Sports offer excellent metaphors that are used for general success in life precisely because they exist to be entertaining microcosms of life itself. Individuals or teams vie in a competitive landscape typically officiated by imperfect referees. Preparation is allowed, but on-field performance is all anyone remembers. Sports reflect real life in numerous ways, and each sport brings its own flair to the conversation.
Golf of any variety is a wonderful mix of planning, tactics, and execution. It’s about discrete decisions, managing each shot based on given strengths and the likelihood of success. I became overwhelmed each time I tried untangling these metaphors. It was too much.
Let me instead focus on one mindset adjustment I first jokingly heard in a disc golf YouTube video, but which I found impactful: The woods are mostly air. Aim for the gaps.
Forests are vast and imposing. They look thick and treacherous from afar, with an impenetrable canopy covering unknown terrain. Yet, this is only a view from the outside.
While a forest may still be dense inside, it is more approachable and navigable from within. In most cases, the gaps between the trees are larger than the trees themselves, so the forest is mostly not trees. There is space to move around whatever is in the way, but it’s only possible to see that when in the middle of it all.
Focusing on this relative lack of trees is a shift in mindset that can help boost confidence when approaching a difficult project. Disc golf is about commitment and trust in the intended shot. You have to anticipate the line through the forest, and any hesitation compounds the chance of error. In life, it is much the same. You have to avoid being overwhelmed by something that feels insurmountable by getting into the details, observing the actual options to get from where you are to where you need to be, and then plotting a course to follow.
The second part of the quote, Aim for the gaps, is a shift in how the directions and intentions are communicated. When faced with obstacles, it’s natural to consider how to avoid them. They loom large in the plan, boogeymen in our periphery that add nerves and distract us from achieving the goal.
When lining up a shot in disc golf, the best focus for your vision is the negative space through which your disc will fly. Once you start thinking about missing trees, you’ll naturally be thinking about just trees which are nice, big, hittable targets. So trust that there’s more air than trees, and instead aim for the gap. Hit the gap. There’s space there after all.
Working towards a goal isn’t about avoiding all obstacles. The obstacles are a helpful outline, framing an available path. Agonizing over their existence isn’t going to change where or how large they are; they will simply occupy space in the plan that is better left to a different level of focus.
The trees are still there, anchored, gangly behemoths. But so is a path through the air. Aim there, and you’ll be surprised by how little the obstacles actually matter in the end.