My Confidence Evaporated Again

Bob Rotella says golf is a game of competence and confidence. I think I have some competence, because even though I cannot recall a single good throw ever in my life, I know that some scores I have posted in the past have been decent. But my confidence, what the crap is wrong with it? I certainly don’t have it. I take every competition as an opportunity to be exposed as a fraud. A chance to show that none of my improvements have been real, and that all of my efforts have been futile and wasted.

Disc golf is what I spend most of my time and energy on. It’s almost always on my mind. I spend thousands, maybe tens of thousands of Swedish Kronas on playing it every year. And probably about 20 hours a week at least. So when the competition comes, I better have something to show. Otherwise my life is a lie, I am useless and worthless and I should be ashamed of myself. Ashamed. Shame on you Mikael, because you spend your time playing instead of improving things for your family or bettering society. Shame on you, you selfish piece of shit. The least you could do is to win and take home some prize money. The least you could do is to enjoy it so much that some of that joy comes back into your family. You should at least be better than those who you practice more than. Like your brother, and everyone in the region. But instead, you suck. Instead, it becomes painfully obvious that you don’t have what it takes, and that you will never have the nerves required to simply make an easy putt when it counts. JUST THROW IT IN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, HOW COULD YOU MISS THAT? You phony.

I wish I could turn off my thoughts. It’s as if the task of throwing a plastic disc when it “matters” is too big of a philosophical question for me to handle. The matters of life and existence all pivot on the flight of that plate. It’s bizarre really, but to me, in that moment, my life depends on that throw. It contains my whole life, and my whole life contains nothing else. How is that for focus? But it’s destructive. I am crushed under the pressure. Time and time again. I used to believe that the one who won was the one who could handle that pressure the best. But I’ve come to realize that not everyone plays under that pressure. Most of them don’t worry at all, they just throw. And I envy them so much. It’s funny really, because not even a month ago I had a weird week where I played my worst round of the year on the Sunday, then “fixed my swing” on Monday and shot the until-then hot rounds of the year on two different courses on Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

Now I’m thinking that maybe these kinds of destructive thoughts are amplified when I play doubles with my brother? Because then I expect myself to make every single putt and every single drive. I basically expect perfection. And I cannot bear it.

I went to bed early since I was exhausted from all the tension. I woke up at 3:30am completely soaked in sweat and with feelings of anxiety, fear and self-loathing. So here I am at the computer to write some of it off of me.

Will I ever do enough? Is there any chance for me of redemption? I feel that there is no way to come back up to even. I have wasted too much time, there is no way I can catch up. WHY DO I FEEL SO GUILTY? I feel so ashamed. So worthless. I feel there is no way back, I will never play well again and what’s more, I will never do anything good in any area of life again. I will never feel like a man again. That’s how shitty I feel. It’s as if it started on Thursday, when I was playing poorly initially and then basically had a stretch of almost perfect golf for eight holes. Then I made a couple of bad shots, and I started hating myself and saying that it shouldn’t be that hard. It shouldn’t be that hard… hm. Maybe I’ve just been trying too hard. The harder I try, the harder it becomes. And I can try extremely hard. I am one of the hardest triers I know. “You are such a try-hard” is something my little brother says sometimes. I don’t think I’ve heard it anywhere but from him, which is kind of crazy. I mean, not even the term. But it makes sense. I try so hard to sleep that there is no way I would fall asleep. I try so hard to throw it in that there is no way it’s gonna stick. I want it so bad, that there is no way my arrogant mind would yield control to my stupid body. Somehow, my response to the desire to succeed is to be overly controlling. I need to control everything. Every single thing I try to such into my abstract view of the world and forcefully subject to my will. When did that ever work? I don’t think it ever did actually, but I think it comes down to this: If I fail, what will I say to the voice that demands to know why? What will I say to the voice that calls for my condemnation? If I stepped in and took control, then at least I can say I tried. If I apply myself fully, if I focus the attention of every cell in my body and squeeze until my knuckles go white, then I can say I DID EVERYTHING I COULD! But when I try my very hardest and still fail, then there remains nothing more than damnation for me. My accuser smirks, as the question changes from “did you do your best?” to “why would you fail?” and “have you considered not sucking?”. And then I’m trapped. There is nowhere to go from there. I’m at my whit’s end. I have one firm belief that is very hard to shake, and that is that if I don’t try as hard as I possibly can, then I will not perform well. Then I will fail just as much, but then I will be a loser because I didn’t even try. What kind of man doesn’t even try? Furthermore, if I would actually be convinced that I might perform better by not trying as hard, I still have this odd sense of not having earned it or deserved it if I didn’t try. But hey, I tried hard in the practice field. So if it works when I don’t try hard, it’s only because I tried hard at some point.

I think I know what I have to do. I have to back off, try less. And then, even though I struggle so much believing it, I will probably perform better. I recall now that the day after similar feelings like these after a big competition in the north a couple of years ago, I scored my best-ever result on one of the courses in the city I lived for three years while the wife was studying. And then my thought for the day was “don’t try”. Don’t try. How does one not try? This is probably the biggest question of my life right now. It seems to be the secret for golf and sleep alike, and who knows what more it could unlock.