Play Your Best Golf in 2021 (Part 1) – The Art of Looking Back

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The New Year is almost upon us (thank goodness) and avid golfers at every level of the game will be pondering what they hope to achieve in 2021. The process will be so stimulating for some that they will be a game-changing or life-changing resolution. And for many, it means a firm commitment to goals aligned with the wave of their dreams.

They are great things, and it is a mental effort that is absolutely required when it is important to get better results on the golf course. But as a mental coach with decades of experience, here are three words you need to hear before heading towards a future with better play and lower scores … not so fast.

Rethink the Past Before Conquering the Future

A burning desire to achieve your dreams is an essential aspect of success, but it is not the whole equation. Before imagining becoming a more consistent ball striker, hitting the lowest rounds of your life, or seeing yourself holding a coveted trophy, it's critical to avert your eyes long enough from the future to get a Get a powerful picture of your past.

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Honestly, I learned this the hard way. In my early days as a coach, I focused exclusively on the future. I was passionate about goal setting, planning and vision. I would help my clients map their needs, identify obstacles in the path and develop strategies to overcome them all. The results for my clients (and in my own life) have been good … but not great.

Fortunately, the ability to coach professional athletes and senior executives inspired me to study the workings of the subconscious mind … the part of us that maintains our habits, filters our experience, and more to the point of this article, sets limits on what we can be, do and have in life. And from this study, I learned that the memories we prioritize – consciously or unconsciously – determine our future efforts.

Here it is helpful to think of memories as making chapters in the running book of your life. Whether it is your personal life, your career or your golf game, it seems important to the subconscious mind for the next chapter to follow the previous chapter logically.

If you're like us, you took great photos, mediocre photos, and horrible photos last year. You had great rounds, medium rounds and brutal rounds. You enjoyed a hot streak or two, and likewise fell into a dip or two. And like most golfers, you probably tend to focus on your worst swings and your worst rounds. You will mentally pull out miss hits more often and feel them more intensely than your best moments.

It's not your fault. Quickly identifying problems and threats is an evolutionary aspect of human nature that has enabled us to survive and thrive. But the tendency to emphasize the negative and downplay the positive can make it difficult when it comes to achieving your most meaningful goals – in fact, it's a real stumbling block – because the subconscious mind tends to control the dominant emotions of this. year the ongoing themes in the next chapter of your life. And no matter how much you want things to be different, if most of your mental energy was spent on disappointment, frustration, or fear on the golf course last year, your script will most likely remain fundamentally the same in 2021.

I am sure you have experienced it yourself or seen it in others. When we set a goal outside the arc of our current story (or self-image, if you prefer), we invariably sabotage the achievement of that goal. We get hurt at the wrong time, rekindle a bad habit, or create a new pattern of behavior that distracts us from our efforts, or suffocate when the big moment is near.

But just as your future is not set in stone, neither is your past. You can and should shape your perception of what happened.

Manage your memories

As you deliberately showcase your best moments from 2020 and set goals that align with the arc of that story (even if your new goal is a significant stretch), you'll move forward with a deep sense of confidence. You will feel that you are meant to reach this level of success … as if fate is somehow at work. There will be obstacles and setbacks. You won't suddenly go from constantly choking in tournaments to being as cool as Brooks Koepka under pressure. Yet somehow you will notice an internal shift in your attitude, and your efforts will bring you closer, if not directly, to the rose of your desires

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I repeat, before deciding on a future goal, it is essential to manage your memories in a way that paves the way for the improvement you desire.

I'm not talking about constructing a fantasy and hypnotizing yourself to believe it. No matter how much editing I do with my story, I will not be eligible for the Champions Tour next year. And you don't sleep in Butler Cabin on the eve of the Masters. So it is not about convincing yourself that you are one of the best golfers in the world when you are not the best golfer in your country. The point is to become deeply convinced – through the truth of your own experience – that you have what it takes to write a story about the future that improves and perhaps dramatically improves last year's results.

Here I want to be very clear. I strongly recommend that you do the following exercises. Don't hide this work. As the old Nike slogan said, "Just do it."

Simply reading the rest of this article – even if you happen to agree with what I'm writing – won't get you anywhere that is beneficial to your game. Application is key.

So grab a pen and paper, set aside 30-60 minutes of undisturbed time, and give the following your undivided attention. Hey … there is what it takes. And besides, your game is worth it!

Step One

List your best golf moments of 2020.

~ 3 Best Rounds

~ 3 Best Holes

~ 3 best discs

~ 3 best par 3 tee shots

~ 3 best fairway woods / hybrids

~ 3 Best Irons

~ 3 Best Recoveries

~ 3 best ups and downs

~ 3 best lay putts

~ 3 best-made putts

~ 3 Funniest Moments

~ 3 best times with friends

~ 3 best courses / institutions

The secret here is to let yourself relive every moment .

Let your mind travel back in time. Be there again. Look what you saw. Listen to what you have heard. Make things alive. Notice the beauty of your surroundings. Think about your playing partners. Hear the sound of your club and the sound of your ball on the clubface. Watch your ball fly to its target. Hear the ball roll around the bottom of the cup (or, in Covid times, maybe gently hit the flagstick).

Close your eyes, take your time and relive every memory as if it were happening again.

You don't make up events or distort the truth. But you selectively emphasize your best memories.

Give this exercise a fair effort, and you'll convince yourself – on a deep level – that you have what it takes to take great golf shots, make great putts, and play great rounds. It's key to developing the confidence it takes to play your best golf when it matters most.

Step Two

Now make a second list.

~ 3 Hardest / Disappointing Moments

Everything in golf is not a bed of roses. If you've played enough in 2020, there's a chance that you've experienced a devastating moment where you wasted an opportunity to hit a meaningful milestone. Or maybe you experienced a demoralizing slump, and if it lasted long enough, you wondered if you would ever get your & # 39; A & # 39; game back. Such "negatives" are an inevitable part of golf at every level. But the real problem isn't the fact that they happened. It is not possible to learn from them.

Let me make an important distinction: When I talk about learning, I'm not talking about gathering more information or increasing your understanding. I'm talking about using your imagination. It is mental images, not ideas, that have the greatest influence on personal performance. It doesn't matter if you've analyzed your mistakes enough to write a PhD. thesis. What is important, in terms of your future achievements and results, is to envision yourself performing in a way that corrects your mental or physical mistake and rewrites the memory with a better ending.

The key here is to review crucial memories that still carry a strong negative emotional charge.

Take the moments you just mentioned one by one. As you recall them all, use your imagination to distance yourself from the memory and make sure you can see yourself in it. It should be like watching a video on the YouTube of your head – and you're in it. This will help you break free from the negative feelings associated with the memory and allow you to edit it in the same way that a movie director decides to redo a scene.

Be sure to see yourself taking golf shots during this rethought moment. Notice how learning in your bones changes your pre-shot routine, your in-shot routine, or your post-shot response. Notice how changing what you do also changes the results of each shot. Note if the change improves your score on the hole and your final score for the round.

Whether the shift is subtle or dramatic, your mind must identify the change as something you have already achieved.

Now that you've done this important inner work … well … congratulations is okay. By spending time on step one and step two, you have rewritten the chapter of your golf life from last year in a way that can and will enhance the following. Well done.

And speaking of the following, tune in again next week, then I will share with you a process that builds on the work you have done here and will further increase your chances of playing your best golf in 2021.