Lessons from Aunt Beck – Lesson #2: Keeping Score

Posted on August 3, 2009 by pdncoach

by Becky Morris

I am a stickler for accuracy. When golfing, it is very important for me to keep track of my shots and report the number accurately. It is also very important to me for those with whom I am golfing to do the same thing. There have been times when I have found myself helping my golf partner count strokes (of course, they are not aware of this; I am just keeping a mental tally). Such was the case the day I golfed with “Aunt Beck”, my new 90-year-old golfing buddy. This is the second article in a series about lessons learned from Aunt Beck that began with “Don’t Always Go For the Long Ball”.

Aunt Beck may not be as much of a stickler when it comes to keeping an accurate score as I am. I am not suggesting that she cheats; heck, when you are 90 why would you need to cheat at golf? For her, it was more about losing track of her strokes. She was not trying to cheat or be deceptive, she simply forgot. My first inclination was to get it right; then I realized how trivial this seemed. In the broad scope of things, what did the comparison of our scores really matter?

How much trivial score-keeping do you have in your life? I define score-keeping as “measuring your results against the results of someone else”. Score-keeping doesn’t mean you are necessarily tracking the result you personally desire. Rather, with score-keeping your focus is on how much better or worse your results are compared to those of someone else – a competitor, a sibling, a spouse, a colleague, a golf partner.

How are my kids doing in school? Am I looking at my children from the viewpoint of how well they could do compared to how well they did, or am I looking at how well they did compared to someone else? There are many other areas in which people often “keep scores”: income, size and location of your house, the vehicle(s) you drive, personal body type (height, weight), and all the other insignificant measures of comparison.

  • How do the “scores” of others really matter to you?
  • Why do they really matter?
  • How much pressure and dissatisfaction do these comparisons bring into your life?
  • How might your life change if you measured what you have or need instead of what you want because someone else has it?
  • How might this change the perspective about score-keeping change your life?

A couple of years ago I started keeping a Dream Inventory. What a powerful thing, this Dream Inventory! It is a great reflective tool to consider and record what I would like to accomplish in the remaining years of my life. I record everything I want to have, to do, to become…everything. No one else has seen this Dream Inventory; it is strictly mine.

My Dream Inventory allows me to:

  • list anything that I would like to do, be, accomplish, see, achieve, attain
  • think about what I must do differently to make these dreams become reality
  • prioritize the dreams I could achieve in the next year, 2 years and further out
  • develop specific plans to make these dreams become reality
  • inspired me to start doing things differently to get these new results – not because someone else has them, but because they are my dreams

It is a great thrill and honor to win a game of golf, or a swim meet, or a 5K run…, but the best goal for any game is to get your best score, not to beat someone else at the game. Competition helps motivate us to pursue and achieve our goals, but when competition becomes the goal, we lose something. We become score-keepers trying to beat the dreams of someone else rather than achieve our own.

Aunt Beck, thank you for making me stop and analyze the insignificance of score-keeping. Thank you for helping me to stay focused on my own dreams, and how I need to measure my own progress toward those dreams.

Join me at the Intersection of Purpose & Now.
Posted in Aunt Beck, Becky Morris, dreams, goals, score-keeping | Leave a comment

Lessons from Aunt Beck – Lesson #1: Don’t Always Go for the Long Ball

Posted on July 30, 2009 by pdncoach

by Becky Morris


Golf is a game that I love to hate yet can’t help loving. For some unexplained reason, I joined a league this year. It was an opportunity to reconnect with some previous co-workers and get me out on the course at least once a week. There is a wide range of ages and experience in my golf league, but all of the women are very enjoyable to be around and it gives us an opportunity to visit while trying to hone our skills.

One particular lady on our league is affectionately called “Aunt Beck”, who just happens to be 90 years old. You will see her on the golf course three times a week, which by itself is amazing to me. Though I had seen her every week, there had never been an opportunity to be in her foursome until a couple of weeks ago. I relished that opportunity and, in my true nature, took advantage of the 2+ hours I was in a golf cart with her to find out what it must be like to have lived 90 years.

Following is the first of several articles to come about the lessons I learned in my two-hour “course” of observation and conversation with Aunt Beck.

Lesson #1 – Don’t always go for the long ball.

I really love golf and I love watching golf on TV. The professionals make it look so easy. They stand up to the tee and crank that ball and it sails somewhere between 250-300 yards. It is easy to see this from someone who makes it look so easy and think, “heck, I can do that”. I usually forget that, perhaps, these pro golfers have spent most of their winter lifting weights, taking swings and conditioning their body to allow such a performance.

Though not a professional, Aunt Beck approaches the tee in much the same manner. She lines up, doesn’t take a practice swing, hits the ball and while it doesn’t go far, it does go straight. Interesting…Every time I approach the ball on the tee box, I am trying to hammer that thing as far as possible. When I manage to hit it long, it goes to the right – not my desired result. I am then hitting out of tall grass without a direct shot to the green, and my score grows with each swing of the club.

As I continued to watch Aunt Beck’s approach to the game I began realizing a longer shot is not always the best shot. There was value in her shorter straight shots – great value in comparison to my results. Oh trust me, I have golfed with some people who can hit the ball for miles, but in the end, there is not a significant difference in our scores because they haven’t mastered the short game. Of course, Aunt Beck has a good short game, so straight shots off the tee usually lead to low scores.

So what about my sales game?
When I think of my sales goal for the year I determine a number that I would like to achieve. With that number determined I make appointments and begin meeting with people. I have a long range goal with a target date for success that is measurable. It seems to have all of the defining criteria of a WAY SMART goal (Written, Aligned, Yours, Specific, Achievable, Realistically high, Time-dated). However, I am missing HUGE steps if I do not identify all of the obstacles and break my goal plan down to action steps. One of those obstacles can be unreasonable expectations about each appointment – the equivalent of trying to hit long balls with every tee shot.

To develop an effective plan to achieve my goal I answer questions like this:

  • How many appointments do I need to have a week to make steady progress toward my goal?
  • How will I get those appointments?
  • What will happen if by June I am not at least half way to my goal?
  • What is the purpose and intended outcomes from those appointments?
  • How will I stay motivated?
  • Who will I be accountable to?
  • How will I measure my activity and its effectiveness?
  • Do I really know what I need to do to hit my sales goal?

Staying out of the rough
There is a lot of green to cover to make par on a 450-yard golf hole. I have a lot of time to cover to reach my annual sales goal. Aunt Beck meets and exceeds her goals by breaking her game into steady, consistent performance and by hitting straight each time. That’s how she reached the wise old age of 90; that’s how she wins in golf.

If I’m going to reach my goals of getting the ball into the cup on fewer strokes, or of hitting my revenue goal in fewer months, the same rules apply:

  • approach the tee with confidence (understand and practice the Buying/Selling Process)
  • take one shot at a time (take my appointments one at a time)
  • hit straight (measure my key activities)
  • know the results I want and how to get them before I approach the ball (have my annual revenue goal in mind, as well WHY I want to reach my goal and WHAT I need to reach it.)

Thanks, Aunt Beck.

Join me at the Intersection of Purpose & Now.
Posted in Aunt Beck, Becky Morris, Buying/Selling Process, goals, golf, sales | Leave a comment

When I Grow Up Will I Be Beautiful?

Posted on July 29, 2009 by pdncoach

by Becky Morris

“When I get big will I be beautiful?”


My six-year-old granddaughter, Maggie, was getting her bath the other night. My daughter was drying her off after she got out of the tub and blowing Maggie’s hair dry . That’s when Maggie expressed her concern to her mommy: “When I get big will I be beautiful?”

My daughter answered her in a most splendid way. Her response went something like this….

“Maggie, of course you will be beautiful. You will take care of yourself, wash your hair, brush your teeth and make sure you are always clean. However, there is more to being beautiful. You will be polite to people and treat them kindly. You will share and help others in need. You need to help those who can’t help themselves and always be nice to older people. Those are the kind of things that make you beautiful.”

Too often, we get so hung up on the external features of beauty. We are so quick to judge others by their physical appearance and forget to look for the beauty on the inside. We rush to judgment when someone says the wrong thing or acts poorly in the moment. We easily forget that each person has a good, long story about them, perhaps one worth knowing.

How many times do we miss an opportunity to discover the true nature of a person because we can’t get past the “outside” or a single moment? How hurtful are our actions and obvious exclusions?

If you had some shampoo, a comb, brush and blow dryer, what areas on the inside would you clean up to remove your prejudices based on looks alone?

And we worry about our own beauty in the eyes of others, don’t we, at least to some degree? This shows up in many ways, most of which are perfectly normal, healthy concerns for which we should be unashamed.

How might others measure your beauty? Certainly, your appearance and cleanliness are important; this is a legitimate concern despite the fact our society gives biased attention toward appearance. Your behavior is certainly beautiful or not: on the “Grace Scale”, where would people rate you? How do you know?

  • How would you describe the Beauty to which you aspire? How will you sound Beautiful?
  • How will you appear?
  • How will you act toward others?
  • How will you treat people?
  • What kinds of things will you say?
  • What kinds of things will you do?
  • Who will you serve?
  • How will you serve them?

Like all the questions we ask at The Intersection of Purpose and Now, spend some time with these. The more specific you can be, the more likely you will see results we all can appreciate.

Again, I love my daughter’s response to my granddaughter about growing up beautiful. Of course, having considered her mother’s guidance, Maggie had more to say. She was listening and taking in all of this information my daughter was giving her. After a few seconds of pondering, Maggie added:

“…and I probably shouldn’t fart.”

Good point Maggie!

Photo credits: Marilyn Barbone and Anna Yakimova, http://www.123rf

Join me at the Intersection of Purpose & Now.
Posted in beauty, Becky Morris, questions | Leave a comment