Trying to Control Your Thoughts
And Feelings When You Play?
The greatest potential for enhancing both learning and enjoyment lies in questioning your beliefs about the game. In asking different questions, you begin to see the inherent problems that come with building a worldview or indeed a strategy for your golf, based on firmly held beliefs or concepts gleaned from outside sources.
I’m sure you can think of a couple of examples of things you believed in at certain points in your life that turned out to be untrue, or false.
Father Christmas? The Tooth Fairy? That a slice is caused by an open clubface?
So, please don’t feel bad or foolish if upon closer examination, a number of beliefs that you might have about your golf turn out to be false.
This is a process we all go through in all areas of our lives. Indeed it would be unhealthy if we did not let go of certain beliefs. Those that might have served a purpose for a while but were discarded when their useful life had ended.
This is why regularly examining the beliefs and concepts by which you live your life is a valuable, indeed essential, part of learning and thriving.
As a wise person once said, ‘Your beliefs can make evidence transparent’.
Can You Choose What You Think About?
It’s impossible for a human being to go through life without having beliefs and theories about what is going on around them. One way to have a healthy, happy day to day experience is to be open to the possibility that these theories might not all be true.
Many golfers cherish the belief that perfecting your golf swing is the key to consistent good play and enjoyable golf.
The fact that even the best players in the world sometimes lose form and fall out of love with the game might start to raise some questions as to whether this belief is one worth subscribing to.
In this article, we will explore another commonly held theory. The idea that a particular thought or way of thinking or feeling is preferable in terms of golfing performance.
This belief represents one of the main strategies that golf coaches and sports psychologists have been advocating for years. That you should attempt to control or manage your thinking and state of mind before, during and after your game.
Unfortunately, it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding about how human psychology really works.
It’s based on the belief that human beings can control or choose what they think about. However, when you take a moment to consider this logically, you quickly come to realise that this can’t be true.
If you’ve ever stood on a tee with water down the right hand side of the fairway and out of bounds down the left, you will be all too aware that thoughts come into your head whether you like it or not.
We can’t deliberately choose not to think thoughts we don’t want prior to them arising. And it takes an awful lot of mental effort to then try to think of different thoughts to replace them with.
If you have ever tried to manage your thinking like this, you probably found that it took on a life of its own. The very feelings of insecurity, nerves and anxiety you were trying to avoid remained or intensified.
Where Do Feelings Come From?
A much more effective remedy for butterflies in the tummy is to understand why you might be feeling nervous in this situation in the first place.
(Hint; it has nothing to do with the water or the Out of Bounds.)
This is one of the fundamental tenets of what I help people to explore.
We never feel our situation or circumstances. Our feelings can come and go independent of what is happening around us. We attribute our feelings to an event with the benefit of hindsight.
So, if you’re feeling nervous or anxious on the first tee, despite how it looks, it has nothing to do with the round or shot you are about to play.
It is simply down to the thinking you have going on as you are waiting. Predictions about what might or might not happen. Expectations about how you need to play in order to feel OK about yourself.
Look at it logically. If a situation could really be the cause of a feeling, you would always feel the same way in that situation. We know this isn’t true. Our feelings come and go even though our circumstances haven’t changed.
On the first tee one day we feel anxious. The next day we feel energised and confident.
Leave Your Thinking Alone
This is why golfers are (rightly) sceptical of the guidance from golf psychologists and mental coaches. It is directly contradicted by their own experiences.
As a result of poor advice, they are thinking too much about what is in essence, a simple sport. This misunderstanding compounds feelings of doubt, anxiety and lack of confidence.
These feelings make it much more difficult to swing with good rhythm and timing, (as I explain in more detail in this online learning program.)
Unfortunately, the techniques and strategies offered by most golf psychologists require the golfer to think even more. No wonder the game can seem so hard!
When you gain a better understanding of how your mind really works, you will see more and more that the correlation is between your feelings and your thinking. Not between your feelings and what is going on.
Not from the first tee, the out of bounds or short putts. You understand that like all thinking, if left alone, it will pass.
You will naturally feel calmer, less insecure, more confident.
Just Play
In fact, doing nothing is by far the best solution to first tee nerves, or any other kinds of anxious feelings. Mainly because there is nothing you can do to stop yourself from feeling whatever you are feeling.
The good news is you don’t need to.
You may have had the experience of feeling confident but then not playing as well as you had hoped. And you will probably have had the experience of not feeling great, but then going out and surprising yourself by playing beyond your expectations.
This is in direct conflict with what most people believe about needing to feel confident in order to play to your potential.
Just getting rid of the belief that your performance can be enhanced or diminished by how you feel is a big factor in your resilience and consistency.
You stop worrying about it and just play.
If you’d like to know more, please follow this link to book a Discovery Call.
In summary:
Carefully examine the belief that you can choose or control what you think about or when you think it. What is your evidence for this belief?
Your thoughts and feelings have no bearing on your capacity to play your best golf.
When you understand these first two points, anxious feelings will be less frequent, less troubling and will pass more quickly.