I was a psycho golfer. I was in the habit of throwing clubs and cursing the golf gods so vehemently that spit would fly out of my mouth into the skies as I flipped them off. So I thought I'd look into that. See if I could figure out why in one second I could be in such heaven and the next in such hell. That was about 20 years ago. I feel better now.

In my examination I realized something remarkably interesting. But before I tell you what it was, I want to tell you a story about the experiment I conducted on the 18th green at Wildwood Golf and Country Club at the South Jersey Shore.

I stood by the green on a busy summer Saturday afternoon with two clipboards in my hands. Each had a piece of paper on it with a T-chart. They looked like this...

Obviously one  sheet was for recording responses from kids, the other from adults. I asked everyone one simple question as they exited the 18th green. I asked, "How'd it go?" I didn't say, "What did you shoot?" I didn't ask, "How'd you play?" I just asked a nice open ended question, "How'd it go?"

(You already know where I'm going with this, don't you?)

The adult responses: (translated into non-vulgar)

• I suck at golf.
• Horrible.
• Played good on the front, managed to screw it up on the back - as usual.
• Woulda been good if I could putt to save my life.
• Woulda been good if I could get off the tee.
• Better than a day at work, I guess.
• Where's the bar?

And the occasional...

• I played awesome (ONLY if they had an unusually good scoring round)

The kid responses:

• I finally saw the snapping turtle in the pond on #2. It's HUGE!!!
• I made a putt on #4 that must have been 100 feet long! (4 1/2 hours ago and that's the first thing she remembers.)
• I hit the ball so far off the tee on #14 it actually went in the lake!!! (Jumping up and down for joy.)

So there seems to be a shift from childhood to adulthood. The shift here involves what we selectively recall and HOW we interpret events.

As children we automatically and effortlessly recall those things that make us feel light-hearted and we interpret history in a way that inspires us. (Highly intelligent.)

As we grow up, however, we are conditioned to view things differently. We learn to recall what stunk, and we learn to interpret history in ways that deflate us. (Highly unintelligent.)

Take the final kid response, "I hit the ball so far off the tee on #14 it actually went in the lake!!!" The kid finally put an awesome swing on it, caught it on the sweet spot and it went into the lake that he's never been able to reach before. He interprets that as progress. As proof of mastery.

An adult finally nuts one, it goes into the lake and he curses himself and says, "I finally catch one on the screws and I GET screwed!"

Same event - two entirely different interpretations. One interpretation leads to activating intelligence (wonder why kids learn so much faster?). The other leads to failure of intelligence.

The good news: we can choose our interpretations.

 Interpret to Inspire