsion to be a Hero.
Carl Jung the famous early 20th-century psychologist regarded the Hero instinct to be one of the most important motivators in life. Indeed, all societies from every corner of the world have Heroes and stories of heroic journeys. The Greeks have their gods and Odysseus, the Nordic people have Beowulf, the Aborigines have dream time heroes, and the Central Americans have Hunahpu and Xbalanque.
Sport is the creator of modern-day heroes. It is through sport we transcend the self. Whether you watch it or play it, sport makes us feel alive. Sport has been part of man’s history since the beginning of time. Roman gladiators fought in the Colosseum and the Greeks competed at the Olympic games. Native Americans played stickball/lacrosse and the ancient Chinese played a form of football, volleyball, and golf. The ancients knew, Sport gives us meaning in life. They knew, sport is a window to the divine and projects us into a state of providence. It’s a mystical and deeply spiritual experience.
The Ryder Cup experience is a good example of a modern-day “Hero’s journey”. It is predicated on a vision that people can do extraordinary things. Great athletes and the great people in the world have these visions all the time. Recently 19-year-old Emma Radicanu, an unknown British tennis player had the vision of winning the US Open. She had a world ranking so low she had to come through 3 qualifying matches to enter the tournament. Her vision of being the US Open champion and changing history drove her to the final and win the event without dropping a set. Her win is one of the greatest athletic human achievements ever. Her journey tells us when talented athletes set impossible goals miracles may happen.
The philosopher Joseph Campbell states that you can only experience being alive if you take the path of a hero. This is a poignant message. So here is my message to you. Get out of your seat and start living. Get a vision of something magnificent and aim at it. Stop procrastinating. Stop creating barriers and reasons why you can’t do something magnificent in your life.
Your journey does not have to involve ‘becoming the world’s number one golfer’. It could be something as magnificent as raising a child and ‘becoming’ the best in the world at showing empathy and human kindness.
If we all aimed at that vision, we all could change history. Indeed, we may create a society, that authentically cares for people. Mental health specialists would be out of a job, and we would stop all wars.