FORE! Taking The Life Mulligan

I'm a fan of the ESPN Radio Show "The Herd" with Colin Cowherd and I happened to catch a bit of his show today while driving home to have some lunch. Colin was discussing a bit of which teams in professional sports most need a mulligan, i.e. a chance to start over and get out of an ugly situation. For all of you non-golfers... a do-over. Simple enough concept.

But he also went into a little bit of detail about taking a mulligan in life and his overall point was very directly related to my theme of making life better through simplification. He commented about how during his early to mid 30's, he was on the rat race treadmill and as soon as he got off of it... his life improved dramatically. Of course, it's always helpful to find the right mix of job, friends, family and personal satisfaction to make it all really click, but it's a good lesson nonetheless. How often do we put things off because of work or put the things we say are important on the back burner because we will get to it tomorrow? It's probably one of my absolute worst habits... the things I will do later. The cool trips or life experiences I will take part in somewhere down the line. What's that line? Life is what happens when you're busy making plans?

I don't mean to have this entire post descend into utter cliche. But Colin makes a really great point in that adding more "stuff" to your life (the big house, the fast car, the best TV or even just the gnawing need for all of those things) just makes things more difficult than you need... and how does that possibly make you happier? Life tends to throw enough complications at you as it is, so why add further complexity all on your own? You know... like me doing that totally sweet 450 degree spin out on the drive home from youth group Sunday night. Hit me some sweet black ice while driving less than 50 MPH, losing control of the car and being one fortunate SOB not to hit anyone. Oh yeah... really good times there. Nothing quite like that moment when you realize you cannot turn out of the spin and for the next 5 or 6 seconds, you are waiting it out to see what in the name of all that is holy is gonna happen to you.

You can download the MP3 podcast from Colin show's today here. I highly recommend going to the ESPNRadio.com Podcenter to subscribe and get them delivered to you daily (especially if you are not able to listen to the show as it's broadcasted live because that ugly little distraction known as your job keeps getting in the way).