Twenty-two years ago I named my business Positive Mental Imagery because I knew it is the most powerful way to achieve peak performances in any sport. Using positive mental images repeatedly creates success instead of reliving failures, instills confidence, and reinforces your abilities so you can perform easily and effortlessly automatically without thinking.
Imagery is making a mental representation through the use of your senses and imagination. Since your subconscious mind takes in everything literally, it doesn’t distinguish between what is real from what you are imagining.
Visualization is only one of your senses
Visualization is not the same as imagery. We all know that visualization is the process of creating a mental picture in our minds. Not everyone “sees” in the same way. Some people are more visual than others. And not everyone “imagines” in the same way.
Seeing or visualizing is only one of your senses. Pre-school children are vivid visualizers or day dreamers, which is a right brain function. When they go to school they are taught using mostly left brain functions and begin to stop using their right brain capabilities. When you don’t use this part of your brain, you tend to believe that you can’t visualize. We all visualize, although it may not be as vivid as it once was.
Imagery is making a mental representation through the use of your senses. We all learn by processing information and stimuli through our five senses which are seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling. The senses we use in golf are visual (seeing), auditory (sound, rhythm, balance), and kinesthetic (touch, feeling). While athletes have good hand-eye coordination, they can learn and perform at their best by utilizing their dominant sense.
What is your dominant sense?
If your dominant sense is visual, you will “see a line on the green”, and learn the golf swing best by seeing it performed. If you are mainly auditory you will understand instruction best by listening, and be most confident by sensing the rhythm and tempo of the swing. If you process information kinesthetically, you will learn best when you can feel the swing. If you trust your sixth sense, you will know intuitively which club to use. When you know what your dominant sense is, you can then make positive internal representations of the shots you want to produce.
Guided mental imagery is a learning technique where descriptive language appealing to the senses is used to benefit the listener. Athletes as well as golfers use positive mental imagery in hypnosis to help them achieve their goals. Through the use of hypnotic suggestion you can communicate with your subconscious mind and program new ideas in your golf game for success. These new ideas must include positive self-talk, belief in your abilities and potential, and imagery of a superior performance in accomplishing your goal.
Be like a child and play in your inner mind, using your imagination to sense yourself practicing and playing, totally focused with calm and relaxed confidence. See, hear and feel yourself accomplishing your goals. Experience how good it feels within your physical body to hit perfect shots and putts. Enjoy your success over and over!
Available now at www.pmi4.com/cart are CDs created with powerful guided mental imagery suggestions to improve different parts of your mental golf game.
Play “In the Zone” With Joan
Entrain Your Heart & Mind for Peak Performances
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