Change Is Hard

I get this comment a lot in lessons. “This feels uncomfortable” and my response is always “YES, that’s good!!!”

Change is hard. But hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Often the things in life that feel the hardest are the roads we need to go down the most. It’s uncomfortable, there is a lot of resistance, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong. We can’t always rely on things feeling good all the time if we are in pursuit of our best selves on and off the golf course.

I’ve made a career out of changing people. Changing motor patterns. Changing self-belief patterns. Changing self-sabotage patterns. But in my experience, we can’t wait for something to feel good first before we change, feeling good comes when we embrace the suck and stop labeling the feelings that come up as bad. As Ted Lasso says, “Be curious, not judgemental”. We are challenging old patterns that have been there for a long time… it’s not supposed to be easy!

Growth is hard work, we have to do the reps, we have to be ok feeling uncomfortable. We can’t skip this step. There are no shortcuts. We have to learn how to stand in the face of tough things and follow through instead of giving up. And when we have these feelings of resistance and wanting to go back to the old ways because it’s easier, we have to dig deeper and let ourselves open up more. We have to let ourselves be open to new ways of thinking and moving our bodies.

We have to make space for the process of change and not label it as “negative”. What if we just let the process be what it is and dance with it instead of fighting it? What if we let our hearts lead us through this and tell our egos to take a back seat? Do we want to be right, or do we want to be happy?

Golf teaches us so much about life. It’s ok to feel uncomfortable because everything that we want comes after that.