Right now we’re talking about work and the attitudes that help up to power up the way we make our living.

One of the most important of these is following through. 

I used to run a security firm, and once time I was assigned as security guy to the legendary golfer, Seve Ballesteros. (And yes, it was really exciting!) Right up above is picture of his footprint… and what I want to talk about today is the print that the great man left on me.

So I was out on a green with him. I watched him as he took a swing at a ball.

It didn’t look like much effort, but that ball hung in the air for ever. It seemed like it was never going to fall to earth. I was impressed.

He asked me if I’d like to have a go. I swung at the ball and made contact. The ball travelled a few feet. I tried again. Same result.

Then he asked me: ‘if you’re going to land a kick in taekwondo, do you do that with your legs stiff, or with your legs flexibie?’  And that’s when I realised that just like my sport, golf was all about doing things with the right technique. It might look easy – but it wasn’t. It took skill and it took practice. Seven had put in the time and he had the skills.

The other thing he told me about was follow through. The term he used was ‘sequential movement’. The sequence involves your whole body; it’s a flow. It travels from your feet to your ankles to your knees to your hips and up your torso into your arms where the muscles are waiting for the swing. Then after you’ve connected with the ball, that movement continues in a long, smooth follow-through.

So here is the lesson. You focus on the end result, the contact with the ball, or with the opponent, but you don’t lock rigid. You flow right into it.

A lot of mistakes in life and work come from a very rigid attitude. We might think that we know what we are doing, but really we’re afraid and that inhibits our freedom. So we are only doing a small movement when we need to do a much larger one.

It takes confidence to relax into the flow. But if we can do it, the result will be far more powerful.