Scottie Scheffler is inarguably the best golfer in the world right now. He’s ranked world number 1 for one thing. He’s won 22 professional tournaments against the very best competition. He’s won four major tournaments. You know of him because you’re a golf fan, or maybe because you just watched Happy Gilmore 2. Either way, he’s pretty good at hitting a little white ball where it’s supposed to go. He made news a few weeks ago because of his press conference remarks before the British Open tournament. “What would be the longest you’ve ever celebrated something…?” was the question posed to Scheffler that led him to answer by essentially questioning the point of golf and the point of life itself almost.
‘We work so hard for such little moments’, he said.
‘It’s like showing up at the Masters every year; it’s like why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly? Why do I want to win the Open so badly? I don’t know because, if I win, it’s going to be awesome for two minutes’.
First. Very easy to say when you’ve succeeded a bunch of times. Second. Even easier to say when you have a bank account with 8 or 9 zeros attached.
If you can get past those thoughts, though, he is right. He does have a point. One of my best friends’ dad told us growing up, ‘There are a lot of ways to keep score in life, men’. Scheffler’s answers, in essence, are searching for the answer on how to keep score. To some degree, I would argue, we all do this with different things in our lives.
It happened in the Mancino Utz Group this summer. We reached a huge milestone in our practice that we’ve been working towards for some time now. Clients come first. Client outcomes are what we come to work for, but somewhere down the list, we’re also trying to succeed, personally and professionally, at our craft, so we were excited about the accomplishment. I had to drag Bill to celebrate at lunch. I went home expecting a night to bask in the sweetness of achievement. Instead, I spent the night cutting 9 cantaloupe, 3 watermelons, and 6 pineapples for the high school football team summer workout the next day to check a few hours off our parent volunteer responsibilities.
‘We work so hard for such little moments’.
It happened in the Utz Family Chronicles this summer, too. We checked off a bucket list destination this summer as a family and I thought a lot about milestones and achievement and fulfillment as I looked at the remarkable water at Lake Louise in Banff National Park and Emerald Lake in Yoho National Park. And then, after seeing a moose, grizzly, mountain goat, big horn sheep, and amazing vistas of the Canadian Rockies…. the guy in front of me on the plane ride home wanted to recline his seat the whole way back for the 4 hour flight east.
‘It’s going to be awesome for two minutes’, Sheffler said.
This happens to you, too. I’ve seen many people excited to get to $1,000,000. There’s a nervous energy as you’re inching your way there. It’s extremely fun when it finally happens. It should be celebrated. But then we’re on to the next number you want to achieve.
In Scheffler’s comments he said, ‘Whether I come in second or dead last…we’re on to next week…the show goes on’.
That’s certainly the way achievement, accomplishment, or a particular success feels like sometimes.
These aren’t bad things. They can be bad if your scorecard isn’t keeping track of the right things, probably, but they’re not bad in and of themselves. There’s no problem in wanting to get to $1,000,000. There’s no problem in getting there, and there’s assuredly no problem in celebrating once you do. There’s no problem in wanting, then, to get to $1,500,000 or $5,000,000. Progress, achievement, more progress is what lets you put www. into your computer or call your mother on a device not attached to the wall.
We see this all the time with folks that are moving into the next phase of their lives after their careers. Things that have been on the scorecard for decades now need replaced. When you’ve spent your entire life accumulating assets and you move to spending those assets it messes with your brain. That’s a sign you probably haven’t calibrated your scorecard correctly for the next phase of life. When you’ve spent your entire marriage starting the day together and ending the day together and now you’re spending the entire day together it can mess with your brain. That’s a sign you probably haven’t calibrated your scorecard correctly for this phase.
I would contend that it’s entirely normal for someone that has grinded for years to perfect a craft so well that they have become the best in the world to ask ‘What is the point?’. Think about how many golf swings, how many putts, how many hours went into literally being the best person on the planet at that particular skill set. You’ve finally achieved it. At some moment, you would probably think, what is ‘it’ though? What is the point?
Asking those questions does not make you weak. It also is not a sign that you’re done wanting to dominate achievement. Proof: Four days after his remarks, Scheffler won the Open by four strokes and produced not a drop of sweat for the last few holes.
I can assure you if you’re headed into this next phase of life after your career that it’s entirely normal for you to ask that same question. ‘What is the point’? I’ve seen countless folks ask it in one way or another. You’ve worked for decades honing a craft, accumulating assets, paying off debts, and maybe raising children. Now what? If you haven’t thought it through, I would encourage you that you should. Calibrating a new scorecard can take some time. It doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t mean you don’t want achievement anymore.
What should your new scorecard be comprised of? I have no idea, but we can certainly talk about what you’re interested in accomplishing in this new phase of life. Do we have to give up accumulating assets? Not necessarily, but if you have enough to live on and continue to accumulate, we should probably think about who is going to benefit from those extra dollars at some point in the future and how you want them to use the money. That should be on the new scorecard somewhere. Do I have to spend all day with my spouse? We’re under the Takakkaw Falls in Yoho National Park and I couldn’t hear your last question. The falls have 390 cubic feet of water per second falling 1,000 feet so it’s a little loud and you’ll have to forgive me. BTW, after 9 days in Canada I still can’t tell you how many meters that is and my 10-year-old thought for sure we’d get arrested for going over 100 on the highway. I have no idea how many MPH it was, the car was in kilometers, but it was exhilarating.
What’s the point of this blog:
1. Spend the money to see Banff and Yoho National Parks
2. Think carefully about what’s on your scorecard
3. We’re here to help you figure it out