Controlling yourself while controlling your disc

Anyone who knows me knows I can get a bit intense when I am playing any type of sport. I'm not the most athletically gifted person, but I am good enough to know I should be doing well. I have always had a hard time controlling my temper when I'm playing sports. Bowling, baseball, football basketball, walleyball, disc golf, regular golf...it doesn't matter because no matter the sport, I would get angry if I was doing bad.

Here's the thing, I never cared because I have never been one to care about what others think of me. Being a dad has changed all that. I have never cared so much what someone thinks of me as I do my almost one year old daughter. Every day she amazes me with how intelligent and independent she is becoming. If she sees me or my wife, Lauren, do anything then she will immediately copy us. It's adorable and terrifying. As I said in my first post, I am doing everything I can to get my girl outside and enjoying nature and sports. The one thing I don't want to happen is for Eden to see me getting angry because I'm not doing well. I know it to be one of my character flaws and I don't want her to inherit that trait from me.

Well, recently I have seemed to reach a plateau with my disc golf. I couldn't get any more distance and I wasn't getting any more consistent with my putts or my accuracy, so I decided to do some research to see what types of things would improve these aspects of my game. It all came down to form. I am working almost every day to replace my poor form with the form used by today's top players and guess what? It's incredibly frustrating. I have not been getting the scores I normally get even though I am noticing my distance increase and my putts are hitting better. The difference is that I am still learning my new form, which is making me wildly inconsistent right now. All this is important because of how I have had to become more aware of my emotions when my little girl is around. I have made an effort to focus on remaining calm, regardless of how my throw goes. As a matter of fact, the above picture was followed by hitting a tree approximately 100ft down the fairway and getting stuck 15ft up the tree. Normally I would have likely used some not so nice language and thrown a second disc out of anger, but not with Eden there. I took a deep breath, made a joke about hitting my target and started chucking a rock at my disc to get it to fall out of the tree.

Being a parent is such an incredible responsibility. In the year I have had with my girl, I have changed more than she has. I've learned so much from her and learned to be a better version of myself so that I can be worthy of the blessing she is to my wife and I. Who knew all I needed to become my best self was someone constantly watching and learning from me?