ENJOY LIFE: JOHN RICHARDSON
John Richardson is a fascinating, down to earth guy who, through meticulousness and self-discipline achieved what was told by many was impossible. At the age
of 37, he decided to raise his golf game from the level of "occasional weekender" to "pro" in a year. The result shows that with the right commitment, a system and persistence anything and everything is possible. His pure determination, dedication to learning, researching, practising, modelling, control of internal dialogue, visualisation and positive thinking led him to succeed when professionals told him to
DREAM ON W
hen John Richardson was a boy growing up in Northern Ireland, he watched with deep fascination as Seve Ballesteros won the Irish
Open. “He was incredible at that stage," he says, comparing him to his other sporting heroes, George Best, Mohammed Ali and Ayrton Senna. “The pinnacle of sporting achievement." For a fl eeting moment, John dreamed of
becoming a pro, until real life got in the way. How could he know then that his dream would come back to him, years later? Life for John was mixed. Growing up in
Belfast during the height of the Troubles, he recalls how his earliest memory was being excited to go to see another lorry his dad had bought for his furniture business after the previous one had been burned out. He became used to the sound of bombs
going off in the distance. Later, though, when his parents moved to the coast, life was “idyllic”. To his parents' frustration John didn't
really work at school, fi nally going on to sit a university degree in Business Studies after twice failing his A Levels. Life looked pretty ordinary. The turning point came on his return
from university when he set up a sandwich business at the age of 25. By the age of 28,
22
WWW.THEBESTYOU.CO
it was the biggest sandwich business in Ireland. By the time he was 29, he had lost everything due to business mistakes. As John says, “that's when the learning
really started.” He went on to become an expert in the hospitality industry. “I thought about my businesses day and night,” he says, and he also “read business biographies to fi ll in the gaps” and learn from the experience of those who'd gone before him. So what of the madcap idea of learning to
play a round at par or below, within a year, with no real experience except for occasional golfi ng. “As I got near to my 40s, I began to think
about my dream when I was a child. I decided that I would realise my golf dream within a year. It meant applying myself obsessively, while continuing to work in business for 50 hours a week.” What John had realised was that people
were good at things not just from pure talent, but because they worked at something repeatedly. He reckoned he could become an expert in golf by putting in 20 hours a week. Professional golfers told him to “dream on”
- which became the title of his best-selling book that told the story of how he did it. So how did he do it? He reveals that the fi rst thing to do was get rid of negatives and have a set of mentors that he could rely on. They didn't have to be real.
“When I was younger, I used to do a bit of motor racing. I used to imagine that Ayrton Senna was sitting next to me. His imagined presence made my driving better.” John applied the same technique to his golf. If he was going to have a mentor, he was going to have the best, and so the virtual Seve Ballesteros accompanied him on his training. Through the power of visualisation, he imagined Seve was always there, or he would “slurp” himself into Seve's body, and imagine looking out of his eyes. He would talk to himself in his head as if he were Seve, modelling the very best that he had seen. “I got the concept from Napoleon Hill's Think And Grow Rich, in which he talks about having a mental mastermind, in which you can imagine having all these people giving you advice.”
What was extraordinary was that it paid off. Within a year, John got himself to a professional standard in which he could play a round at his local golf course on par. It was a real achievement.
John believes anyone can learn to do anything with the right application. The key to getting things done is taking personal responsibility and believing that you can do it. “It takes 1,000 hours of intensive training to get into the top 1 per cent of anything,” he says. “To do that, you have to believe and motivate yourself. Then you can do it. And
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72