The decisions we make in our lives reflect the choices we make. This is especially true on the golf course. Although we have hit each club in the bag hundreds of times, every situation on the course requires a new decision.

Indecision will sabotage your shot
Suppose that you have decided that it is a 5-iron that you need to hit to the green. If you had hit over the green into trouble the last time you hit that club, you probably will experience some fear and will think about hitting a 6-iron. Or you think the distance is between clubs and you don’t have confidence in either club. Fear is always an emotion experienced in the past. The power of a fear thought limits your willingness to trust yourself.

If you can’t make up your mind whether it is a 6 or a 5-iron, you are sending an indecisive message from your mind to your muscles. You will probably swing harder with the 6-iron, and be reluctant to take a full swing with the 5-iron. In either case, not putting your best swing on it will result in a lack of distance.

Choose to use a decisive thought for good results

You must believe that the club in your hand is the right one for the shot you are about to hit. If you are unsure, “act as if” it is the right one. This will shut out the “self-talk” doubt and fear thoughts and give a powerful, decisive message to your subconscious mind about what you want to happen.

A golf swing happens now in the present. Don’t bring past fears or future anxieties of what might happen into your preparation pre-shot routine. Be decisive. If you believe it is the right club you have a much better chance of creating a good swing. Brad Faxon said: “It’s more important to be decisive than correct.” If you are decisive……….you are correct.

Choose to use positive words for good results

One of the options to use when you are in-between clubs is to shorten your grip on the club which shortens the length of the swing. Golfers say that they “choke” down on the club in this situation. Your unconscious mind will interpret this as “strangling/squeezing the life out of” which will cause you to grip the club tighter. Your subconscious mind is very susceptible to suggestion. Be careful of the words you use in your golf vocabulary as they will directly impact your results.

Choose to use positive affirmations for good results

As you look down the fairway visualizing a perfect shot with the perfect club, fire in your affirmation. Remember that an affirmation is always stated in the present, such as, “I am swinging with ease and confidence,” or “I am hitting the ball at my target,” or “I am positive this is the best club for this shot.”

Harvey Penick was quoted saying, “Once you address the golf ball, hitting it has to be the most important thing in your life at that moment. Shut out all thoughts other than picking out a target and taking dead aim at it.”

Choose to create your success anew

Success is never the same two rounds in a row. One day you might have a hole-in-one, and the next day you might be successful scoring lower than you did with the hole-in-one.

Success will give you confidence, but success is fleeting. You have to start over again the next day. Instead of trying to duplicate your success, be decisive, have patience, enjoy the moment, and watch miracles happen.

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success.
If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
—Albert Schweitzer

Entrain Your Heart & Brain for Peak Performances!

© Copyright PMI 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Last month the discussion in this newsletter was about your intention to create the golf successes you desire. By setting precise goals you defined what your strategy is and how to achieve it.

Now that you have a written plan, the next step is to take action. You can now create something out of nothing by structuring your thoughts.

Make a conscious decision now to create your highest vision for yourself and your golf game by partnering with your intention to create your peak performances.

If you were about to accomplish in your golf game all that you have ever dreamed of, what would you need to do right now to be ready to accept that success?

“There’s nothing wrong with having your goals really high and trying to achieve them. That’s the fun part. You may come up short. I’ve come up short on a lot of my goals, but it’s always fun to try and achieve them.” — Tiger Woods

Why do you play golf?

When you think about playing golf, do you have visions of being outside in the sunshine, swinging with ease and freedom? Or do you spend your time thinking about what “could have been” — “if only you had” done something different? The former description is full of passion, the latter is full of guilt and excuses. A truism is that the more intense your feeling is, the quicker it will be attained.

Do you learn from your life experiences?

When golfers judge their shots on the golf course and see them as mistakes, they often try to justify why the shots happened to keep themselves from feeling like a failure. As human beings we learn best by paying attention to what didn’t work and then learning from the experience. Thomas Edison was famous for saying he hadn’t failed 9,999 times to invent the light bulb. Instead, he had found 9,999 ways that didn’t work and was that much closer to success.

Let go of justifying your miss-hits and learn from the choices you made. If your heart-felt desire is to really enjoy playing, begin now to mold your passion, potential and purpose into a positive learning experience.

Young Female Golfers Show Their Mental Discipline

Do you need more discipline, decision and organization? Are you ready to set sail toward your destination or do you need to reach into your mental tool box for additional tools.

Jennifer Johnson and Jennifer Song met in the final match of the Women’s Amateur in August 2009 in St. Louis. Johnson was a shy 18-year-old from LaQuinta, CA who had been working with her mental coach for five years. She kept her focus and never trailed in her first 94 holes of match play in the stifling August heat.

Song, 19 of South Korea who won the Amateur & the Public Links in 2009, said of her mental coach, “He wouldn’t let me hit a golf ball if I wasn’t thinking positively. He changed my life.” Last year as a 21-year-old rookie, she won the first professional event she entered.

The Great Law of Magnetic Attraction

The Law of Attraction is easy to understand. What your thoughts are constantly focused upon is attracted to you. Your subconscious mind takes all thoughts literally and acts upon them without change.

The subconscious mind does not know the difference between reality and fantasy. This is apparent when you watch an action movie and your heart races, or read a sad story and you cry or feel other emotions. Your conscious mind knows the difference between the story and reality, but your body reacts as though it is real.

If you are feeling good you will attract what you want. If you are feeling bad you will attract what you do NOT want.

Good decisions come from when you are in a good state. Bad decisions come from when you are in a bad state.

Your state of being (feelings) attracts everything to you.
You cannot attract low scores if you are feeling unworthy.
You cannot attract making putts if you are feeling fear.
You cannot attract winning if you are feeling undeserving of it.
You cannot be focused if you are feeling nervous and anxious.
You cannot be having fun if you are feeling frustrated.

Is your golf game happening to you, or are you choosing to make it happen?

You must see yourself from the state of being that will attract what you desire. Consciously choose to feel good and successful even if you have to “act as if.” Repetition is the key to training your subconscious mind into a good state on the golf course to produce good results.

Are you always in a good state on the golf course?

In NLP we speak of modeling winners. Tiger Woods talks about the “art of winning.” He learned to win and win again in junior golf and his confidence kept multiplying. “You start getting a feel on how to do it,” Woods said, “And sort of understanding the feel and the art of winning. I certainly could believe there is an art to winning.”

What will Phil do next?

Phil Mickelson’s dream is to become the #1 golfer in the world. His plans to do that were side tracked when the two women in his life are battling breast cancer, and he was diagnosed with potentially debilitating psoriatic arthritis.

Phil maintained his passion even through adversity.“When I had my nurse gown on,” he said, “I would mentally rehearse shots and stuff to just kind of keep myself sharp, even though I wasn’t touching a club.”

Dealing with life-and-death problems, Phil said more than once, “I’m excited to play. It just makes me realize how much I really enjoy what I do, how much I love playing the game of golf, how much I love competing on the PGA Tour and how I don’t ever want to take that for granted.”

Phil won his first pro title at Torrey Pines in1993. He also played his high school golf matches there. With high hopes of winning, he returned last week to play in the Farmers Insurance Open at the course he knows so well.

Bubba Watson, another left handed player, won the tournament by making a dramatic 12-foot birdie putt on the last hole. If you watched the tournament you saw the way Phil walked up and surveyed the undulations in the green with a winner’s plan to hit a 72-yard wedge shot past the hole and spin it back into the cup for eagle to force a playoff.

Although the plan didn’t work, Phil remained upbeat. “I’m disappointed.” he said. “I wanted to start the year off with a win. On the other hand, I played really good golf.” These are the thoughts of a champion.

Entrain Your Heart & Brain for Peak Performances!

© Copyright PMI 2011. All Rights Reserved.

The New Year of 2011 has begun. It is a time to look forward to the coming year. It’s a time to reflect on the changes we want to make in our lives. It’s a time to resolve to make those changes. Have you made your New Year’s resolutions and stuck to achieving them? Committing to making a change in the New Year is different from other resolutions in that it is done at the end of the year when we have good intentions to improve our lives.

Why do New Year’s resolutions fail?
Generally people resolve to change long standing habits such as exercise, weight loss, or smoking. Unfortunately, many of these resolutions are broken and their life reverts back to old habits. The intention to improve one’s life is a very positive life step. However, a better way to be successful is by setting short as well as long term goals.
Resolutions can be overwhelming as they stay the same; “I will exercise more this year.” On the other hand, goals can be broken down into small steps that can increase in difficulty bringing you closer to your overall goal. As you accomplish the initial steps you become accustomed to the change and develop new lasting positive habits.

Once you have broken a resolution, it’s easy to feel like a failure and give up altogether. But as you achieve each small goal, you will feel that you are on the right track and are moving in the right direction to accomplish the success of your ultimate goal.
If you find the resolution too difficult, it is easy to discard it. When you set many small goals and you find it difficult to achieve one, you can choose a new one that will lead you to the same end result.

In a research study by Locke, Shaw, Saari & Latham (1981) involving specific and challenging goals, they concluded that 90% led to higher performance than did easy or no goals.

When I go to the pool for water aerobics, the instructor says for us to “do our personal best” with each new exercise. What does this mean?

Locke and Latham state that people who are told to “do their best” will not do so. To accomplish a mental or physical skill a person has to have a clear view of what is expected from him/her. Therefore, setting a goal is important because it focuses your efforts in a specific direction.

Think in terms of what you’d like to improve in your golf game,
not what you think isn’t good enough.

Good goal setting means setting precise goals. Champions know where they are going, what their plan is along the way. Most golfers never reach their goals because they don’t define them or seriously consider they are achievable. In setting your goals, keep in mind the following criteria.

Have Specific Goals

Goals should clearly define what you are choosing to do. Defining what you want to happen will help you to focus your efforts. Make your short term goals clear and easy to accomplish. In setting your goals, ask yourself the following What, Why and How questions.
• WHAT do you want to accomplish with each goal? Be specific.
• WHY is it important to do it at this time?
• HOW are you going to do it? List short term and intermediate goals.

Have Realistic Goals

You must want to achieve the goal and not just wish it to happen. Once you have broken a resolution, it’s easier to feel like a failure and give up altogether. Set goals that you can attain with some effort. If it is too difficult you set yourself up for failure. If it is too easy there isn’t any motivation to improve.

Have Measurable Goals

Your progress in golf is easily measured by your handicap, and other stats such as number of putts, fairways and greens hit in regulation, ups and downs, sand saves, etc. By measuring your progress you stay on track, know where you are in your progress and can enjoy the success of achievement that motivates you to move on to the next goal. By writing down your mental goals you can also track your progress.

Have Attainable Goals

You must believe that you can achieve the goal. Conversely, some people don’t set goals high enough because they don’t want to be disappointed. It is important to set goals where you have a 50% chance of success or more. You don’t want to have unrealistic expectations just to make yourself feel good. You probably won’t commit to goals which are too far out of your reach. Although you may start with the best of intentions, the knowledge that it’s too much for you means your subconscious will keep reminding you of this fact and will stop you from even giving it your best.

Have Positive Goals

Your goals must be positive. If your goals are negative about what you want to avoid you will not form any new habits to move you forward. If you focus on accomplishing short term as well as intermediate goals, it can help to cure anxiety and burnout or “the poor me” (pity pot) syndrome. You need a positive plan to decide what you need to develop in yourself and in your golf game.

Time Manage Your Goals

Time management is about being clear about your short and intermediate-term goals, and choosing a plan that will help you achieve those goals. Once you have written down all of your goals, focus on your short-term goals by posting them on your computer or around the house. Change is an on-going process. Reward yourself when you stick with the process of accomplishing your goals.

Set a timeframe for the accomplishment of each goal. This gives you a clear end point. If you don’t set a time, your commitment will be too vague and you may not even get started.

LONG TERM GOALS
Lifetime:
Five Year:
One Year:
Six Months:

SHORT TERM GOALS
One Month:
Next Tournament:
Next Round:
Next Practice:

MENTAL GOALS
Positive Attitude:
Mental Rehearsal:
Positive Self-Talk:
Visualization:
Concentration:
Mental Rehearsal:
Pre-shot Routine:

Goal Setting Questions

Now is the time to program your golf game for this year and the next ten years. Your current thoughts are going to create your future. If this is the winter off-season for you, this is the best time to develop a solid mental game. Answering these questions will help you create well-defined, compelling and attainable goals, and provide a pathway to their natural realization.
• What do I need to do to make this goal(s) happen?
• What physical or mental skills do I need to develop or improve on?
• What will I need to do on a daily or weekly basis to accomplish this goal?
• What will I need to change in my thinking to achieve this goal?
• How will I know when I have achieved my goal?
• What will I see, hear and feel at that time?
• What effect will this goal have or create?
• Imagine how you will feel when you have achieved this goal.
• The first thing I will do is:

Without goals, and plans to reach them,
you are like a ship that has set sail with no destination.
Fitzhugh Dodson

Entrain Your Heart & Brain for Peak Performances!

© Copyright PMI 2011. All Rights Reserved.