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Welcome to Episode 134 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast, I'm Jack Shitama, and today's episode is a personal story about Surrounding togetherness pressure that I felt recently.

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I used to be a golfer, but I haven't golf for about eight years. I started golfing in high school. I even took a couple of lessons. And then when I was a young adult in my 20s, my brother and I had a solar business in Florida and we used to golf quite frequently together. I was never really that good, I could hold my own, I could hit enough good shots to make it enjoyable, but it wasn't something that ever became a passion of mine.

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Over the years, I began golfing less and less, mostly with my father in law who loved to golf also. But when he had a stroke in 2014, it just seemed like there was no reason to golf. And I felt like it was a lot of time to spend for something that I got marginal enjoyment out of. My brother, who's eleven years older than I am, continued to golf on a regular basis, and when we would be on family vacations together, he would go golfing and I would usually decline because I just didn't want to spend that much time when I could be on the beach or I could be hiking or I could be reading a book.

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This spring, we decided to take a trip to Florida and we rented a place near the beach with my brother and his wife, whom we hadn't seen since August of 2019. My niece and her family joined us, along with my 98 year old mother, who has been living with us since the beginning of the pandemic. A couple of weeks before our time together, my brother texted me and said that he would bring an extra set of golf clubs if I wanted to golf while we were in Florida.

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We were only going to be there for four nights, so it wasn't a lot of time, it wasn't a long trip. So I thought about my response and I texted back that I wasn't sure I wanted to spend that much time golfing on such a short stay. He texted back, OK, I just have really fond memories of us golfing together. Immediately I felt surrounding togetherness pressure. To my brother's credit, he wasn't trying to define me, what he was saying was that he recalls fine times golfing together.

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He was expressing his own feelings. He was self-defining in a non-anxious way. So he was self-differentiated with me. Even so, I was the one feeling surrounding togetherness pressure. I was feeling like I didn't want to let him down, that he was thinking o fun times that we had together. And if I didn't golf with him, I would be denying him of that. Perhaps denying us of that. What do you do when you feel pressure to respond to somebody else who is asking you to do something and it's not a bad thing, it's actually a good thing, something that you can do together to cultivate your relationship.

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So this was the dilemma I was facing and I thought about it quite a bit leading up to our trip to Florida. One thing I realized was that if I decided to play golf with him and spent nearly a half day of my very few days in Florida, I couldn't resent him. That would have to be my choice. And if I was willing to say no to him, I had to be willing to put up with any disappointment he might have.

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In the end, I decided not to golf with him. I decided that I didn't want to spend my time doing that and I began preparing my responses. My main response was, I just don't want to spend that much time when we have so little time in Florida. Of course, I needed to be prepared for him to say, well, this is time we can spend together, which would have doubled down on the pressure to conform. And that's when I developed an out.

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Our trip to Florida was in May, and I realized that we were going to spend a week together with Extended Family in Myrtle Beach in late July, this was my brother and his wife and several of his kids and their families, my sister and her kids and all four of our kids and their family. So we were going to be together in one large extended family gathering the third week of July in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And if you don't know anything about Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, it is like one of the golf capitals of the United States, maybe 100 plus golf courses in the Myrtle Beach area.

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So my response to my brother was when I got to Florida, I don't think I'm going to play golf here, but I will play golf with you when we are in Myrtle Beach. Another factor that reinforced that was that my two sons both golf on a fairly regular basis so we could put together a little golf outing with my sons, my brother or some of his sons, and we could have a good time together with extended family when we'd be together for a whole week.

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When we were in Florida in May, things worked out just fine, I told my brother I didn't feel like spending that much time golfing. He ended up golfing by himself. And I told him that we would golf together and Myrtle Beach. Interestingly, he did not double down on the surrounding togetherness pressure when I told him I didn't feel like golfing. He said, OK, fine. And he went ahead and made a tee time for himself. But I felt the need to offer something up, a goodwill offering of sorts.

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So now I was committed to golfing for the first time in over eight years and I had to get ready. In the weeks leading up to our trip to Myrtle Beach, I bought golf balls, I got a golf glove. I actually went to the driving range once to make sure I could still hit a golf ball. So I was prepared to golf together. I even shared with my sons that I was planning to golf. And one of my sons started emailing the family asking if people wanted to do a golf outing.

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There were several who wanted to play more than once, but it looked like we might have seven or eight people, at least for one outing. Our first full day there, we confirmed all of our plans and we may tee times for a couple of days later where we would have seven people, my brother and his two sons, me and my two sons and my daughter's boyfriend. It was the night before our golf outing that I realized I was going to face another dilemma with more surrounding togetherness pressure.

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Who was I going to golf with? Was I going through golf with my brother? And if I golf with my brother, you could have four people. Who would the two other people be? We couldn't have my two sons and then have my daughter's boyfriend play with my brother's two sons, my two nephews. That would have been ideal for me, I would get to golf with my brother and I would get to golf with my two sons, but he became increasingly clear to me that I would have to choose between the two more surrounding togetherness pressure.

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And remember, this is not pressure that is being put on by my brother or being put on by my sons. This is pressure that I am feeling internally. For all I know, my sons didn't care and I'm guessing my brother did care. But he would probably be all right if we played golf and I played with my sons. The point of this for me is that we feel these moments of pressure to conform all the time. Sometimes they are explicit.

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Sometimes people lay it on us and even more thickly than my brother did. My brother was just sharing how he wanted to spend time with me and how he had fond memories. Sometimes people lay it on even more thickly where they are just trying to guilt us into doing what they want us to do. I think those are even easier to deal with because in those cases I feel like there is something else going on with the other. And I can just be a non-anxious presence and politely refused to conform.

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But when somebody is engaging in healthy behavior and they want you to connect with them, what do you do? And this is a case that I dealt with with my brother in Florida and then trying to figure out what to do between my brother and my sons. Another takeaway here is there are no right or wrong answers. What's most important for leadership is being willing to take responsibility for your own choices and then be able to live with them, be able to remain a non-anxious presence even if other people are upset with what you decide.

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The morning of our golf outing, I offered to drive so that my two sons and my daughter's boyfriend could ride with me and I could have some time to explain my choice. I did not want to leave this to chance because that is a situation where then things don't work out the way you want to and you don't have time to really explain to anyone. This, again, is what I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, which is leaning into your own anxiety and trying to be proactive about what the situation is so that you have the best chance of taking responsibility for yourself and maybe not controlling the situation, but at least being able to share what you believe in that moment.

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And that's what I did. I shared with my sons the story about my brother asking me to golf this spring in Florida and how I turned him down and that I had promised I would golf with him. And so I was gonna spend time with him and golf with him. And they immediately understood that. And they realized that the best situation would be for my two nephews to golf in our foursome and my sons and my daughter's boyfriend to golf together in a threesome.

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So that's how it worked out. Everything was just fine. I probably spent a little more anxiety and worry on this than I should have. But I believe that if we are not proactive, if we are not thinking about things in advance, if we are not thinking through how we are going to present what we believe and feel, then we leave things up to the moment. And I have learned that when I leave things up to the moment, that's when I choke.

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That's when I don't say what I want to say or what I really believe. And then I'm usually not happy with how things go. The day went fine. We had a nice time together. I golf the way I usually golf, which was some good shots and probably more bad shots, but I held my own. But in the end it also reinforced my feeling that golf is not something I typically want to spend my time with. In addition to that, I suffered a couple of minor injuries, one in my wrist and one in a finger, and they're still lingering actually almost two weeks later.

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And that just made me feel even more so that I was not going to golf anymore. That is until I told my wife and she asked, well, what if your sons want to golf with you? Just goes to show you the surrounding togetherness pressure never ends. So that's it for Episode 134, I hope you don't mind me sharing this personal story about what goes on inside of my head, but I think if you're like me, if you're like most people, stuff is rattling around in there all the time about what other people think and what other people want and how we are going to respond.

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And it is not easy. It is something that we just have to work through and prepare ourselves for each time. And don't forget to connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com. Until next time. Thanks and goodbye.

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