Get Out of Your Own Way – Chapter 2, Part 2.
Chapter 2 – Learn Something
If It Feels Like Hard Work, You’re Doing it Wrong
Most people believe their feelings are caused by what is going on outside of them.
Yet at the same time they are very attached to the idea that they are, or should be, in control of what they think, feel, and do in the world.
Can you see the contradiction?
When we believe something that isn’t true, it’s because our feelings, our gut instinct, our inner wisdom, has come into play. We feel anxious, uneasy, insecure. How we interpret these feelings is the key to whether our behaviour changes.
If we believe that we have control, that we have agency over our thinking or behaviour, then it will make sense to use willpower or strength of mind to try to push ourselves into doing what we think we should be doing.
The trouble with this approach is that it requires a huge amount of extra thinking and mental effort. We call the feeling associated with this exertion ‘stress’. Trying to overcome something that isn’t true by repeatedly telling yourself that it is true is extremely hard work, and usually we can maintain the pretence for only so long.
Eventually the truth wins out.
No one wants to be depressed. Not many people are happy being overweight, being smokers, being in unhappy relationships, having the chipping yips, or spending hours searching for errant golf balls in the woods every time they play.
Telling someone who is or does any of these that they have a choice and that they can or should control their behaviour – or change it – has never and will never work.
If it did, why do we still see so many examples of all these symptoms?
Asking or telling people to fix their behaviour is exactly the opposite of what will help them. It fortifies false belief. Their thinking revs up and they feel worse.
When they feel worse, they are much more likely to carry on doing what they have always done to make themselves feel better. They have direct evidence from their own experience that that works. At least in the short term.
My response to a bad round had been to ask the question: What do I need to fix in my golf to avoid in the future how I’m feeling now? The answer was to go to the range to learn something new. Rather than dwelling on what had gone wrong, my thinking moved on to a possibly better future.
I started to feel better.
Looking back, I see that it was a coping mechanism rather than a strategy to realise my potential as a golfer.
Millions of people are trapped in a similar cycle, asking the wrong questions, then trying to fix the circumstances of their lives to make themselves feel better.
So, What Can be Done?
I’ve long since realised that I can’t make anyone do something if they don’t want to do it. Or teach them anything worthwhile if they don’t want to learn. The only way anyone makes a positive change in their life is through having an insight. Through realising that something is true.
Or seeing that something they believed to be true actually isn’t.
A coach’s role is to help someone to use their intellect – their logical, rational mind – to explore their beliefs about themself, their golf, and how they think the world works.
Sometimes when we do this, an insight occurs, and they see that something they believed strongly in fact isn’t true.
When such an insight arises, using willpower or trying to change behaviour through control or coercion then becomes unnecessary. Thinking calms down, and the mind clears, leaving room for more insights to flow.
When insight flows, we see more clearly what is and isn’t true about life and about ourselves.
It becomes a virtuous circle. Our perception of the world aligns more closely with the reality of it.
Rather than believing the thought that a cigarette, or a chocolate bar, or another beer, or holing 100 three-footers in a row will make us feel better, such thoughts aren’t taken seriously, if we even notice them at all.
Rather than paying attention to the thought that going to the gym will be painful or uncomfortable, we just start to warm up and are pleasantly surprised when we enjoy working out and feel even better afterwards.
Rather than mindlessly shelling another large bucket of balls down the driving range in an effort to cure that slice, we notice how we feel when we play and become curious about why we might be feeling that way.
This is how significant change happens on a deep and sustainable level. Suddenly, behaviour that had seemed habitual and intractable just somehow stops.
Our previous beliefs just don’t seem like good ideas anymore. This doesn’t happen through trying or willpower. It happens through insight. It happens because we have no choice. The option to do something else just doesn’t occur.
If You Don’t Understand the Window
As I said earlier, the fact that I can’t teach anyone anything is one of the paradoxes of being a coach or a teacher. All I can do is point towards what is true and hope that someone looks past their current beliefs to see what I’m seeing.
Usually, the best way to do this is to ask different questions to the ones people have been asking themselves.
The direction I will be pointing in the coming pages is opposite to most modern golf instruction. We are absorbing more and more information about golf and golf swings. But the average handicap hasn’t improved over the last forty years.
The problem with information is that it is contextual. What means one thing in one situation can mean something completely different in another. So, if you don’t understand the context, you don’t really understand anything.
Any information we become aware of will be filtered and absorbed through our pre-conceived notions about how the world works and, crucially, about who we think we are.
Therefore, we all know golfers who could write a book about the golf swing but can’t break 90. They are immensely knowledgeable about the golf swing but hopelessly ignorant about themselves.
No matter how much information we take in, we can’t understand the view until we understand the nature of the window through which we are viewing it. We will explore this crucial concept in more depth in Chapter Six.
In the next chapter, we will explore in more detail the nature of our beliefs, how and why they change, and the implications these have for our golf.
We will also have an initial look at the third of the big realisations that had a profound impact on my golf and my life.