What Color are You Dying Your Golf Game?
Self-deprecating humor, while amusing and seemingly benign, may essentially be "death by a thousand cuts" over time.
“You become what you give your attention to.” – Epictetus
“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind.” – Marcus Aurelius
Self-deprecating humor is some of the best kind of humor. Mix in some sarcasm and it’s even better, a delicious cocktail.
At some point or another, we’ve all poked fun at ourselves for absent-mindedly leaving our car keys inside the house or for a lack of willpower as it pertains to chocolate chip cookies with the large chunks of chocolate and just the right dash of salt (you know the ones). We chuckle at ourselves and shake our heads and if someone else is around, they’ll laugh too (but hopefully not too much).
The game of golf is ripe for these types of self-targeted quips coupled with a wry smile. Nice putt, left it short right in the heart, you little weakling. Look at all that water, I wonder how many balls we’ll put in the bottom of those lakes today? No one lays up into a hazard better than me.
It’s worth pondering though, if you are truly trying to get better at this game, are those seemingly benign jokes helpful and possibly even detrimental?
Think about the last time you tried to memorize something, a pin code or where something was in a big store after you asked a clerk, or your list of things to get on the way to that store. What did you do? You repeated it over and over again so that it would stick.
I’m old enough that we memorized multiplication tables by writing them down over and over and over again. Repetition, repetition, repetition.
And so while we all like to elicit a laugh from others or from ourselves or both, I can’t help but think those statements, over and over again, aren’t a death-by-a-thousand-cuts-type-of-thing.
“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts” – Marcus Aurelius
Many an evidence-based sports psychologist will profess the benefits of not getting too caught up in thoughts as they arrive and turning them into narratives. If that’s the right thing to do, then on some level, it must be a net-negative to talk about how you like to three-putt like it’s your job.
To be clear, it also doesn’t make sense to try and talk yourself into being a better player than you actually are. You can think positively all you want about how you are going to hit every fairway today and you can repeat "no doubles" all you want but that doesn’t mean you can just mantra your way to better golf — that’s pollyannaish.
In the end, golf is hard and we need all the help we can get. So therefore, if the self-directed barbs are even just 0.001% detrimental, doesn’t it make sense to find something else to poke fun at than ourselves?
Currently reading: Glory Enough for All: The Battle of the Crater by Duane Schultz. Historical fiction based on the true story of a Pennsylvania regiment from the coal-regions that dug a tunnel underneath the Confederate lines and packed it with dynamite.
Also currently reading: Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I’ve been reading the book for ages now, actually. Reading a dozen or so pages and then putting it down for a dozen or so days. While informative and useful, for sure, it is not a page-turner. Reading, slow and slower.
Recently finished: Comanche Moon by Larry McMurty. It is the prequel to Lonesome Dove and like many prequels/sequels, it is quite good but not as good as what came first. I borrowed it from our local library and twice, without me doing anything, the system auto-renewed it for me, somehow seemingly knowing that 752 pages of moderate enjoyment might take a while.
Of all the games we play, none has a better playing field or setting than golf.
