Aug26Written by:ehanczaryk
8/26/2009 5:25 PM 
Systems theory is relatively new, as science goes. It deals with large organizations, such as galaxies, to small ones, like atoms, and everything in between. Individuals, tribes, fortune 500 companies, and even golf games can be included in the principles of this discipline. Buckminister Fuller and Margaret Meade were very influential in bringing Cybernetics and Systems Theory to the common man.
One of the important themes of systems theory is that a healthy entity is constantly changing. It changes because it is constantly getting feedback from the environment, and using that information to steer the ship. Without that data coming in, the system will blindly keep on going as it is, usually to its death or demise.
Take any living organism (and here a business, or a golf game can loosely be called living), and isolate it from outside influences, put it in a glass box, make it static, and it will fail. Yet so many people thing that there is an absolutely unchanging game that they will someday achieve, a game that will be consistent, the same from day to day. I have arrived, my golf game is secure, and life will be good.
There is no such thing as a static golf game. It is a dynamic play, a dance of many different factors and partners; the course, the weather, what’s going on in your life, your reasons for playing. What I’m talking about is flowing, with everything affecting everything else.
Not only is every day different, every single shot is different. Every lie is different. The pins are in different places, the grass is cut shorter, etc. You are not the same person today that you were yesterday. Moods change, circumstances change, everything changes! At the root of this illusion is the notion that my game is me, and that I am always the same.
The reason we are so free one day, and tight the next can often be traced to trying too hard, and expectations, which arise when we believe in a permanent, unchanging game. The day after a great round, we feel we should do it again, so we try to do it again, exactly the way we did it yesterday. That trying, looking for something that happened yesterday, by definition will take you out of the moment, one step removed from feeling your swing today, right now.
There is more flow in this view, more interest in the action, the dance, and less in the actor, or the dancer. Every golfer reading this has experienced `the zone’. Everything worked, there were no obstacles. Visualization of the shot was effortless, and it came off as planned. If not, no big deal; I’ll get it up and down.
The opposite is a tight, heavy, clunky feeling. I seem to be getting in my own way, trying harder and harder, being awkward. The tightness and heaviness, the `thing’ in the way is ME trying to DO something.
Cybernetics and Self Correcting Systems
In 2007, I had the great fortune to have taught the great game of golf in the happy Kingdom of Bhutan, high in the Himalayan Mountains.
My accommodations in Bhutan were spectacular. Called Villa Italia, it is a condo-like complex owned by one of the most respected men in the country, Lyonpo Ugyen Tsering, the Minister of Labor, and his animated, beautiful Italian spouse, Patrizia.
In trade for use of the internet router (a real luxury), I offered to teach their children while they were here on vacation for a week from school in Thailand.
Ugyen Palden is 15, a very bright young man, but not what you would call athletic. He had learned the basics from past instructors. Technically, his fundamentals were pretty good, but they were thoughts, not feel. Our sessions were 2 hours in length, for 5 days straight. All of this was to be done on the golf course
The obstacle for young Ugyen was his past sports history. He had labeled himself `unathletic’, and got by with reasoning and intellectual powers, not motor skills.
In the beginning, Ugyen was self conscious, and very frustrated. He kept missing the ball! As a teacher, I needed to call on all my experience to help him relax, and not try to impress me. He was one step removed from `playing’, and instead was `trying’.
As I said, Ugyen was a very bright boy, able to converse at a level beyond his years. It was obvious that he was thinking too much, about the wrong things; I had an intuition:
I spoke with Ugyen about the relatively new science of General Systems Theory, which I described above. It is a set of principles that describes how systems live and grow. As I said, a system could be an individual, a tribe, a business, a country, or even a golf game.
It seems, systems are self-regulating, taking in information in the form of feedback, and changing when it benefits the system. A system is alive, always changing, totally dependent on the world around it. It gives and takes, always making those corrections that will enable it to grow in positive ways.
What that meant to Ugyen; if I could get him to `let it fix itself’, without his conscious interference, then the system of his golf game would grow into a thriving game-system. After explaining the principles, and was sure he understood, I simply repeated to him after every mistake, `let it fix itself. The game will figure out a way to be played. You just be patient’. I am reminded of Jack Nicklaus, telling his caddy Angelo, to repeat `be patient’ to the great player over and over during the game.
What we had on our side was time. There was no rush. The days were bright and crisp, with nobody else on the course at that time. Unlike a 40 minute private lesson, where I have to get results quickly, here I could allow the precious space for growth.
And did his system ever grow! It wasn’t long before he was hitting long and straight for the most part, and when he didn’t, there was no thought of failure, or negativity in any way. He was hooked into the self-correcting system view, understood that change can only come from feedback (including bad shots), and that those bad shots were the only way to get fresh air and dynamic movement into his game-system.
An important systems theory principal, is that it’s about the action not the individual. Bucky Fuller said, `I seem to be a verb’. If the thought of ME doing something, is replaced by `just doing’, with less ME, the action becomes efficient and direct.
My young student began to swing with freedom, confidence. I cannot remember a more satisfying teaching experience in 30 years. Thank you, Ugyen.
I would suggest a practice to do next time you are playing. Begin to notice if you are associating with what you are doing, the action, or the person doing it, the actor. If you are THE GOLFER, doing something to the course or ball out there, then you will automatically begin worrying about how this will affect ME; how am (big) I doing. The action will become second to what’s in it for me. And the action will surely suffer. The worse it gets, the more (capital) I tries to do more to make it better, and around you go, chasing your own tail.
Associate with the action, and there is openness and space, and much cleaner interaction with the environment. Wind and terrain changes are quickly factored in. Ball flight problems are quickly adjusted for. Playing the game becomes paramount, and `how am I doing’ way less important. Instead of me playing, it becomes just playing. I becomes a verb.