There are a couple of rules of success which all high achievers will consider universal. One of those is simply you cannot do it yourself, and another is we all need a sounding board. Sometimes we get lucky and find someone who is both our sounding board and a person who helps us move towards our goals. We need a sounding board to bounce off ideas, think through problems and confess our mistakes.

Recently I was having lunch with a friend of mine. He is someone I trust completely, and therefore one of my sounding boards and confidants for confessions. Since I value his opinion we talk about some things that I don’t talk about with other people. He is one of those people to which I can confess my mistakes and not worry about it coming back to me in a month. A couple of weeks prior to our lunch, I had made a very inappropriate comment to a flight attendant regarding some military people on the flight. Since I am a retired military officer, it made the comments even worse in my mind.

Since my friend is also retired military, I was prepared for a rather harsh response. He caught me completely off guard with his simple response. He just asked “How you feel about it.” I said “Well, I’m embarrassed at my comments to the flight attendant. I’m mad at myself for thinking what I said and more so for saying it. Finally I feel like I owe the soldiers an apology even though they probably never heard what I said.”

My friend looked at me and laughed, saying “We all have crazy days like that, we all say stupid things.” He then told me to go hit golf balls, or go to a batting cage or go play raquetball.  He continued by saying that one of the great stress relievers is aggressive, focused physical contact. The reason that some people hit other people is they don’t have an outlet involving physical contact for their stress and anger. People will bottle it up until they lose control and hit another person or hurt themselves. The trick is to release the anger and stress before you lose control of it. He said what I was really feeling was anger at myself. He also told me there may be several other things bottled up that led to the uncontrolled and inappropriate remark.

Of course being the skeptic, I got home that evening and searched the Internet to see if he was correct. I stumbled on several websites of psychologists and psychiatrists who had the same opinion. Dr. Hans Selye in Montreal Canada noted that we get rid of anger through our hands, our feet, our teeth and our voice.  This may be why children instinctively act out in this way.  Seyle found that hitting things with our hands like baseball, golf, racquetball and punching bags transferred the anger out of us.  Kicking a soccer ball can work too.  This may explain why some adults will stomp their feet when angry or frustrated, instinctively they are transferring the anger out of themselves.

A little over a year ago, my wife told me I was becoming grumpy and needed to buy another Harley. Shortly after that conversation, my friend Grady’s sister passed away and I went out to Las Vegas to visit him. I rented a Harley and we went out on a memorial ride to Red Rock Canyon. My stress level came down several notches and my wife noticed immediately when I got home. I have been renting a motorcycle about once a month ever since just to clear my head and relieve stress. I had no idea there was so much more that I was still bottling up inside.

My friend gave me a method of nine “hits” per issue, and told me to hit as hard as I could. This clearly isn’t to improve my game of golf. Using this method, if the only thing bothering me was my comment to the flight attendant, I should only need to hit nine golf balls. When I arrived driving range they had a special where the jumbo bucket of 150 balls was the same price as the small bucket of 50 balls. Of course I had to take the jumbo bucket.

I was advised to take nine hits as follows;

The first three hits were started with a phrase like “This is for being stupid and saying something I shouldn’t have.”

The second three hits were started with a phrase like “I forgive myself for making the comment to the flight attendant.”

The final three hits were started with a phrase like “This is to thank the soldiers for doing something I no longer want to do.”

The amazing thing about this little exercise is it worked. After I hit the first nine balls, I stood there with 141 balls in my bucket. As I looked at the bucket, more things that I was mad about just popped into my head. As it turns out, I had several things that I had done or said, for which I was mad at myself. There were also several things that I was mad at other people for doing or saying and held my tongue at the time it happened. It turns out I hadn’t forgotten any of these issues, I had just forced them deeper inside, as we all do. I continued using this method of nine hits for each issue that popped into my head and by the time I drew a blank, there was only one ball left in the bucket. My hands were blistered and bleeding from hitting so hard and yet I felt great.

As I left the driving range I had a big smile on my face. I realized that the last time I was at a driving range was about the same time I sold my last Harley. It turned out that during my previous success I had stumbled onto motorcycle riding and golf without even knowing it. Motorcycle riding and golf won’t be the right stress relievers for everyone and in order to achieve high success you will need to find something. While I was loading the golf clubs back in the truck, a guy walking by said to me “I guess you hit some good ones today.” All I could say was “Yes I did!”