Graham W Price's Blog

Tiger’s rambling apology, and his apparent failure to get it previewed by his PR, serve only to highlight how thrown he’s been, and still is, by the events that have caught up with him. (I assume he has a PR and if it was previewed by said PR, I suggest he finds another).

To be fair he’s in a tough position. His wife on the verge of dumping him. His previously enviable celebrity status diminished. His sponsors in retreat. No more flings!

But hold on … aren’t there thousands of stories of greater hardship … survivors of natural disasters losing their entire family; soldiers with limbs blown off. Don’t we hear or read impressive stories of resilience in horific circumstances far worse than Tiger’s. Shouldn’t we expect a greater show of resilience from him.

Not at all. Expecting anyone to be different from who or what they are is expecting the impossible. The criticism the media has levelled against Tiger for his performance, whether sexual or apologetic, ignores a truth the media always ignores, because they’re totally unaware of it. If they were aware of it, I’ll be the first to admit, their stories might make less enthralling reading.

Ironically, the understanding the media is unaware of is the same understanding that would give Tiger the very resilience he appears to be lacking.

This truth is that we live in a determined world. There’s simply no way Tiger could have avoided his affairs. There’s no way he could have given a more impressive apology. There’s no way he could have consulted his PR, assuming he has one and that he or she wasn’t consulted.

Sure we make choices … all the time . The question is why do we make the choices we make. The answer is always … because of our awareness at the time (everything that makes up who we are at any moment … our beliefs, attitudes, ways of thinking, unconcsious programming, abilities, knowledge, etc).

The truth is that everything Tiger or you or me have ever done, thought or felt at any moment is the only thing we could possibly have done, thought or felt at that moment, given our awareness at the time. And as our awareness at any moment is simply the result of our entire life experience up to that moment, there’s no way our awareness at any moment could have been different either.

If Tiger knew this and how to use this knowledge, he like everyone else would be able to breeze through any hardship life may put in his path.  What’s more, he’d be able to take  control of events, or at least his experience of events, and total control of his future.

If everyone knew this truth and how to use it, everyone would be able to deal easily with any challenge life may present and be able to take control of how we experience events and total control of our future.

If this sounds like a huge cop-out from all the wrongs we ever do or have ever done, you’ll need to find out about the difference between blame and responsibility. It would be a very different world is we could eliminate blame, including self-blame, and replace it with responsibility.

And if you think living in a determined world suggests we have no control over the future, nothing could be further from the truth. Sure what we do in the future will be determined by our awareness at the time. The question is … how can we take control of our awareness. 

It’s long been known that the human mind is determined. There’s now practically no disagreement  among those who’ve been involved in thousands of discussions on the subject. Yet few until now have seen the link between this basically obvious and well documented truth and the powerful tool of  ’accepting what is’ (very different from the generally weak concept of  ’acceptance’) that lies at the core of resilience.  That too is the only thing that could have happened given the awareness of everyone involved at each moment.  www.abicord.com/what-is-is