The Fuel of Failure
Day 3 on “Golf the Wright Way” by Mickey Wright
“I had poor emotional control.”
After turning pro, Mickey struggled with a familiar problem: she wasn’t winning. She says, “I had a good swing. I hit the ball well. Yet I’d go out and not score.”
Each year, she earned more money. But like most of us on the golf course, money wasn’t her goal. She wanted the satisfaction of playing her best. She wanted to win.
After each loss, she simmered in anger and wallowed in self-pity.
Mickey admits, “I had poor emotional control. My first year on tour marked the most frustrating phase in my career.”
Like a thermostat.
Dr. Nick Hobson is a behavioral scientist who writes for Psychology Today. He says, “The lousy feeling you get after you fail is unavoidable. But failure drives improved performance.”
Learning from failure sounds like a cliche. But Dr. Hobson is talking about biology. Our behavior is regulated by feedback cycles, like a thermostat.
He writes, “With the rising heat of failure, your brain’s internal governor kicks in to cool your emotions and help you be better at whatever you’re doing.”
If you focus on the negative emotions of failure, your thermostat gets stuck and you simmer. Dr. Hobson calls this “turning failure into fuel.” That’s what Mickey did.
But if you feel and release those negative emotions, your thermostat does what it was designed to do: cool you off, integrate what you learned, and prepare you for the next challenge.
The most valuable golfing advice.
How did Mickey learn this lesson years before the research was available? The old-fashioned way: a friend called B.S. on her self-pity.
Betsy Rawls won the St. Petersburg Open. Mickey finished way down the leaderboard. She sat in her hotel room, feeding on those negative emotions.
There was a knock on the door. It was Betsy.
She said, “Mickey, you hit every shot during this tournament. No one hit them for you. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and accept responsibility for every shot you hit.”
Besty had a degree in physics and was the most level-headed player on tour. Her honesty knocked Mickey out of the self-pity cycle.
She says, “That was the most valuable golfing advice ever given to me. I went on to win five tournaments that year, including the U.S. Women’s Open.”
Bobby Darnell said, “Negativity is cannibalistic. The more you feed it, the stronger it grows.”
Mickey says, “I try to get to the green in the most nearly perfect way. But if I don’t, I don’t lose any time in self-recrimination. No matter how I get there, I’m happy to be there.”
That’s how she took responsibility: letting go of self-recrimination and taking hold of joy. That simple action changed self-pity into acceptance, allowing her brain’s thermostat to cool the negative emotions and prepare her for the next shot. Of course, it’s easier said than done. But it’s good to know we have biology on our side.
That’s all for now. Until next time, keep imagining what’s possible.