About a year ago, a voice in my mind advised, "Play more golf." Since it came so clear and I liked the message, I decided the speaker was God. If you think I'm crazy, that's okay.

So I asked, "Yeah? Then where do I get the time and the money? " All that came was a whispery chuckle. 

The past year, things have gotten ever busier, and money has found ever more means of escape. If I play golf once a month, I feel extravagant, though golf has long been a kind of therapy. At least it's the best means I've found for allowing my mind a break from all other pursuits, ambitions, trials, concerns, and tribulations. Which is why, I presumed, God would suggest I play more.

But the obvious answer isn't always correct. Here's my latest answer:

Golf is largely a mind game. The attitude with which we approach a round, or a shot, decides its success. One part of attitude is setting a goal. At least a hundred times I've asked myself, should I attempt to shoot par and measure my performance against that standard, even though I'm bound to fall short? Or, should I attempt to shoot bogies (one over par)?

An eighth grade teacher must've thought I was troubled by the pressure of having a mother who taught in our school. She took me aside and gave this peculiar advice: "Don't worry about getting A's. B's are fine. They'll get you wherever you want to go." 

B's are like bogies. All through high school and college, until graduate school, I aimed for B's and rarely got disappointed. And I've gone through life as a bogie golfer. I come home from games feeling slightly uplifted if I scored an 87 (three under bogie), and slightly dismayed if I shot 93 (three over). That, I'm finding, is a lousy attitude. A fellow who has played the game for as many years as I have shouldn't settle for bogies. 

Since each new hole is a new game, I can choose to address each one as a potential par or as likely bogie. If I choose the former, I get dismayed more often. Choose the latter, I get uplifted more often. And each of those conditions translates into better or worse concentration, meaning more or less tension, the primary mental elements of the golf swing.

But yesterday, the voice came back, with such clarity that I decided it was feeding me the reason it told me to play more golf. This time it said, "Go for birdies." 

For those who avoid the game I'll explain. A par three hole is short enough so you should be able to reach the green in one shot, where you can finish with two putts. A par four hole, you should be able to reach in two and finish with two putts. But if you hit the right shot to the green, and use only one putt, you score birdie.

"If I always go for birdies," I asked, "won't I be discouraged most of the time?" God knows, a discouraged golfer gets tense and loses concentration.

"That depends," I heard. "Why get discouraged unless it's the last hole you'll ever play?"

Those, I believe, are words to live by. There is always, or most always, the next hole. 

I'm no longer the following the advice of my eighth grade math teacher. Every hole I play, I'm going for birdie, even though I know I probably won't get one. But I'll be choosing optimism. And making that choice eighteen times a round will affect my attitude about other pursuits.

My dad was an optimist, or he tried to be. But his ventures usually landed him in a mess. He went broke plenty of times. Which made my mom, of the Great Depression generation, ever more pessimistic. She was a fervent believer in Murphy's law, and advised me, in ways both subtle and blunt, to prepare for the worst. Hence my affinity for bogies. 

Should I live long enough, and should I play enough golf with this new dedication, and should I succeed in bringing new optimism to each hole, no matter what I suffered on the last one, I'll begin to see optimism overcome the less productive attitudes. And we all know optimism is healthier and more likely to prompt creativity and inspiration. Right?