You're playing the course, not others

Hey friends, Chase here

Let's talk about golf.

And before you check out because you're not a golfer, hang with me for a minute — because this episode isn't really about golf.

It's about life.

It's about what happens when things don't go according to plan. When the ball lands somewhere ugly. When you're stuck behind a tree, buried in the sand, sitting in a divot, or staring down a shot you didn't want and didn't ask for.

In golf, there's a phrase: play it as it lies.

You don't get to move the ball just because the situation is inconvenient. You don't get to pretend the shot is easier than it is. You don't get to rewrite reality so it matches the version you had in your head.

You look at what's in front of you.

You accept the lie.

And then you play the next shot.

That idea has become one of the most useful metaphors in my life. Because life, like golf, rarely unfolds exactly the way we imagined. Even our best-laid plans run into rough patches. The course changes. The weather shifts. The terrain surprises us. Sometimes the thing we thought would be straightforward turns into the hardest shot of the day.

And the question becomes: Can you stop fighting reality long enough to respond to it?

That's what this episode is about.

Not golf tips. Not swing mechanics. Not how to lower your handicap.

It's about resilience. Presence. Ego. Preparation. Adaptability. Learning from mistakes. And remembering that the little things — the short putts, the quiet choices, the small daily actions — often matter just as much as the big dramatic swings.

Here's the thing golf teaches you fast:

You can do almost everything "right" and still end up in a bad spot.

You can prepare. Practice. Visualize. Get coaching. Set goals. Build routines. Show up with the best intentions. And still, eventually, you're going to hit one sideways.

That's not failure.

That's the game.

And more importantly, that's life.

The people who keep growing aren't the ones who never hit bad shots. They're the ones who learn how to recover. They're the ones who don't let one ugly moment become the story of the whole round. They're the ones who can take a breath, look at what's real, and ask: What's the best next move from here?

The Core Idea

You don't get to choose every lie. But you do get to choose how you play it.

That's the heart of this episode.

In golf, the course is full of imperfections. A root here. A bunker there. A weird patch of grass. A branch that grew out at exactly the wrong angle. A divot you didn't create but now have to deal with. You don't get to pretend those things aren't there.

You have to confront the reality of the shot.

Life works the same way.

Sometimes you get the clean fairway lie. Sometimes you're in the rough. Sometimes you're blocked. Sometimes the conditions change overnight. Sometimes you did everything you could and still landed somewhere difficult.

The mistake most of us make is wasting energy wishing the lie were different.

But the power move is acceptance.

Not passive acceptance. Not resignation. Not pretending you like the situation.

Acceptance as in: This is what's true. Now what?

That mindset builds resilience because it pulls you out of fantasy and back into agency. It reminds you that while you may not control the terrain, you still control your next swing.

What You'll Hear in This Episode

This episode is built around a set of lessons golf has taught me — lessons that reach far beyond the course.

• Why "play it as it lies" is one of the best life philosophies for dealing with reality, setbacks, and uncertainty
• How to stay present after a bad shot instead of letting one mistake define everything that follows
• Why your best shot might come right after your worst one — and what Tiger Woods can teach us about staying neutral
• The hidden value of playing with someone new and staying open to unfamiliar people, personalities, and situations
• How ego quietly ruins the game — in golf, creativity, business, relationships, and life
• Why mistakes are feedback when you're willing to study them without shame
• What it means to play against the course instead of obsessing over comparison
• Why preparation matters even when you can't control the outcome
• How the little things add up — the one-inch putts, the daily habits, the small choices that shape the final score

Play It Like It Is

The first lesson is simple: play it like it is.

In golf, the traditional phrase is "play it as it lies." Wherever the ball lands, that's where you play from. You don't get to deny the circumstances. You don't get to pretend you have a perfect lie when you don't. You don't get to spend the whole round frustrated because the course has imperfections.

You adapt.

That's such a powerful life lesson because so much of our suffering comes from arguing with what's already true.

We think, This shouldn't be happening.

Maybe it shouldn't.

But it is.

And the faster we can stop resisting reality, the faster we can begin responding to it.

This doesn't mean you don't have emotions. It doesn't mean you don't get frustrated. It doesn't mean you don't acknowledge that something is hard or unfair or disappointing.

It means you don't stay stuck there.

You look at the lie. You study the conditions. You adjust. You play the next shot.

That's resilience.

That's adaptability.

That's life.

Your Best Shot Can Follow Your Worst One

One of the most iconic moments in golf came from Tiger Woods at the Masters.

The shot itself was extraordinary — the ball rolling slowly, almost impossibly, toward the hole, pausing for a split second, then taking one final turn and dropping in.

But what makes that moment even more powerful is what came before it.

That incredible shot followed one of his most disappointing shots of the tournament.

That's the lesson.

Your best shot can come right after your worst one.

But only if you stay present enough to take it.

Most of us do the opposite. We make one mistake and immediately leave the moment. We replay what went wrong. We narrate the failure. We spiral. We decide the round is ruined, the project is doomed, the day is shot, the dream is over.

But the next shot doesn't care about the last one.

It only asks whether you're here.

That's the discipline: staying neutral. Staying composed. Staying available to the possibility that something beautiful can happen next.

Not because you're pretending the bad shot didn't happen.

Because you're refusing to let it own the rest of the round.

Play With Somebody New

Golf has this funny thing built into it: sometimes you show up and get paired with people you don't know.

That can feel awkward. It can feel inconvenient. It can feel like a curveball.

But if you stay open, it can also be a gift.

You might play with someone who's been at it for nine months or nineteen years. You might learn something from a beginner. You might learn something from a veteran. You might meet someone you never would have crossed paths with otherwise.

You also might get paired with someone who doesn't exactly light you up.

And that's part of the lesson too.

The point isn't that every stranger becomes a lifelong friend. The point is that there's value in staying open. There's value in learning how to share the course. There's value in practicing patience, kindness, curiosity, and connection over a few hours.

Life works this way all the time.

We get paired with coworkers, collaborators, clients, neighbors, strangers, and people whose rhythms are different from ours. Sometimes it's magic. Sometimes it's friction. But either way, there's something to learn if we're not closed off before the first shot.

Disconnect From the Ego

Golf will expose your ego fast.

It's hard to hit a tiny white ball with a club toward a hole hundreds of yards away. It's hard to do it consistently. It's hard to make the body, mind, mechanics, course, weather, and emotions all cooperate at the same time.

And because it's hard, the ego wants to jump in.

It wants to explain every bad shot.

It wants to justify every mistake.

It wants to narrate every swing so nobody thinks less of you.

I used to do this all the time. Good shot, bad shot — I had a comment. An explanation. A little story about what happened or why it happened.

Eventually, I realized: it doesn't matter.

That was all ego.

The shot is the shot.

The score is the score.

The work is the work.

When you can detach from constantly judging yourself — good or bad — you free up so much energy. You can laugh. Learn. Keep going. Try again. You can be in the experience instead of performing an identity around the experience.

That's true in golf.

It's true in creativity.

It's true in leadership.

It's true in life.

The ego wants protection. The game requires presence.

Learn From the Mistakes

Golf is endlessly humbling because no two rounds are exactly alike.

The course changes. The grass changes. The greens change. The wind changes. The pin placement changes. The conditions you played yesterday may not be the conditions you face today.

That means mistakes are inevitable.

But mistakes are also information.

When a shot doesn't go as planned, you have a chance to study what happened. Was it your setup? Your focus? The wind? The club selection? The lie? The speed of the green? Your emotional state?

The point isn't to shame yourself.

The point is to learn.

This is one of the biggest differences between people who keep improving and people who stay stuck. Stuck people turn mistakes into identity. Growing people turn mistakes into feedback.

Nobody plays a flawless round.

Nobody lives a flawless life.

The goal isn't to avoid every mistake. The goal is to build the capacity for error recovery. To adapt. Improve. Persist. Keep moving.

That's where growth happens.

You're Playing Against the Course

Yes, golf can be competitive.

You can play against other people. You can compare scores. You can enter tournaments. You can measure yourself against the field.

But at its core, you're playing the course.

You can't hit someone else's ball. You can't control their swing. You can't determine how they handle pressure, luck, weather, mistakes, or momentum.

You show up and play your round.

That's such a useful way to think about life.

We spend so much energy comparing ourselves to other people. Their success. Their timing. Their resources. Their audience. Their path. Their scorecard.

But comparison pulls us out of our own game.

Your job is to play the course in front of you as well as you can.

That doesn't mean you don't care about excellence. It doesn't mean you don't compete. It means you understand where your power actually lives.

Your preparation.

Your choices.

Your attitude.

Your recovery.

Your next shot.

When you focus there, the results have a way of speaking for themselves.

Preparation Is Key

Preparation matters in golf just like it matters in life.

Not everyone can swing like a pro. Not everyone has the same athletic ability, experience, or natural feel for the game.

But everyone can prepare.

Everyone can stand over the ball with intention. Everyone can build a routine. Everyone can line up carefully. Everyone can take the setup seriously.

That's a powerful distinction.

You may not control the outcome, but you can control the setup.

In life, that might look like how you start your day. How you enter a conversation. How you prepare for a meeting. How you train your body. How you manage your attention. How you create the conditions for better work.

No Olympic hurdler goes from the couch to the starting line without warming up.

And yet so many of us expect ourselves to perform at a high level without creating the conditions that make performance possible.

Preparation isn't glamorous.

But it compounds.

And when the pressure comes, you'll be grateful you built the habit before you needed it.

The Little Things Matter

One of the funniest things about golf is that a 390-yard drive and a one-inch tap-in both count as one stroke.

The big swing and the tiny putt have the same weight on the scorecard.

That's humbling.

It's also a perfect metaphor.

In life, we tend to overvalue the big moments. The launch. The deal. The breakthrough. The dramatic decision. The visible win.

But the small things matter just as much, often more.

How you start your day.

How you speak to people.

How you recover from frustration.

How you express gratitude.

How you care for your relationships.

How you practice when nobody's watching.

How you handle the little putts.

A successful life isn't only built on big swings. It's built on the accumulation of small, deliberate actions repeated over time.

The details count.

The short shots count.

The quiet moments count.

Every stroke matters.

Timecodes (So You Can Jump to What You Need)

If you're not listening straight through, here are a few landmarks to help you find the part that speaks to where you are right now:

• 01:46 – Why golf became an unexpected obsession again
• 03:13 – The lessons from the course that go way beyond golf
• 03:41 – Lesson 1: Play it as it lies
• 05:58 – Lesson 2: Stay present after a bad shot
• 07:42 – Lesson 3: Play with somebody new
• 09:30 – Lesson 4: Disconnect from the ego
• 11:13 – Lesson 5: Learn from mistakes
• 14:13 – Lesson 6: You're playing against the course
• 15:58 – Lesson 7: Preparation is key
• 17:32 – Why the little things matter as much as the big swings
• 19:00 – Bringing the lessons together: presence, ego, mistakes, preparation, and playing the lie you're given

Read This If Life Has You in the Rough

If you're in a season where things aren't going according to plan, I want you to hold onto this:

You don't have to like the lie to play it well.

You can be frustrated and still be powerful.

You can be disappointed and still be capable.

You can wish things were different and still take responsibility for the next move.

That's the work.

So much of life is learning how to stop waiting for perfect conditions. We tell ourselves we'll begin when the timing is better, when the resources are better, when the path is clearer, when the lie is cleaner.

But the course rarely offers perfect conditions.

And if we wait for them, we miss the game.

The question is not, Is this the shot I wanted?

The question is, What does this shot require?

That shift changes everything.

It moves you from complaint to creativity. From resistance to agency. From ego to presence. From helplessness to the next right action.

Questions to Ask Yourself

If you want to turn this episode into action, take a few minutes and sit with these:

• Where in my life am I refusing to accept the lie in front of me?
• What reality am I arguing with that I could be responding to instead?
• What was my last "bad shot," and what can it teach me?
• Am I letting ego narrate my mistakes instead of simply learning from them?
• Where am I comparing my round to someone else's instead of playing my own course?
• What small habit, detail, or "one-inch putt" deserves more of my attention?
• How can I better prepare for the challenges I already know are coming?
• What would it look like to stay present for the next shot?

A Simple Practice for Playing It As It Lies

Here's something practical you can do this week.

Pick one area of your life where the conditions are not ideal.

Maybe it's work. A relationship. A creative project. Your health. Your schedule. Your finances. A goal that feels harder than expected.

Then write down three things:

• The lie: What is actually true right now?
• The resistance: What do I keep wishing were different?
• The next shot: What is one useful action I can take from here?

Keep it simple.

Don't solve your whole life. Don't redesign the entire course. Don't wait for clarity to arrive in perfect form.

Just play the next shot.

Because momentum doesn't come from perfect conditions.

It comes from honest action.

Final Thought

Golf has reminded me that life is not just the big swings.

It's the small strokes. The recovery shots. The bad lies. The quiet adjustments. The willingness to laugh, learn, reset, and keep moving.

It's playing with new people.

It's staying present after disappointment.

It's disconnecting from ego.

It's preparing well.

It's learning from mistakes.

It's remembering that you're not really playing against everyone else. You're playing the course in front of you.

And some days, the ball is going to land in a divot. Some days, it's going to end up in the bunker. Some days, you're going to look down and think, Really? This is what I have to work with?

Yes.

That's the lie.

Now play it.

Until next time: stay present, let go of the ego, prepare well, and remember — play it as it lies.