In this picture here,
a 19-year old Sergio Garcia celebrates having won the prestigious low amateur honors
at the 1999 Masters. Later that summer,
he had a famous battle down the stretch with Tiger Woods at the PGA
Championship at Medinah. At the
time, many people felt as though Sergio and Tiger would be a rivalry on the
order of Jack and Arnie. Writing from
this vantage point, we know that prediction not to have panned out, as Tiger
went on to win 12 more majors, and Sergio went 74 starts in a major before finally
breaking through this April at the Masters.
In the intervening 18 years, Sergio experienced some incredible heart breaks
featuring some uncanny luck of his competitors, all of it driving some brutally
scathing self talk.
As I wrote in this blog in 2012 after he shot a
dreadful 76 dropping him out of contention in the Masters, Sergio was asked
what he lacked to win a major tournament, and he replied a dispirited:
“Everything.” In 2013, he was asked
again what the problem was, and he stated, somewhat more desperately: “I’m not
good enough,” he continued. “I had my chances and opportunities and I wasted
them. I have no more options. I wasted my options. … Tell me something I can
do.”
This year, when his
tournament-winning birdie putt dropped on the first playoff hole, Sergio ended
his long drought. I’m sure I was not
alone in the sport cognition world to wonder what had changed in order to bring
this about, since, given his history of bad luck and scalding self talk, this
victory would have to entail miraculous alteration in his cognitive approach to
the game. And, in fact, I was right. Speaking after his victory about his ups and
downs at the Masters, Sergio revealed that somehow since his disaster in 2012,
he acquired the skill of Radical Acceptance:
“When
I came here in ’99 as an amateur, I felt like this course was going to give me
at least one major. I’m not going to
lie: that thought changed a little bit through the years because I started
feeling uncomfortable on the course. But, I kind of came in peace with it the
last three or four years and I accepted what Augusta gives and takes. And because of that, I’m able to stand here
today.”
When people talk about the
most important traits of successful athletes, they often don’t mention the
ability to accept reality as one of them, because we often think it is so
important for athletes to have outsized egos, as if the ability to succeed
depends upon the ability to dwarf reality’s hold on us. And while I think dreaming big is a key
element to success, it is important to separate out dreams from reality, because
as the Buddhists will tell us: a sure fire way to suffer is to be at odds with
reality. The problem, from a cognitive
point of view is that, too often, people confuse accepting reality with approving
of it, as if one were being something of a patsy to accept reality. We see this in our clinical practice when it
comes to trauma or other negative life events: “If I accept it, I must be
saying it’s OK,” without noticing that the inability to accept the event cements
it as one that will not be overcome.
While a great deal could be said, and has been, about acceptance, here
are some aspects of it I want to mention which elevate it from mere spiritual or
psychological flimflammery, to a truly transformative power in your sport life
and in your life as a whole.
1. The first step is to notice non-acceptance. The first aspect of reality refusal you need
to attune yourself to is that you are engaging it in. In the sport context, this often involves
some form of a tantrum: throwing a club or racquet, yelling at an ref or
opponent, or just yelling in general, or thinking in your head that you’re the
most unlucky person who ever walked the earth.
While some of these actions seem hyperbolic, every athlete engages in
them to some extent. The successful ones
notice it and do everything to move quickly
from reality refusal to reality acceptance.
2. Refusal to accept reality keeps you stuck. If you
continue to be in a state of disbelief about something, you will never see your
way clear to the answer because your disbelief blinds you to potential
solutions. When you throw a club, a
racquet, or argue with the ref or God, you are mired in the moment that has
already past rather than seeing your way to potential solutions in the
present. Plus, you can also see that
there is some entitlement in disbelieving reality, as if you don’t deserve
negative things to happen to you. As he
even acknowledges, Sergio had a big plate of entitlement, winning 1999 low
amateur honors, and coming from brilliant Spanish golf lineage: Severiano
Ballesteros, and Jose Maria Olazabal (the
winner in 1999) both multiple Masters’ winners. He expected good fortune to rain down upon
him.
3. The best opportunity to change your reality begins
the moment you accept it. This fact is the reverse of corollary #2. Accepting reality is an extremely liberating
cognitive move, even if the reality that
requires accepting is painful. It is
far different to be in an accepting posture no matter how much your face
stings, rather than in a tantrum about how the very thing that is happening
isn’t or shouldn’t be happening.
Now, you would think that
golfers have more opportunity that other athletes to practice acceptance given
that the “rub of the green” is built into the sport, the random, unfair, even
bizarre things that happen on the course over which we have little or no
control. Dwelling on them in disbelief just
gets in the way, inhibiting success in the next shot. But, as Sergio’s press conference makes
clear, you can be in an 18-year long fight against reality and not know
it. Once Sergio accepted some basic
realities, his reality changed, and with it, his entire life.
*The term, Radical Acceptance, as used here is
borrowed from Marsha Linehan and her system of Dialectical Behavior Therapy, as
laid out in her “Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Borderline Personality
Disorder,” (Guilford Press, 1993), and the accompanying skills manual, “DBT
Skills Training: Handouts and Worksheets,” (Guilford Press, 2015). Readers will note that Linehan has borrowed
heavily from the Buddhist position on acceptance, but, as far as I know, the
term “radical acceptance,” is her coinage, adding the notion that acceptance
must be full, entire, and all the way to
the roots. It can’t be faked, or
half-hearted. I encourage you to investigate the wisdom entailed in her
“reality acceptance” skills, of which skills #2 and #3 here are only two.
