Enjoying Golf – Learning
Introduction
It’s great that you are enjoying your golf. And that you are keen to learn and improve. I don’t know many golfers who wouldn’t like to get better or who aren’t ‘working on’ something in their game. This potential for improvement is one of the main reasons why people fall in love with it. Golf is a tough sport to master and it is immensely satisfying and enjoyable when you make progress.
If you aren’t quite improving in the way you’d like, I hope this article might help you understand why. If things are going well, it might help stop you falling for a common misunderstanding that can stall your progress.
Addicted to Outcomes?
The game can seem hard sometimes. But the fact that even a golfer who is struggling can at some point can hit a fantastic golf shot is a reminder of our potential to improve. The challenge seems to be discovering how and why such a great result occurred. The human mind is an amazing problem solving machine. Golf provides lots of opportunities to create theories and concepts. We enjoy the feeling of figuring things out intellectually.
But no sooner have you solved one golfing problem than another one arises. There is always the feeling that another breakthrough is just around the corner. It can become addictive
This is where some golfers fall into a trap that can diminish their experience of the game, rather than enhance it. If the ego gets involved and you mistakenly believe that it is the outcome, rather than the insight that brings the feelings of satisfaction, then you gradually start to make your enjoyment dependent on your performance rather than the intrinsic, innate love of learning.
It’s a subtle shift but one that can have a detrimental impact on your enjoyment of the game.
If you are feeling like your improvement has stalled and you are on a bit of a plateau, you have my sympathy. We have all been there. Unfortunately there are many golfers in a similar position, and the golf instruction industry has to accept some responsibility for this.
It reinforces the belief that many golfers have that the only way to enjoy the game is to improve. To play better. This feeds the feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction that many of us have experienced at some point.
Where Does Understanding Take Place?
But what is it about these moments where ‘something just clicks’ that is so satisfying and rewarding? Every golfer knows the feeling. One moment you were stuck and frustrated. The next moment you understood something and you felt free and happy.
It’s important to understand that this Aha! moment doesn’t take place at the level of the intellect or the personal mind. It comes from a deeper place. Logic and intellectual reasoning might have led you to the realisation. But the feeling of understanding or ‘getting it’ doesn’t happen at the level of the mind.
It is a connection with the source of who we really are. It is a reminder of a deeper, universal intelligence. Perhaps this is why we enjoy and value the feeling so highly?
The Best Reason For Learning
The purpose for playing the game is enjoyment. When we make our enjoyment of the game conditional on reaching goals, whether in terms of learning or performance, we are placing conditions on our own happiness.
Remember when you started playing golf. You probably weren’t as competent as you are now, but you fell in love with the game. You saw the challenge of learning as something to be embraced and enjoyed, rather than a problem to be fixed or overcome. Something to be endured in order to get to somewhere better than here and now.
Most golfers know the enjoyment and satisfaction that can be experienced from a few hours on a nice piece of turf, a pile of clean golf balls and a new idea of how to improve something. The anticipation of a discovery or an insight. The feeling of joy if and when it arises. It’s the golfing equivalent of a scientist conducting an experiment in the lab, or an artist in the studio experiencing a moment of inspiration.
Conclusion
When we enjoy learning for the sake of learning, for the feeling of figuring things out and for the moments of understanding, then golf will always be enjoyable.
However, it is easy to slip into thinking about learning as a means to an end. As a route to performance. When we go into a lesson or a practice session with a predetermined outcome in mind, you start getting in our own way. Frustration and impatience builds and your capacity to learn is diminished.
If you are taking lessons or practicing and not improving. If you are feeling stuck and frustrated with your game, just check that you haven’t subverted your love of learning and turned it into a slightly more enlightened desire for performance. We all want to play well and improve. But so often setting goals and judging our learning based on our performances rather on the quality of the learning process gets in the way.
If you approach your play and practice with curiosity and an open mind, you can’t help learning. You might not learn what you think (or someone else thinks) you should learn, but that might be a useful lesson in itself.
Questions to consider:
What are you currently working on in your game?
Why is that important to you right now?
Remember the last time you had an insight about your golf. A piece of fresh, new thinking that moved you forwards. Where did that insight arrive from? How did it appear?
If you’d like to have a chat about one of these questions, please follow this link to book a discovery call.
If you’d like to read something else that might be interesting and helpful for your golf, please have a look at one of these articles.
Action Steps