Having a good attitude during a round of golf and in your everyday life is essential for success and happiness. Your attitude is just a habit of thought that you have put into your subconscious mind. Your attitude is reflected in your state of mind, your behavior, and your conduct which reflects your opinion or purpose.
“Create a Positive Mental Attitude*
Maintaining a positive attitude is important because it directly impacts your performance. When your negative attitude is stronger than your conscious effort, you will not be able to manifest what you want.
Since early childhood, most of us have been taught values and resulting attitudes that have been framed in the negative. We are so used to expressing ourselves in the negative; it sometimes becomes impossible to think of a positive way of expression.
Are you an optimist or a pessimist? How does hitting a shot out of bounds or into a water hazard affect you? Pessimists internalize the mistake, believing the missed shots will continue and undermine their game. Optimists, on the other hand, believe that a missed shot is only a temporary setback or a challenging situation to overcome. Do you look for solutions or more problems? Do you put the missed shot behind you and continue with your positive strategy?
In aeronautics attitude is the direction of the airplane in relationship to the horizon. Think of attitude in relationship to your goals. If you lean toward your goal, you have a positive attitude. If you lean away, you have a negative goal.
The bad news is that nobody can be positive 100 percent of the time, and perhaps that is one reason why golf scores are inconsistent. The good news is that you can change your attitude, just as you can change any bad habit. Your attitude is your choice. The sooner you decide to choose how you will think positively about yourself and your golf game, the less anxiety you will have and the more you will enjoy your rounds of golf. Don’t waste your round of golf looking at half-empty glasses and making a victim of yourself. Make your round of golf the most enjoyable experience possible.
Your attitude is energy producing and effects your emotional level. I am always surprised at the way people talk to themselves on the golf course and are unaware of the impact of their negative statements. The worst attitude to have is to be judgmental about yourself or your golf game, which is self-rejection. Every time you judge yourself, the pattern in your subconscious mind becomes stronger and you lost more confidence in your ability.
Ben Hogan loved the game and loved to practice. This was his attitude. Is it yours? I have loved playing the game, and practicing it, whether my schedule the next day called for a tournament, or a trip to the practice range. The prospect that there was going to be golf in it, made me privileged and happy. I couldn’t wait for the sun to come up the next morning to play the course again.
*Excerpts are from Chapter 12: Attitudes; “THE HEART OF GOLF, Access Your Supreme Intelligence for Peak Performances”
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