If you don’t follow golf, the U.S. Open took place this past weekend ending today with an 18-hole playoff and 1 more sudden death hole between Tiger Woods, whom all of you have heard of, and Rocco Mediate, whom you probably never heard of. While Tiger did win his 3rd U.S. Open on a very bad left knee, an equal amount of attention was placed on Rocco, especially with the way he handled himself during the tournament.

Rocco Mediate is a 45 year-old PGA Tour veteran who won 5 times on the tour but has rarely contended in the major events such as the U.S. Open. He has a very easy-going attitude who loves to build a rapport with fans and other players, including Tiger, to the point where many want to see him win today’s playoff. While he admits that he is nowhere close to Tiger in terms of skill, when he was out on the course he was focused on winning the U.S. Open. However Rocco also realized that if he didn’t win, he did his best in his opportunity to win one of the biggest tournaments in golf. “I got what I wanted,” Mediate said. “I got a chance to beat the best man in the world, and I came up just a touch short.”

As we end the Toastmasters year in two weeks, we have Club and District officers who are trying to reach or exceed their goals for the year in the hopes of getting Distinguished, Select Distinguished or President’s Distinuguished Club, Area, Division or District. Some I’m sure will act desperate and will try to do whatever they can to reach their goals, even if it meant rubbing the people they serve the wrong way by pressuring their members to finish up their educational goal requirements or pressuring guests to join their clubs.

Over the years I’ve seen District 30 officers take desperate steps to reach what they claim is the glory of District 30 or whatever Division or Area they are serving. However, many of them ended up alienating the same members they need to help District 30 succeed. It can be because what others do don’t match their view of the world. Some resort to arrogance and micromanagement. We even have at least one in recent years manipulating the statistics they are responsible for just to reach Distinguished or greater by stealing new clubs from other Areas and Divisions (in District 30, new clubs can be placed in a particular Area or Division based on which Area or Division Governor was involved regardless of location) and even getting a fellow Toastmaster to join a club and submit an educational goal for that club for the sole purpose of getting its Area Distinguished and the Division President’s Distinguished.

For just about every Toastmaster, Toastmasters is only a blip in the bigger scope of things. We all have our own lives – most of us have jobs we are trying to keep, families we are trying to support, relationships we are trying to build and perhaps most importantly our own health we are trying to take care of. While reaching the glory in Toastmasters is great and gives a sense of accomplishment, all of the things we accomplish in Toastmasters is only minute comparing to what we have or can potentially accomplish in life. If a District or a Club Officer alienates others in attempt to accomplish something, reaching that goal comes with a cost, perhaps one that can cover far more years than the time it took to get the goal.

There is nothing wrong with aiming and reaching a high goal, working very hard to achieve that. But there is no need to act like it is life or death. Like Rocco Mediate, all we can do is try our best without turning off our fellow members and be fortunate that we have the opportunity to succeed.