Taking the High Road

Ever spend time in the low lying places found in a field that has been fertilized? Yeah, it stinks. The smell of the air makes it hard to breathe and is definitely unhealthy for you. There is a feeling of being miserable after a steady diet of that type of pollution. The same feeling comes from the pollution found in the cities we live in when we walk past the alleyways between tall buildings. The bad air settles in and tends to make us sick. That is what pollution does to our lives, makes us miserable, sick and unhappy.

After spending time in these basins of polluted air if we take a trip to the tops of buildings or to the mountains we find that the air becomes easy to breathe and healthy for us. We find that we gain a feeling of euphoria. We find ourselves to be happier about our surroundings and our selves. It becomes a feeling strong enough to push away our problems for the moment and give an inner peace that increases our happiness even further. This air is also found along the high road rather than along the low road of life.

Throughout our lives, we make many choices concerning taking the high road or the low. Our decisions made in these cases determine how we feel, happy and filled with joy or miserable. Those decisions are based by the way we look at life. Whether we take a positive view or negative view of what we have before us and then how we react to the situation facing us will form how we feel about ourselves. Zig Zigler wrote in his book “See You at the Top” that “stinkin’ thinkin’ causes hardening of the attitudes”. When a person allows this to happen, (the stinkin’ thinkin’ that is) feelings of disgust, misery, anger and frustration set in. Once they do, the stinkin’ thinkin’ seems to amplify itself and the feelings that you experience ride right along with it. This tends to make a person miserable and stay that way, never happy with anything.

Take this negative viewpoint of life over to your golf game and watch what happens to your scores. When you say I’m going to hit a lousy drive in your mind you will. Sometimes when you say I’m going to hit a good drive it’s lousy. What you do after that lousy shot is what matters. If you stay upset with stinkin’ thinkin’ your next shot is sure to learn from your last one. If you take the high road and look at it as that shot was lousy, but this is a new shot and I can make better contact with what I just learned from it, you have a decent chance of following that bad shot with a good one. If you say you can’t, you most likely won’t, so don’t let it enter your mind that you cannot make that putt. You still may not make it, but how many times have you seen pro’s like Phil Mickleson and others miss a three footer.

Your happiness with your golf game and life in general does not have to be reigned in by stinkin’ thinkin’. It becomes a choice that you make for yourself through your decision of looking at them through positive (the high road) or negative (the low road) viewpoints.

Don’t miss the three footers of life because of taking the low road. You’ll never be sorry for taking the high road, that is where happiness is found.