Compass No.15
Rory McIlroy's Masters' win, sense foraging, and the power of agency
Thought provoking quote
I had to include some coverage of Rory McIlroy finally winning the Masters this Sunday! Despite an otherwise incredibly impressive career and consistent staying power as one of the top golfers on the PGA tour, McIlroy had not won a major championship since his 2014 win at the PGA Championship.
For the past 10+ years, he’s had to carry the burden of being the guy that the golf world and media felt should have won more majors by now. The Masters, in particular, being the elusive major that would allow him to complete the career slam. What’s more, after several runner-up moments at major championships, he’s been plagued by the reputation of being the guy that chokes in crucial moments. Despite all of that, he kept going and never lost faith.
In a press conference on Tuesday before the Masters began, he reinforced the importance of resilience and bouncing back from heartbreak:
“I think it’s a self-preservation mechanism. It’s just more of a thing where you’re trying to not put 100 percent of yourself out there because of that. It happens in all walks of life. At a certain point in someone’s life, someone doesn’t want to fall in love because they don’t want to get their heart broken. People, I think, instinctually as human beings, we hold back sometimes because of the fear of getting hurt, whether that’s a conscious decision or subconscious decision, and I think I was doing that on the golf course a little bit for a few years.”
“But I think once you go through that, once you go through those heartbreaks, as I call them, or disappointments, you get to a place where you remember how it feels and you wake up the next day and you’re like, yeah, life goes on, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. And I think it’s going through those times, especially in recent memory, where the last few years I’ve had chances to win some of the biggest golf tournaments in the world, and it hasn’t quite happened. But life moves on. You dust yourself off and you go again.”
Rory falling to his knees after sinking a putt on the 18th green to win the playoff against Justin Rose and secure his career slam with a Masters victory. Source: Richard Heathcote/Getty Images
Tool that stayed with me
Sense foraging is a fancy term for paying attention to sensory experience. Researchers Norman Farb and Zindel Segal coined the term based on their research which has shown the important role sensation plays in opening up our brains up to new information, particularly when existing mindsets and behaviors are no longer serving us. In their book, Better in Every Sense, they write:
“Because attention is a limited resource, a powerful way to break down a dominant narrative or worldview is to starve it of those attentional resources. A simple way to do this is to attend to elements of experience that are not already bound up in this worldview – every moment of attending to a sensation that is not obviously relevant is a moment of taking resources away from the story we tell and re-engaging with the unknown. Over time, the brain’s property of extinction will reduce how easily a story comes to mind, opening the door for new narratives to emerge.” (p.63)
This is a particularly important tool given what we now know about the brain’s default mode network (aka “the DMN”):
As Farb and Segal contend in their book, “By providing patterns for us to follow – the ‘rules of thumb’ for every situation — the DMN, in essence, fosters a system of knowledge exploitation. It consolidates what we know and tries to trigger the appropriate set of instructions for managing the incredible complexity of everyday life, and with the greatest efficiency. But being locked into a pattern of exploiting existing knowledge, to the point that we can no longer consider alternatives, is also called being ‘stuck.’”
If you find yourself feeling stuck in particular thought patterns and behaviors and want to try out some sense foraging on your own, try out these two quick tools from Farb and Segal’s book below:
Seeing exercise: “Whether you’re indoors or outdoors, look around and pick out five things that you can see, and name them or write them down. Then close your eyes for a moment. When you open your eyes, look around you again, only this time, pick out five things you didn’t see the first time, maybe because they were in the background or were lost in a busy scene. Take a moment and actually name each thing that you notice.”
Hearing exercise: “Search your memory for the last few times you walked outside, then make a list of sounds that you might have heard. Depending on where you are located, these might include a car approaching or honking, birdsong, people talking, a door slamming, wind moving branches, subway doors closing, a dog barking, and footsteps on grass or gravel. Now head out and listen for these sounds, and as you hear each on your list, cross it off.”
Question inspired by a recent interview
In last week’s interview I spoke to writer and entrepreneur, Alex Michael, about what it was like to experience the worst case scenario in having to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy for his e-commerce business. A quote from Alex’s essay, “Fixing in Public,” left a big impression on me. He contends:
“My operating philosophy over the past few years has been that agency and self-sovereignty are the most important qualities we can cultivate in ourselves. My belief has been that when we develop a deep, genuine understanding of who we are and what we want and then learn to give ourselves permission to pursue that path, we show up as the best version of ourselves in the world and can fully engage with it…But it’s easy to justify a belief system when things are going well. I wrote a lot about the transformative power of these ideas when the business was growing and life was relatively easy. Now that I’m confronted with crisis, it’s a perfect time to ask: does my belief system hold up? Well, I’m staring down the barrel of bankruptcy with no idea what comes next, and I have a better quality of life than I did when my bank account and 401(k) had big numbers with lots of zeros after them. So I’d say that’s a yes.”
That quote inspired the interview’s title: “When the Worst Case Scenario is Not Synonymous with the Worst Life.” I believe his story begs the questions: When we look back at the end of our lives, what would actually be the worst case scenario? How might that change your view of the worst case scenarios that are holding you back from exercising agency in your life?