SURRENDER THE OUTCOME
In golf there is no greater prize than a major championship. It’s the achievement every player dreams of and the one legendary players are measured by. So you can imagine how it must’ve felt for Scottie Scheffler heading into the final round at the Masters last weekend, holding a three shot lead and on the doorstep of achieving that major dream for the first time. He must’ve wanted it so bad.
That’s partly why I was so intrigued by the comments he made to ESPN reporter Marty Smith, who asked Scheffler about his steady demeanor heading into the biggest round of his life last Sunday. “At the end of the day, if I win this golf tournament, it’ll change my life on the golf course,” he said, “but it won’t change my personal life at home. Winning this golf tournament isn’t gonna satisfy my soul or my heart. I know that going in, so I’m able to play freely knowing that the rest isn’t really up to me. I’m gonna go out there and give it my best.”
This, in sports, is what you call “surrendering the outcome.” It’s a really powerful, really freeing, but really difficult thing to do, especially when you want something as bad as you’d have to imagine Scottie Scheffler wanted to win the Masters. But the more I study the mindset and perspective of champions in any area of life, the more I’m convinced that this ability - to surrender the outcome - is one of the ways the very best separate themselves from everyone else. I believe there’s an important lesson we can learn from a performer like Scottie Scheffler, one we can apply to our own winning pursuit.
What does it mean to surrender the outcome?
1) Surrendering the outcome means trusting your preparation. It’s a whole lot easier to handle the weight of a big moment when you know you’ve built a strong foundation of practice and preparation to stand on. That’s the reason the Navy Seals famously said that in your big moments, “you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training.” The truth is, confidence and poise and belief aren't randomly bestowed on us in those big moments. More often than not, if we have them, it's because we've earned them. That means if you want to feel more relaxed and more ready under the bright lights of the big stage? Then make sure you’ve prepared well in the dark.
2) Surrendering the outcome means accepting that some things you can control, and some things you can’t. When we want something really bad, it can be easy to get caught up in worrying about every part of the experience, including some things we have no control over. We can’t control how the other people involved perform. We can’t control the conditions. We can’t control that sometimes a bad break comes flying our way for no good reason at all. All those things can have an impact on the outcome, but worrying about them does no good. In fact, dwelling on those things that exist outside our control takes our energy and focus off what we can control, and what really matters - things like our attitude, our effort, and our response when things don’t go our way. The more we commit to the things we can control, the less we're held hostage by the things we can't.
3) Surrendering the outcome means finding your identity in who you are, not in what you achieve. One of the biggest challenges we face is battling this lie that who we are is determined by how we perform, or that what we accomplish is gonna heighten our sense of peace or contentment. But Scottie Scheffler was right when he said that winning a golf tournament wasn’t gonna satisfy his soul or his heart. Believing that lie - that we’ll somehow fill this hole we feel inside with the thing we’re pursuing - makes the threat of falling short even more scary to consider. It’s paralyzing to our performance. Plus, just look around. You’ll see overwhelming evidence that many really successful people - people who seem to have it all - are some of the most unhappy and unsatisfied. Authentic joy and peace are out there, they just don’t come from a trophy.
Surrendering the outcome doesn’t mean you don’t want to win. I can guarantee you that Scottie Scheffler is fiercely competitive - you don't get to this level without that - and I bet winning the Masters was really important to him. It also doesn’t mean all your nerves or worries magically disappear. Sunday morning before his final round, Scheffler said he “cried like a baby,” taken again by the lie that he wasn't ready for the moment and overwhelmed by anxiety and fear. With the help of his wife Meredith, he re-centered himself and re-surrendered the outcome again. He got back to the truth. Then he went out and won that green jacket.
Full disclosure: surrendering the outcome is really difficult for me, and I have a feeling maybe it is for you, too. That’s why I think it’s important for those of us who are pursuing our own achievements to keep learning from champions like Scottie Scheffler, and to keep working to do what champions do in our own lives. That means putting in the work and trusting our preparation. It means focusing more on what we can control and less on what we can’t. And it means reminding ourselves that our identity is found in who we are, not in what we achieve. Ultimately, it means choosing to surrender the outcome...so we can go win, too.