You may have top quality golf equipment and the most expensive coach, but it’s not going to help you too much if you do not have the right mindset. There are lots of famous quotes about the game of golf that is 90% played in the mind. Your mind is the most dynamic tool you own, use it in the right way and you can achieve practically anything.
You need to realise that if you do not have the correct mental attitude you will not be successful. We all have days when our golf game is great and then suddenly our game can be a complete disaster. So why is golf such a mental game?
Our mind is such a complicated piece of apparatus, we have only two ways of thinking:
- We get Inspiration and act on it
- We use the memories that continually replay in our mind of a time when we were in a similar situation. This goes a long way to explaining why you can sometimes hit the same bad shot on a particular hole.
Our subconscious mind is a marvellous piece of engineering, it stores absolutely everything we have ever done as memories. The only problem is the subconscious mind cannot separate between good and bad memories. The vast majority of people go through their entire lives just using these memories that are replaying in their mind. This is the reason people develop so many habits and find it so difficult to break them.
So how can we re-program our mind so that we act more on inspiration and only rely on the good memories we have stored?
There are lots of ways you can use to try and reprogram your mind. The biggest problem is that the majority of people are just so cynical about changing their ways. I honestly believe that you should try these things with an open mind, having faith that they will make a difference.
Visualisation is a great tool, anybody can achieve this;- we do this all the time whilst day dreaming. Next time you are standing over a shot, just picture in your mind, you making the perfect golf swing and see the ball fly into the distance, and land exactly where you aimed it. Feels good doesn’t it. Be sure to use this technique for every shot you make, including putting.
Never be negative on the golf course. As soon as you say something negative you are putting this idea into your mind. You have got to realize how powerful the mind is – if I say to you “don’t think about a big red hairy spider ” I bet you have that image right now in your mind? You must be positive on the golf course, always picture and state that you are going to make a great shot.
Reign in your emotions on the course. When you see players throwing their clubs, you can practically guarantee that their next shot is going to be a bad one.
One other area that is being used more and more for mind training, is NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming). NLP is the innovative science of the mind, it uses physiology and the unconscious mind to adapt thought processes, which allows negative behaviour and habits to be changed to positive. These are recordings that will put you into a light trance and then make recommendations to your subconcious mind. Sounds strange, but I have tested them and have never felt so relaxed. Keep an open mind and try it out.
So these are a few ideas for you to give some thought to. To put it plainly, in golf as it is in life, if you can’t imagine it you will never achieve it!
