Life & Success Lessons From The Golf Course 3: Reboot, Refresh, Resume

A few days ago I was out of the driving range and found myself wasting a bucket of ball. Some of them I hit so badly that I could just walk up a couple of steps to retrieve them, but the re-hits were not that much better. I had done much of what I needed to do from stretching, working on my stance and my grip. I must admit that it was getting frustrating, because just the other day I was doing so well after my lesson. With my driver, 7 or hybrid it was all either a complete miss or at best a few feet. The harder I tried the more comical the resulting misses. Eventually, it was decision time and I decided to move on to chipping which is the best part of my game, followed by a few minutes with the putter. I was getting great results.

What was happening was that I needed to break from what I was doing to regroup and start over. That is something we see often when working on certain projects or in some meetings. When you find that your actions are not yielding desired results, it’s time to step back to reassess and return for a fresher start. Many of us have had to sit through an overdrawn project meeting and came out wondering what happened to these last few hours. That was a result of the person leading the meeting not realizing that I was time for everyone to take a break from the issue at hand and come back later—often with fresh insights and new perspectives.

Taking a break does not necessarily mean hours or days, it could be as simple as 10 or 15 minutes just to step away. That brief moment allows you to shut down the current cycle of thoughts or behaviors and switch to a different mode. When you return, it’s like you are rebooting your mind and body to continue the work you had been doing. It’s almost like when your computer freezes up. In some cases you can continue to work with it, but it moves slowly, or sometimes not at all. After you take a moment to restart it, it starts to work again and faster than before. Yes, you lose the few minutes that it took you to go through the reset period, but in the end you make that up by not having to wait two minutes for every command to be executed as before.

By taking breaks, you give yourself the benefit of a fresh start, which also allows you to make the adjustments necessary to get you on the right track. If my swing is off I can most definitely stay there and try to fix it, but when my body is used to being in that off position it’s more difficult to change that than it would be if I was starting in neutral. We are pattern driven and once we settle into the rhythm it’s hard to transition out of it. A halt however gives you the opportunity for a new start and some rest in between to rejuvenate and give more energy.

So next time you find yourself stuck in a pattern that is not giving you the results you want, remember that it is ok to stop for a moment, because the break that you take to regroup and reorganize will more than likely be shorter than the time that you would lose trying to push on.

When you take a break you can do some of these things to make the break more productive:

• Just relax for a moment- Sometimes the body and mind need that.
• Find a distraction- Something that will force you to get your mind off the task at hand— My weaknesses are Tetris and Minesweeper. Whatever you choose, make sure you have what it takes to stop in five or ten minutes
• Meditate or do breathing exercises- This allows the recirculation of your energy which is great for fresh start. When you need to rebuild momentum getting oxygen into your body is one of the things you can do.
• Cat naps- Depending on the setting and time available this could be a great tool. Closing your eyes for a few minutes gives a great opportunity for introspective reflection- and if you dose off you feel refreshed when you awaken.
• Change course- If what you are trying to do is not working out, you can move on to something else that you need to do and return to the original task later. Just changing the schedule around a bit will not hurt much- just make sure that it is a change of pace that you need and not rest.

 

 I’m just saying though…

Dream Big… Live Bigger…

DrJudiC

www.DrJudiC.com