Of course, I have no idea about what was really going on with the golfing legend before his accident this week. But reports state he was driving too fast, late for an appointment with two football quarterbacks who were legends themselves.

Maybe if he was late for an appointment with some "regular" people, he might not have felt the need for such speed — who knows?

But what it seems to imply is that he felt bad about being late. When you see someone driving like a maniac racing to get somewhere, you just sense their feeling of unworthiness or self-blame, don't you? How do men deal with that negative self-assessment? Through action, of course, evasive action. Driving like a daredevil. Making it right. Being courageous, heroic and strong, as per the dictum of that oppressive man box of masculinity.

It's already right!

We just don't know it, unconsciously, because we are living in what the psychologist Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance, calls the "trance of unworthiness."

What is striking about this particular case of "unworthiness" is that it was exhibited by one of the most outstanding and successful people on the planet — Tiger Woods.

He's a tiger, after all.

We don't think of tigers as having any self-esteem issues or problems with self-loathing or self-contempt.

But we do know human beings have these sorts of issues — even the very greatest of them like the legendary Woods.

If someone who has won more golf tournaments than anybody ever has these issues, is it any wonder that ordinary sods like you and I do, too?

We are enough

For women, there has been a huge collective movement in the last decade toward escaping the trance. I'm thinking of this phrase that my wife and daughter have written on their mirrors in red lipstick: "I am enough."

That comes from another great author, the psychologist Megan Fenyoe, who wrote You Are Enough: 5 Steps To Move From Struggle To Strength. The message has been part of a female empowerment movement since its publication in 2018.

But what about men? Are they enough?

Men can use this moment, where Tiger thankfully survived a terrible accident, to ponder what terrible catastrophe our own trance of unworthiness is going to inflict upon us.

A great work on the struggles of manhood in America was published twenty years ago called Stiffed by Susan Faludi. The book details the various ways men cope with the challenges to their "manhood" that come from economic hard times. Of course, twenty years later we can easily attribute the rise of Trumpism to the feeling of being stiffed by the system that men struggling financially and emotionally in America. Preliminary reports, for instance, indicate that the majority of the individuals who raided the Capitol on January 6 were undergoing some sort of financial struggle.

What did they do? Like men throughout the ages, they took action!

Men are programmed to respond to the trance of unworthiness like action figures, rather than like whole human beings.

Tiger Woods shows that no amount of heroic action will save you from the trance of unworthiness.

Here's why. The trance of unworthiness was here before we were born and it will long outlive us.

In other words, it's not our trance of unworthiness. It is the trance of unworthiness that we inherited.

It reminds me of that monster from Stranger Things — it is multi-dimensional and so much bigger and more powerful than any one individual — even a living legend like Woods.

And herein lies the secret to escaping the trance — questioning the many unrealistic expectations we have for ourselves. For instance: this is what a healthy Tiger might have done, when he realized he was late for this appointment with the legendary quarterbacks, and began driving like a maniac through Southern California. He might have forgiven himself, maybe made a call to apologize, and then driven there at a safe speed. But he didn't, because he hadn't quite located the source of the harmful self-expectation. Here's how he might have located it.

FIRST: Friends and colleagues.

In this case, it seems to Tiger was worried about the impression he would make on his colleagues, the fellow legendary athletes. Our colleagues are the first category of attack to our self-esteem. As are our friends. Yes, they are the enemy of the unhealthy mind. I am reminded of Carlos Castaneda's advice: "Beware the black magicians, for they are your friends."

Friends and colleagues are naturally whom we compare ourselves to on an everyday basis. And remember, when you compare, you will despair. But it often goes much deeper than this.

SECOND: The past

Maybe in the past someone made Tiger feel bad about being late or irresponsible. Oh wait — the entire world made Tiger feel bad about being irresponsible when he went through a very sordid and public sex scandal that ended in his divorce.

It took Tiger years to recover from that event — but he did! However, full recovery is a mountain with no peak. He obviously had more work to do on self-forgiveness for all his past mistakes and irresponsible actions.

We all do.

Self-forgiveness happens every day. Every morning we wake up we need to wipe the slate clean of the past and face the day free from the encumbrance of incomplete dramas, tragedies and comedies. Free from the "theater" of life so that we can be present to the "real" quality of life in a soulful, mindful and whole way.

THIRD: Our loved ones.

And this is the real key to overcoming the trance of unworthiness. If we pick up the huge and heavy burden of unworthiness, and throw it off our back, what we will discover underneath it is quite shocking:

It's love.

Yes, it's self love. And it's love for all the people who have loved us. We don't want to disappoint them because we love them.

If we didn't love them, why would it matter that we turned out to be losers, schmucks and fuck-ups?

But it does matter, because we do love them.

Once you experience the "underneath" of the self-condemnation, you will have the luxury of feeling a much nicer emotion — love — than the surface emotion — inadequacy.

The only reason we want to be adequate, don't you see, is that don't want to let down the people who love us — including our higher selves. Or our inner child, however you want to term it.

If we don't have access to the positive underneath of the painful psychology of unworthiness, as men we are especially prone to dealing with it in more drastic and harmful ways than just driving too fast.

We are prone to addictions of all sorts to help us cope with it. Of course, no amount of drugs, alcohol, sex, or money will make us feel one drop more worthy. All of those addictions are fake cures that only end up making matters worse.

The worst of all "cures" — workaholism

The night before the accident, Tiger gave a now much-watched interview where he detailed his struggles with his back injury, surgery, and his difficult time in the gym doing what he called the "the mundane stuff that you have to do for rehab."

We might not have the back issues, but we have the same issues — all of us men. We are doing the "mundane stuff". And we don't feel any better than the tired-looking Tiger felt about his own "mundane" work.

Yet, it's the only way we know to cope with this incessant and nagging feeling of lousiness.

We need a national campaign for men, just as women have gotten through the "I am enough" movement. Instead of joining Qanon to work out our sense of failure, we need to join the human race.

Not the "man" race, where men are competing against each other to prove their worthiness.

No, the human race, were we realign our goals in life from competition with some unachievable ideal to cooperation with our better selves and one another.

Here's a way to start today. Like I said in the title, it is absolutely URGENT that men get "right sized," and stop having ballooned egos that are merely masks for our secret and hidden insecure selves. Here's how we do it.

1. Admit to one other person that you feel insecure, inadequate and unsure about something.

It can be an email, a letter, a phone call, or something we say in person. We need to practice revealing our hidden unworthy self. By shedding light on this shadow self, you see, you rob it of its insidious power.

2. Do this every day for one week, to different people if you like, or to the same person.

Some people we might confide in: significant others, best friends, parents, children even! Yes, children. If you display to children that it's OK to be insecure, they might not develop the trance of unworthiness to quite the extent you did. But be advised, they will develop some version of the trance. It is something hardcoded, culturally and perhaps even genetically. It is, after all, quite possible that the human beings most vulnerable to the trance became the best fighters and survivors in the dog eat dog world of early man.

3. After one week, revisit this page, and report in the response section what you discovered from finding the strength to unmask your unheroic and vulnerable self.

I will respond to you. It is important that we share the breakthroughs to keep them alive and to keep ourselves growing.

The waking from the trance of unworthiness is a beautiful event that happens individually, but as a group as well. We have undergone so many awakenings in recent years, including awakening from the self-delusions about our own race relations and equity, to the awakening to the climate crisis that lies before us. The pandemic, too, has contributed to a shift in our consciousness. We have had a painful break from the routines of life. Now is the time of individual and collective resetting of priorities and values.

I can't imagine a more exciting time to be alive. It seems that anything is possible. Especially if we all wake up together!

Can we all walk the land together and at one with our own immense power— as real tigers?