What Can We Learn From Tiger Woods' Troubles?

"There was never a doubt that we live in a celebrity-driven culture," said Brown, a certified life coach and author of Choices, from Dog Ear Press (www.wgranvillebrown.com). "As Tiger gets ready to play in the Masters, his every move and word is already being scrutinized. One columnist found irony that Tiger is rebooting his career in Augusta at a country club that doesn't allow females to join as full members. Others are picking apart his short TV interviews. It all points to the fact that people still aren't comfortable with the choices he's made since his troubles became public, but we don't need to gang up on him. I think it would be more productive if we could take a lesson from his troubles and apply it to our own lives."

Brown believes that hidden in the forest of lurid interest in Tiger's issues is a nugget of personal truth awaiting us all. Temptation -- a big factor in Tiger's string of personal choices -- can be valuable, according to Brown, because of the potential lessons in how to avoid it.

"All of us, no matter how much we succeed in life or who we are, can still fall prey to temptation, lust, greed and having our faith and beliefs shaken - if not tumbled," he said. "But in the end, we are people of free will, not puppets, and no one can make us do anything we don't wish to do, as long as we have the faith in ourselves to persevere. We have to face the truth that we all live imperfect lives, and that our celebrity-driven culture has the notion that our idols, our celebrities, are supposed to embody the perfect lives we cannot ourselves achieve. This is why we are disappointed so often. Instead of taking that disappointment in sorrow, however, we seem to exhibit this almost sadistic glee when we experience it. This is because somehow we perceive that when the mighty fall, it somehow lifts up the rest of us. It doesn't. The only thing that can elevate our souls is within each of us, and it begins with our choices."

Brown explained that choices are inextricably packaged with either benefits or consequences, or some mixture of both.

"Human beings have the ability to make their own decisions, but one thing is very clear," he added. "With choice, there is also a measure of both accountability and responsibility. Too many times when we fail, we mask the result in excuses, trying to cast them as reasons for failure. The irony is that the films that elevate performers to celebrity status typically depict a classic hero's journey, where the adversity their characters face reveals the measure of their character. Life truly imitates art in that respect. A person's character isn't determined by how they conduct themselves when life is easy and comfortable, but rather, it is determined by how they conduct themselves when the solid fecal matter makes contact with the rotary air device. How we make use of our gifts, countering our liabilities against them - and find a way to survive the adversity - is how we discover the stuff we're made of."