Scottie Scheffler and Us

Friday, July 25

Okay, we’ll talk about Scottie Scheffler.

If you don’t follow golf or spend any time online, you might have missed this quote from Scottie Scheffler (he who is on a hot streak in golf like we haven’t seen since Peak Tiger) last week as he prepared to play The Open:

“This is not a fulfilling life. It’s fulfilling from the sense of accomplishment, but it’s not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart. I love the challenge. I love being able to play this game for a living. it’s one of the greatest joys of my life. But does it fill the deepest wants and desires of my heart? Absolutely not. Why do I want to win The Open Championship so badly? I don’t know. Because, if I win, it’s going to be an awesome two minutes. Then we’re going to get to next week.”

The quote has been dissected more times than I care to count, but it gets straight to the core for one of the pillars of high performance that we work on with athletes and leaders: Commitment x Contentment.

Scottie didn’t say he doesn’t care about winning or being great. He said later on that he’s literally worked his entire life to be great at the game of golf. He’s a competitor. He wants to win, wants to be great, wants to see what he is capable of. It is a mindset that all of us should have when it comes to our craft. That is Commitment.

But he also knows that what he does on the golf course doesn’t define him. He wins a trophy or loses a tournament, and he still has to go home to be a husband, to be a dad, to be a son. To be Scottie. His identity isn’t rooted in the outcomes of his golf swing. That is Contentment.

The key is to balance both of those. Too high of Commitment with no Contentment and you suffer from burnout, frustration, dissatisfaction. No win is ever good enough because you aren’t at peace with who you are. Too high of Contentment without enough Commitment and you end up settling, never putting in the effort to see what you are capable of. The result is regret.

When you balance these two, you unlock your best. You are 100% Committed to being the best you can possibly be, but don’t feel the pressure to “win” because you are also 100% Contentment with who you are no matter the outcome of the work. You get live and perform with freedom, not fear.

Commitment x Contentment is a recipe not just for success in sports, but in life.

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Keep chopping wood. 🪵🪓

-Kevin