The 3 Pillars of Inevitable Success from The Masters & Rory Mcilroy

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What’s on the agenda:

• Verse: working with all your health

• Lesson: the winning formula

A verse:

If you know me, you know I’m one of the most competitive people you’ll ever meet, but the nuance is I don’t hate to lose.

What I hate, more than anything, is losing, or falling short with more in the tank.

In sports, this is a pretty easy thing to recognize. Playing tennis growing up, and dabbling in golf now, it isn’t hard to recognize a poor shot, or if I played worse than I could have. When you finish a race, whether it’s a run, Hyrox, or triathlon, you can look back at that race and know whether you gave it all you had or if you had extra gas in the tank.

But knowing what’s in the tank in life is a bit harder.

We don’t have many finish lines in life.

So, it makes us ask the question: am I giving my relationships all they deserve, working and building a career with full effort, and maximizing my time on side projects? Or will I look back at the end of the race and wonder, “Did I have extra gas in the tank?”

What does it mean to work with all your heart as unto the Lord?

This verse is a reminder that whatever you're doing—your job, your side hustle, loving your family, pursuing your goals, you’re called to give it everything you've got.

Not halfway. Not “just enough.” All your heart.

I think this is as much for the glory of God as it is a kindness to us. Its the opportunity to go all in on things with the security it will all work out.

But I think most of us, myself included, say we’re working hard, but in reality, we’re giving partial effort and expecting full returns. I talked about this in my letter about why the 80/20 principle isn’t true, but when we expect big results from little effort, the results will always disappoint.

I am really trying to ask myself if I’m giving the things in my life everything I have.

Hard work requires Focused Work

I think a nuance of this is that you can’t give everything everywhere 100%, it requires us to say no to a lot of things.

I think it’s through thoughtful prayer and discernment that we can pick the big bets and discern our calling while saying no to everything else.

A lesson:
The winning formula

Rory Mcilroy won the Masters this weekend and completed the career Grand Slam - meaning he has joined an elusive club only five other players have ever reached.

It’s an amazing accomplishment.

The short four-day tournament was a roller coaster, and the final round had the craziest twists and turns. Rory was up by four stokes late in the round but made a mistake that cost him the lead.

He also had a short putt to win on the 18th hole that he missed which pushed the tournament to a sudden-death playoff.

With a few amazing shots, he birdied the playoff hole and won.

You can watch the highlights here.

What did it take for Rory to win?

After the tournament, Rory did a press conference where he was asked a bunch of questions. Many of them could be summarized into “what did it take to win”.

Rory’s answer:

• A little bit of luck

• Resiliency

• Persistence

A little bit of luck:

Rory commented on how, when you’re playing the Masters and up against the best in the world, regardless of how good you are, you’ll need a bit of luck. He talked about how even when he hit bad shots and ended up in the trees, he always had a look or a shot he could take to get out of trouble.

I like Naval’s commentary on luck.

He says there are 4 kinds of luck:

1. Blind Luck: when you get lucky because of something totally out of your control

2. Created Luck: luck resulting from hard work, hustle, and persistence

3. Spotted Luck: when skill or knowledge lets you see opportunities others don’t

4. Luck that finds you: when you build a unique skill or characteristic that makes others search you out when they find an opportunity.

Rory may chalk his luck up to blind luck, but I bet it’s a mix of created and spotted. Rory had played the Masters 16 times before and is a skilled golfer that saw shots others wouldn’t.

Resiliency

Rory made some pretty awful mistakes on Sunday. He dumped a wedge into the water on 13 and bogeyed the next hole to wipe away a big cushion. Then, on later holes, he missed short putts for eagle and birdie that would have given him an easy path to victory.

But those things happen. We make mistakes. It’s what we do about them.

Rory credited for his victory was his resiliency.

"I'm very proud of myself. I'm proud of never giving up. I'm proud of how I kept coming back and dusting myself off and not letting the disappointments really get to me." 

“The mark of a champion is resilience in the face of adversity”

Persistence:

Rory had an amazing performance this weekend and was extremely resilient after making mistakes.

But extended resilience turns into persistence.

This wasn’t Rory’s first chance to win The Masters. In 2011, fourteen years ago, Rory entered the final day with a four-shot lead and lost. After that, he’s finished in the top 10 eight times, even finishing second in 2022.

Here’s what Rory had to say about it:

“It's so hard to stay patient, It's so hard to keep coming back every year and trying your best and not being able to get it done.”

Despite the weight and the pressure, despite coming so close and failing time and time again, he kept showing up.

Implementing the winning formula

You probably aren’t trying to win the Masters, but we all have our own “Grand Slam” we’re trying to achieve: our life goal or objective.

Like Rory, sometimes the weight is heavy and we can get scared it’s never going to happen. Sometimes we face setbacks or make mistakes we aren’t sure if we can overcome.

But I want to encourage you to do three things:

1. Create a surface area of luck:

Build a skillset that helps you find, create, and attract luck.

In Naval’s list, he gives an example of “the best sea diver in the world” known for going on dives others won't even dare to attempt. By sheer luck, somebody finds a sunken treasure ship that they can't get to.

Their luck just became his luck.

What skillset do you need to be developing to increase your surface area of luck?

2. Stand back up when you’ve been knocked down

Setbacks and mistakes are part of the journey, not the end of it.

When life knocks you down, what matters most is standing back up. Each stumble is a chance to learn, to grow, and to prove to yourself that you are the type of person who doesn’t give up.

What adversities are you facing, that have knocked you down, that you need to dust off and keep going?

3. Never give up

It took Rory 11 years to complete his grand slam after winning the first three championships, but His journey began long before that as a kid in Ireland.

This was Rory’s dream.

I think we often think we should achieve our goals sooner, but the reality is they take time.

After the tournament, Rory was asked what he’d say to his younger self who almost won the Masters in 2011 (14 years earlier) his answer was “Stay the course, don’t stop believing”.

Have you given up faith or are you staying course?

Don’t give up. I promise it will be worth it.