Success Research Paper

Trevor Hernatadt
Writing 11
Ms. Murphy

“How Bad do You Want it?”

The word success is thrown around a lot in modern day language. What do people mean when they say success? The Merriam Webster dictionary defines success as, “ The accomplishment of an aim or purpose.” I don’t think this definition suits success very well. My definition of success is to accomplish what you love and work your whole life to reach what you have worked so long and hard for. It’s working for an idea or purpose that no one can ever take away from you and that only you can make yourself work hard enough for. There is a difference between doing well and being successful at something. People seem to get these ideas mixed up at times. Doing well is working hard and being good at what you do. Being successful is working harder and being the best at what you do. There are many ways to reach success, but they all tie back to one common theme; Self-motivation. When I was thirteen years old I played my first eighteen holes of golf. I did poorly being that it was my first time, but I loved the idea of it. It was nothing like any other sport I played, the thought of hitting a motionless ball as hard as you can and getting it in a hole as soon as you can seemed so simple. However the idea that this game was easy soon vanished. My first round I shot a 120. It was so frustrating because I knew I could have done much better if I hadn’t chunked the ball into the water on hole seven, or left it in the bunker on the tenth hole, or made many other careless mistakes. That same day I decided to go play another eighteen holes. Not because I enjoyed it or because it was relaxing. I went out again to try to beat my score. After four hours of grinding and scrambling I managed to shoot a 104. I beat my last score by sixteen strokes. The next day I woke up at the crack of dawn and played another eighteen holes. I was the first one on the course, and beat my last score with a 100. This time I only beat my score by four. I found that as my scores improved it was getting harder to beat them. I continued playing and trying to better my score and to break one hundred. It seemed so simple to try to take one minuscule stroke off my score; however, I found that I just could not do it. I would be on pace for a sub one hundred round and I would mess it up on the last few holes. This is the moment when I figured out the mental toughness of golf. This drew me to the game that I was already in love with even more. I found out that to shoot good scores and to play well I have to focus my mind and calm my nerves. If I need to make a putt I have to be calm enough to make it. I had to learn to accept my score as opposed to expect to score well. If I expected to score well and I was not playing great, the only thing that happened is that I would get upset and loose focus. I began to see huge improvement when my mental game started to develop. Even though I was improving I still wanted to get better and beat my own score. I was becoming so into golf and it was the only thing I wanted to do. I would play a four-hour round fallowed by two to three hours of practicing after. This was my routine for at least five times a week during the summer. I started to see dramatic improvement and scores were dropping into the mid seventies. I decided to try to play competitively. In the summer of 2011 I played in my first junior tournament. I expected to play decent because I practiced a lot the week prior. I ended with a net score of eighty nine which was not nearly as good as I had expected, but there’s the mistake: I set expectations. One of the principles of golf that I learned was to not to expect because then I get frustrated and loose focus, which is exactly what happened. Playing in tournaments was completely different then the way I was used to playing. I had to be even more mentally stronger and learn to focus on only what I am doing and not what other players are. As

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