2. Mental Improvisations on the Theme of Golf

Most of what I planned for in my life never happened. A lot of what happened in my life was unexpected. I ruminated about things that had already happened and things I imagined happening. Underneath all of these exhausting mental variations on the theme of anxiety, was a desire to control the trajectory of my life. It didn't work.

Trying to control the uncontrollable is not a good way to live. It's not a good way to do much of anything. As I wrote that sentence, I heard the familiar voice that emerges from the gap between what I write and how I live. Writing allows me to compose sentences that create the pleasant illusion of knowing what I'm talking about.

It seems, there are different parts of me that compete for attention. One is an all-knowing writer who prefers to use the royal You. He's a poser hiding behind concepts and avoiding direct experience. He fears uncertainty, and therefore life itself. There's another writer within daring to use the everyday I.

But I digress...

I like to play golf. Golf likes to play with me. I understand the mechanics, or fundamentals, of the golf swing. They're important, but not that interesting. I'm very interested in the psychology of the game, or more formally performance psychology. Turns out it's a good psychology for living too.

Here's an example of my inner dialogue. I know that when I'm standing on a tee with a water to the left, the last thing I want to think is, "Don't pull it left into the water." It's the first thing I think. And it's usually what happens. This is the psychology of avoidance, or what I call the don't do strategy. Avoidance psychology requires a lot of golf balls.

But I'll counter the don't do with a do... I'll tell my brain to focus on a clear target (the one beside the water staring at me). Better psychology. No. Worse. Now I'm multitasking between a don't and a do. My brain has the same solution for this, get it over with and make a tight, controlled swing. Splash. My brain says, There, it's over. You're safe now. Oh, and you're welcome..

I've tried really hard to control uncertainty. It doesn't work. That's why I still try to do it. This is my unique brand of self-defeating commonsense. I find it difficult to genuinely accept the uncertainties of life. Sure, I'll acknowledge them, while secretly refusing to accept them. But my brain knows bullshit when I dish it out. My refusal to accept uncertainty is why my ball goes into the water.

In performance psychology, the acceptance of uncertainty is foundational. To my absolute horror, mindfulness is fundamental to acceptance, because it trains awareness to be present in the here and now. I don't like mindfulness much. I've spent a lot of my time trying to be anywhere else but here in this mind and now in this body. I have an ADHD brain and observing my mind is, well, damn unsettling. Anyway, I digress again...

Performance psychology taught me that trying to fix, discipline, or control my mind is counterproductive. What? So much for the past four decades. I've spent a lifetime in the self-help repair shop trying to fix myself. I have tried to slow my mind down, and it laughs at me. The second I try to focus on one thing, it opens the floodgates of innumerable irrelevant thoughts. I have even made the painful mistake of trying to encourage desirable feelings to make my inner life more tolerable. Self-improvement helped me to create a powerfully adverse relationship with my inner life.

Six decades of undiagnosed ADHD isn't something I'd recommend. If you don't have ADHD you will never understand this. It's a way of being in the world, not a condition. Therapy taught me that trying to fix my mind was the worst approach I could take. ADHD or not, the mind cannot be controlled. Nor does it need to be. There is, as I am gradually realizing, better way. A way it can be trained.

Standing over a 20 foot putt, I hear, Make sure you get it to the hole. Never up, never in... but don't hit it too far past either because you might miss it coming back. Thanks for that. I stroke the putt. Six. Feet. Short. Two more putts from there. Three. Putt. I'm stuck in a trap loop reliving the first putt. Out of no where, my brain says, Mission accomplished. Threat gone. It's over You're welcome! There's a storm approaching.

But there is another way. I let my mind say whatever it wants, but choose to pursue what I want. In other words, I train myself to accept leaving that putt six feet short or long. But there's a hitch. My brain knows bullshit when it hears it. If I haven't genuinely accepted the possibility of any possible outcome, my brain's crapometer sounds the alarm. When that happens, You're welcome.

I think acceptance is a core life skill - that I haven't developed. It's far better than obsessing over control. For me, it's fundamental to learning to live with the internal chaos of an ADHD brain combined with the aftershock of six decades of unmanaged distress. That's a little m ore involved than a twenty-foot putt.

I've played a lot of golf multitasking between a vast repertoire of dos and don'ts, over a shot, and in between shots. Golf requires roughly 40 minutes of concentrated effort thirty seconds at a time. The rest of the four hours is a nice walk. I've ruined a lot of nice walks. I've exhausted my attention well before the round ends. I've played the last eight holes in the absence of my brain.

My walks of rumination reveal a profound lack of acceptance. Perhaps it also reveals the frailty of my self-esteem and self-worth. If I'm not playing to my imaginary standard, I'm somehow deficient as a person. Of course, If I'm playing well, I ruminate about how not to mess up my score. Oh, and then there's the whole thing about what other people think. You're welcome.

Now, I just don't care - and I genuinely mean that. A better way to say that is that I am learning the skill of acceptance. Right now, I am better at acceptance in golf versus everyday life, but life is exponentially more complex than golf. So, I believe that acceptance is helpful, at least from my perspective here in the gap.

I'm in my mid-sixties. Not sure how that happened. But I've only recently been enrolled in the School of Acceptance. Aging seems to give me no choice. My late-life ADHD diagnosis has made it essential. Today, I play golf with a body that has some physical challenges and a brain that can be mercurial. I still catch my mind playing twenty-year-old golf. My body will have none of that. Today, my ignorance seems slightly less enormous that it used to be.

Acceptance doesn't mean relinquishing all control, giving in, or not caring. It doesn't mean a lack of purpose or goals. But it does mean that the uncertainties of life are genuinely accepted with compassion, for self and others. I have a lot to learn.

So, acceptance is a fundamental quality of improvisation. In musical terms, acceptance is like the underlying chord progression used to improvise over. Or, like Keith Jarrett, an energy force to improvise the chords and melodies themselves. A kind of psychological improvisation that allows for other possibilities of living. At the very least, improvising experiences on the theme of acceptance starts to loosen the ice cold grip of control.

I'm writing words that feel inspiring to me, but also distant. That's alright. The gap between words and life is where learning happens.