3 Fundamental Principles to Success

Written by Aki Matsumura on Dec. 30th 2019

Have you ever wondered what it takes to become a golf champion or what it takes to make it to your highest level?

We are in a time and age where access to information comes so easy. We can take out our phones and Google it (or ask Siri) and get instant access to hundreds of hours of instruction instantly. I have spent countless hours educating myself on topics of my interest and have found both success and failure. Most of the success we experience is immediate and doesn't last and then we jump to the next idea and continue down this road of searching for the one tip that will change the game forever. I am sorry to say that it doesn't exist!

We find tips and techniques that work great for some but make it worse for others. As we dive deeper, I'll tell you most of the time it's not the tactical advice or tip that we need but the conceptual understanding of what we are seeking. You'll all be able to filter through the infinite number of tips and techniques and find what is best for you.

First, you must understand the Art and Strategy of High Performance and then you can lay down the 3 Fundamental Principles for Success.

The Art and Strategy of High Performance

The art and strategy behind the longevity of anything are having clear outcomes, then attaching it to the necessity or purpose in your life. We have a 2 and half year old daughter, Charlotte, our clear goal is for her love what she does, make friends and socialize, follow directions, be empathetic, respectful, and continue to make progress every day. This allows us to search for particular activities that meet our goals and needs for her. As she gets older and develops her emotional capacity further, we'll start to consider what she says she's interested — but being clear the specific values we what her to develop makes it easy to discover what to do.

When we attach our necessity or purpose around the clear values we want for her, this allows for extremely deliberate actions to be done. The necessity that drives us is being a close family and building a tightly knit community with friends and loved ones so we can create the family memories that will last forever and can be passed down through the generations. This makes our decision extremely clear and our ability to say "yes" to the thing that fits and "no" to the things that don't.

Also, understand that this is always changing because we enter different phases in our lives, so it's a constant activity that has clarity around your objectives and the necessity that drives you.

How does all of this pertain to golf...in every way you can imagine! Without finding clarity behind what you want to achieve, you'll always be putting tremendous effort in and not understand why you aren't getting closer to your goals. Without the necessity to drive you, you'll say "yes" to too many things that don't move the needle towards your success. Your ability to say "no" to almost everything and only "yes" to the few things that create the largest value is what is separating where you are right now from your next level.

3 Fundamentals

1.

Join an on-going support community.

Everything that we accomplish rarely happens on our own. All of the obstacles we encounter, there has always been someone else who has gone through it and found the way to breakthrough. Being a part of like-minded families and people who support each other tremendously accelerates the performance in all that we do. Golf has always been labeled as an individual sport, but at every high-performance level, there is a team and community built to support the needs of each of the players. Allow yourself to open up and find or create your own high-performance peer group to allow you to accelerate your way to your goals and dreams. You will always need to be looking, searching, and growing, so you are part of a community that you are able to mentor and train others to elevate your understanding of skills and development. You will also be mentored and trained by the more experienced, so you are stretched beyond your comfort and find the beauty and success on the other side of any fear!

2.

Have extreme clarity and be able to measure it.

It's a phrase we all hear over and over again in our lives. But the question should be, who is applying this common sense, and how are we doing it? Most of us have a dream, but do we know if we are getting any closer to it each day, week, month, or year? Most use time when we play on the golf course, our score is our primary metrics. We always ask, how long you have been playing? And what do you shoot? Both work great for checking how we are doing year to year but doesn't provide anything for us when measuring progress for the day, week, or month. Many of you will say, "Yes," but do you have a consistent metric system that you chart at the end of each practice session (daily), or are you tracking what you feel is what you need at that moment? Do you have another set of consistent metrics that you are reviewing at the end of each week or month and season, or year? Is it something that you are able to compare against each week after week, month after month, season after season? Or does it frequently change, and there is no measurement against your baseline? Your highest performers will always have the consistency of metrics to achieve the clarity they need to grow and learn at each moment constantly.

3.

Find a great coach or mentor who cares about you.

A Coach, Mentor, and Instructor have always been interchanged, but to identify what we are looking for, we need to be able to define them.

An Instructor is anyone who can educate a concept or theory so it can be understood. Instructors are great to learn from, but if you have been playing golf (or any other sport) for a long time, our frustrating moments come because we DO understand, but can't apply the concepts.

A Coach is someone who fills in the gap between where someone is today and where they want to be. Coaches take you on a journey that has ups and downs and teaches you along the way, so you can overcome all challenges and obstacles as they come up in the long-term journey ahead of you.

A Mentor is someone who has achieved the success you are striving for; They have either produced it themselves or with other students. Mentors give you the short-cuts on the common mistakes that will arise so you can avoid the common pitfalls and excel your speed to achieving your goal and dreams. Mentors don't have to be world-class performers, they only have to be 1 step ahead of the student, and tremendous success is found. We find many of the world's best coaches also to be great mentors, but we also find some of the greatest mentors coming out of the peer groups that you design or join in your community.

When we observe many world-class coaches of PGA and LPGA Tour players, we notice that it's not their technical skill set, but it's their rare ability to care about the players so much that their relationship goes far beyond a golf instructor or coach. It's the constant communication between the player, coach/mentor, and team that allows the player to see what has been measured, so they continue on the path that has been designed for them to reach their outcomes. Each of the world's best performers have also had instrumental peer mentors at each stage of their career, whether it's been as a junior golfer, college golfer, or on the professional tours.

When we examine the best golfers, athletes, and people in the world, there is a minimal amount of individuals who have achieved their outcome by extreme success and fulfillment alone, it took them longer than the rest, and once they got there, they surrounded themselves with the 3-principles we mentioned. If we know what the end goal is, why not start here, speed up your process and enjoy every part of it from the beginning?

What to do Next???

Before you you leave this page, spend the next 10 minutes:

Take out your journal and write down the end goal of what you want to achieve and create your necessity statement. Do this simple exercise and you'll create the path towards your goals and bulletproof your decisions on where and what to spend your time on.

Thank you everyone! We truly appreciate your time to join our community and support our efforts to shape a clearer path towards an extraordinary life through junior golf. If you want to continue to hear from us, please Subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook and Instagram to be notified of our latest blogs and training videos.