For those of you who don’t know me, I am a serial writer of almost everything.
Recently I was paging through my old notebooks and it brought up quite a few emotions.
From daily tasks to annual goals, sketch-filled vision boards and even a ‘new business ventures’ section, accompanied by each of their projected monthly revenues.
I also read Robin Sharma, Erik Kruger or Paulo Coelho books and I am an absolute sucker for anything written by Richard Branson. Why am I telling you this? Because I may need your help with something…
While sitting on the rug in my (soon to be) office/studio space at home, casually flipping through pages of old notes instead of tending to the actual job at hand of cleaning out the cupboards, I read a page from April 2014 which snapped me out of my time spent ‘kicking the leaves’ down memory lane.
It was a page titled, ‘Five Years from Today…’ and it goes without saying that it was a bullet-point projection of where I visualised my life being on 21 April 2019.
The first two points were instant fails:
1) Played 100 events on the PGA Tour.
2) Presidents Cup 2019.
The next three points weren’t much closer to reality either, which has got me thinking about how to go about the next five years.
One lesson I have learned from spending a lot of quality time around successful sporting, entertainment and business people is that they take care of the little things – the ‘glue and nails’ which hold it all together. Yet this is something most people (myself included) often bypass.
An example of this was how Branden Grace made a point from early in his career to invest in a world-class sports psychologist, as well as in Dr Sherylle Calder from EyeGym. Whereas I (and many players like me) looked at those as ‘unnecessary expenses’ and then carried on writing down ‘big dreams’ with no clear path or deep level of understanding of how to actually achieve them. Needless to say, I have adjusted course for my next ‘reality checkpoint’ – minus the pipe dreams and with more of the glue and nails.
My hope is that five years from today, you will look back and feel an overwhelming sense of pride and peace of mind with what you have achieved and experienced in your own life. As for myself? Well, with 21 April 2019 fast approaching, it looks like my only chance of making it into this year’s Presidents Cup team would be as the wildest wild-card captain’s pick of all time.
So, Ernie, I hope you’re reading this!
– Cairns is a Sunshine Tour pro who offers his monthly thoughts for the magazine
