Written on 6/25/2008 by Alex Shalman, creator of the Practical Personal Development blog.

If you believe in evolution, you know there wasn’t some superstar golfer caveman from which Tiger Woods evolved centuries later. His talent and subsequent success were not a genetic lottery win — let’s take a look at 12 factors that we can adapt from this legendary golfer.

Even if Tiger Woods was somehow physically superior, all that gossip could be laid to rest, when Tiger Woods won this years U.S. Open playing with a bum knee. Ok, so maybe a knee isn’t that crucial to a golfer, but walking on it while experiencing a great deal of pain and keeping the focus does prove that there’s more to this man than his stroke.

12 Rules for Success From Tiger Woods

1. Constant and Never Ending Improvement

“No matter how good you get you can always get better and that’s the exciting part”~Tiger Woods

Never settle for good enough, not when you know you could always be better tomorrow than you were today. That’s how Tiger keeps himself excited, into the game, and appreciating his life on a daily basis. Each day he practices his technique and improves a little bit. You can be sure he takes this principle out of the game and into life.

2. A Bigger Plan

“I think it’s an honor to be a role model to one person or maybe more than that. If you are given a chance to be a role model, I think you should always take it because you can influence a person’s life in a positive light, and that’s what I want to do. That’s what it’s all about.”~Tiger Woods

Tiger looks at the big picture, which is usually bigger than his own success and accomplishments. One thing he does is mentor individuals, both in Golf and in life. The kind of impact he has on these people will extend past his network, past what he could do himself, and he knows this.

3. Embrace Defeat

“I’m trying as hard as I can, and sometimes things don’t go your way, and that’s the way things go.”~Tiger Woods

Defeat will come from time to time but it’s much better to accept it and move on instead of sticking your claws into it and not letting go. This includes wallowing in your own misery, feeling sorry for yourself, and gossiping about your opponent. The quicker that you can pick yourself up and start training for the next challenge the more prepared and successful you will be.

4. Take Life Lightly

“If you can’t laugh at yourself, then who can you laugh at?”~Tiger Woods

Not every moment has to be spent with a serious face on your mug. It’s perfectly okay to laugh, even in the face of tragedy. Realistically speaking we don’t ever know if we’ll be here tomorrow, so we might as well make the best of today. Even if we were guaranteed tomorrow, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t extract every morsel of pleasure out of whatever we’ve committed our life to at the moment.

5. Don’t Stop

“Tiger may have used his golf club as a cane, but he refused to use his injury as a crutch.” ~Brian Clark

Tiger faced serious post surgery trauma during his last game. It hurt like hell. Despite his injury Tiger did not complain. He did not want to even consider using his injury as an excuse and instead focused all his energy on winning. Less talking, no stopping, more winning.

6. Live Your Own Expectations

“One of the things that my parents have taught me is never listen to other people’s expectations. You should live your own life and live up to your own expectations, and those are the only things I really care about it.” ~Tiger Woods

The moment we start allowing ourselves to live the way other people want us to live we become average. We become this culmination of wants, needs, expectations — and none of them belong to us. Not Tiger. Tiger lives his life by his self-made rules. Be the best he told himself, and then he defined what the best was.

7. Do What You Love

“I get to play golf for a living. What more can you ask for – getting paid for doing what you love.”~Tiger Woods

When you’re doing what you love it doesn’t even matter if you’re getting paid.When you think about it, you spend more time working than you do with your family or your place of worship. You might as well take pleasure in the time you spend ‘on the clock’ or in Tiger’s case on the field.

8. Focus

“My main focus is on my game.”~Tiger Woods

Having one solid goal which you can devote all your focus into pools together all your available resources. You begin to enroll other people into your vision and they start to believe in you. This will give you access to new tools, mentors, and even more resources to get to your goal faster and better.

9. Pay It Forward

“My dad has always taught me these words: care and share. That’s why we put on clinics. The only thing I can do is try to give back. If it works, it works.”~Tiger Woods

You don’t know how much money you have until you give it away. I’m sure you’ve heard that before many times. The same thing goes for our talents, skills, and other opportunities. When we can empower people by giving a piece of ourselves to them we can leave a legacy or live on through them. Besides we’re programmed to feel good when we are kind to others.

10. Learn From All Mistakes

“The only thing you can do is take a learning experience from it, positives and negatives, and apply them to the future. What did you do right, what did you do wrong, and I did a lot of things right this week” ~Tiger Woods

You can subscribe to the idea that everything is put into our life as a challenge. When things are going bad it is our challenge to over come them. When things are going great it is our challenge to remain grounded and humble. It’s all there so that we can learn from it and grow, so there’s no point getting hung up on or experiencing a huge grief over a bad mistake. Be happy that you learned a valuable lesson.

11. Celebrate Your Victories

“It’s been a lot of fun to see some fruits of my hard labor.”~Tiger Woods

No matter how many times Tiger wins he treats each win as if it is special. This provides a constant positive reinforcement to keep him interested in giving the game his best. Perhaps if he only celebrated once a year, after the final stats were in and he saw he was still the best, he wouldn’t be living so much in the moment. If Tiger wasn’t living in the present, or at least one game at a time, there is no way he would be as happy as he could be.

12. Pay No Attention To Naysayers

“You know, all the nay-sayers said that I was doing the wrong things. They can understand why now I made those changes.”~Tiger Woods

Had Tiger payed attention to the first critic that told him he wouldn’t make it he would have given up when he started golfing at the age of 5. If he gave up the second time he wouldn’t be here either. During Tigers career there have been thousands upon thousands of people commenting and gossiping that this game wouldn’t be his game, and even if it is he still won’t win it all. Nonsense. By going for his goals despite the nay-sayers Tiger made it all happen.Practical Application.

By now I hope you realized that Tiger Woods is both an amazing athlete and an incredible person. While you may not be a golfer, or if you are you may not be as good as Tiger, you can see how his wisdom could be applied to your every day life. Be the Tiger Woods of whatever you are passionate about. Don’t stop, don’t listen to anybody except your own expectations, and achieve your bigger plan.

-Alex