My sport of choice is surfing. Not football, not baseball, and certainly not golf.
Nonetheless, I found myself involved in a spirited conversation about golf the other evening out with friends.
The term “gimme” was used.
If you don’t know (I didn’t), a gimme in golf is a short putt, maybe the length of a club, that players count as a made putt without actually hitting the ball into the hole. It’s used to speed up the game.
“So, players agree to count the point without actually having earned the point,” I said.
“Yes. To speed up the game,” a buddy replied
I found myself triggered … about golf!?
I pointed to the football game on the TV. “Are we suggesting that the next touchdown should be made at the 1-yard line? Are we still giving everyone trophies just for showing up? Is California sober the new definition of sobriety according the American Counseling Association (ACA). What other standards should we lower to make things easier for everyone?”
Gimmes aren’t isolated to golf
Ever hear the term “quiet quitting”? That’s a gimmie for an employee. Ever get more job responsibility without a raise? That’s a gimmie for an employer. We fight gimmies with gimmies.
Ever see someone completely disregard a red light? A gimmie. A potentially deadly gimmie.
Gimmies are everywhere. Maybe they’ve always been there. Maybe they’re more pervasive these days. I don’t know. I don’t like it. They make things worse.
Gimmies and the habits we build
A C-level coaching client who was no longer aligned with his job and felt mentally disengaged told me he hadn’t been showing up to work at 100% for the past few weeks. He wondered if anyone noticed.
“Probably not,” I told him. “Your 70% is someone else’s 110%.” He nodded. “But, I don’t know if you want to strengthen a habit that you ultimately regret building. Do you?”
“Not showing up 100% doesn’t work for me. I know my time is limited, but it doesn’t feel good to not be all in with my role. It’s not me,” my client responded.
There is more than one insightful quote about habits. I like this one attributed to Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”
That Aristotle was a pretty smart guy.
Excellence is a choice
Excellence is a choice. It’s choosing to do the thing we said was worth doing, even when we don’t feel like it. That can be easier said than done sometimes.
