Golf is a journey. Once you hit that first ball, you are on a lifetime of discovery. Your game is forever evolving, challenging you to be the best you can be, sending you along paths which at times can be frustrating, and other times exhilarating. But never dull.
Think about it. In a four hour game we are aiming to get back in under (or hopefully well under) 100 shots. For each shot, we are only swinging the club and connecting with the ball for about 2 seconds. That’s 3 minutes out of 4 hours!
That leaves a lot of time for thinking about what we’ve done wrong, doesn’t it? Because we rarely think about what we’ve done right, do we? How can we stand up at one tee and hit a long perfect shot down the fairway, and then barely dribble the ball off the next tee?
As Bob Rotella said,
“Golf is not a game of perfect.”
We always analyse our swing, but how often do we analyse our thoughts?
Professional golfers use Neuro Linguistic Programming techniques to visualise the perfect shot and improve performance.
How would your golf game improve if you could …
set yourself up for success instead of failure
understand how the mind does not compute negatives, so if you stand at the first tee and repeatedly tell yourself “Don’t put it in the trees’, your mind is focused only on the trees
learn how to identify with, and model, the top golfers
be aware of your negative self talk and use the walk between shots to shake off what’s gone before and mentally prepare for the next one
visualise the perfect shot and anchor your good shots into your recorded muscle memory
manage performance anxiety and let go of tension
learn some fun techniques
Are you curious to find out?
If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.
Zen