€¦ · Web viewBeing the efficient learner that you are, and by following the lead of institutionalized golf instruction, you have been in a deductive process, tearing apart your

Introduction

Today it’s computers and smart phones. Golf instruction has become highly specialized- technique oriented. There is a massive quantity of advice on how to swing but almost nothing on how to play the game. A typical “golf” lesson may consist entirely of a dissertation on a dozen swing positions without the instructor ever once mentioning the target as being an object of your energy. Learning the golf swing has become synonymous with learning golf, as if they were one and the same. Of course, they’re not even close to being the same.

WHY PLAY LIKE IN YOUR DREAMS?

Being the efficient learner that you are, and by following the lead of institutionalized golf instruction, you have been in a deductive process, tearing apart your game and swing, and examining each piece. There become more and more pieces through continuing to follow this process. In time, you estrange yourself from playing the game and focusing on scoring. Rather than moving toward simplicity and ease, you are being led toward complexity and intellectual overload.

Fewer and fewer are the golfers who decisively approach the ball, aim, and fire. More and more, the student approaches the shot with an analytical checklist, which ties him or her in knots. Quite literally, it doesn’t make sense. Non-sense is pervasive. Talking about the swing is a far cry from sensing the swing.

Play Like in Your Dreams is an inductive process which focuses your energy on playing golf. There become fewer parts. You will be moving from parts to whole and from self-awareness to target interaction. You will pass through the futility of consciously trying to act upon your mechanics; you will also pass through the elusiveness of pure reaction. You’ll move into the satisfaction of managing your ability to interact with the target and its condition. You can logically and artistically move through the stages of learning to become a true player of the game.

The design of this program moves you from a wide range of understanding to a narrow and precise process of efficiently applying your energy on the golf course. This program blends your philosophical mindset with specific scoring strategies.

The progression of broad conceptual understanding moving to focused execution is characteristic of every proficient learner as well as every efficient golf shot. It is no accident that this program avoids “getting stuck” in any one technique or theory. The objective is to provide you with a range of knowledge and experience so that you can freely make your own singular decisions which will meet the demands of any golfing condition.

It is important that you take your time to comprehend and absorb the concepts underlying the precise strategies and exercises outlined. “This conceptualizing process is a vital part of learning, which negotiates for agreement and understanding between your conscious and subconscious mind. Successful negotiation between the conscious and subconscious converts

Play Like in Your Dreams 1

newly-learned techniques to scoring proficiency. Getting this overall picture of the program prevents confusion. You’ll have a clearer understanding of what you want and how you will then proceed to get what you want.

You will see immediate benefits as you move through Play Like in Your Dreams. Often, these benefits will come from a simple shift in attitude or from realizing a new way of looking at your game that will remove precious limitations or summon new personal resources. You have experienced these types of “ahas” before. They are often temporal and elusive in nature, but they are also sometimes permanent and productive in the long-term.

As you become more proficient and masterful of the program, you will find that consistency becomes more pervasive in your game. Your brain begins to pattern and move in consistent directions. A few months into the program, you will find that your present wonderment surrounding, “How can I be so great one day and so lousy the next?” will give way to consistency. Consistency simply takes time, because doing things the same way, over and over, is what creates patterns of behavior. You will realize that these patterns determine outcomes.

Nevertheless, the fascination with golf will not be lost. You’ll never become so consistent that playing golf becomes boring. The golfing environment itself is too inconsistent to reward the perfectly consistent golfer. The elements of creativity and spontaneity are required for the golfer to blend with his golfing environment. About six months of adherence to the program, you will be reaching the maturity of a golfing mind which balances continuity with spontaneity and consistency with creativity. You’ll be consistent, but you’ll delight in the ever-present surprises that are the very nature of the game.

Ultimately, the goal is to “play in the moment.” Fall in love with the fun and fascination of every single shot. From looking in retrospect, and only in retrospect, you will find that your scores are going down while your sense of satisfaction and self-enjoyment are going up.

THE GAME OF GOLF

What the playing of golf has to do with getting lost and absorbed into the target and its conditions as well as the entire environment of the course. It’s about merging into the wind, the humidity, the lie of the ball, length of the shot, roll of the putt, feel of the turf, texture of the sand -the way you feel physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s the relative position of your score, your opponent’s score, the demands of the shot, and your relationship to the field of players -past, present, and future. Golf evokes harmony or disharmony with the choice of clubs, the feel of the club, and how it can be artfully employed to meet your previewed execution of the shot and the accumulation of shots. The best golf is the losing of oneself to the simple love for hitting this ball into that hole.

Golf is interaction at its best. Proficient golf is not an action where all your attention is focused on self (mechanics) to the exclusion of the target, nor is it a reaction where all your energy is purely on the target to the exclusion of yourself. Instead, golf is a blending and synthesizing of the millions of bits of stimuli surrounding every shot. The player’s mind is in continual shift from receiving external input (judging wind, like, etc.) to internal processing (deciding what the


inputs mean) and back to the external and so forth. When golf is played perfectly, there is no time when the integrity of this interaction is breached. The golfer is absorbed with the course. His mind is active with thought but is quiet with descriptions and analysis. Verbalization-internal or external-ceases during the approach to the ball and during the motion of playing the shot.

Look to your personal experience to verify the validity of this mindset. You have experienced those wonderful days when everything was perfect -when you were in The Zone! Think back to one of those moments. Notice your sense of ease and the quiet nature of your intellect. Stop reading for a while. Think back and relive those experiences.

Design your environment.

Resolve at this time that you will move into the mind of the player. With that attitude preceding all else, it is then time to approach golf with a clear and precise learning procedure that will lead to playing golf in the most proficient and enjoyable form. You can learn to keep analysis in its proper place and time. Early in the process of habit formation, you can use the living room, backyard, or driving range for the trying and intellectualizing. Once the habit is formed and validated, you can then liberate your intuition and creativity. That is what a golf course is for, and that is the reason to play. Golf courses are for the purpose of playing the game.

You heard Johnny Miller’s description of his early learning environment. He described the essence of the “safe place.” For him, there were no mistakes or failures. His father made sure of this essential element. There was only the next opportunity for play. For the vast majority of us who weren’t so fortunate, it is our obligation to design this safe place for ourselves and then move forward from this self-constructed environment of safety.

IS GOLF MENTAL OR PHYSICAL

The answer is YES! It is mental and physical at the same time. Only in our language system is there a distinction. Only the words present an illusion that there can be one without the other. But in human experience we are always simultaneously mental and physical; we are fundamentally psychophysical.

The brain (the psych) governs all our bodily functions and movements. The brain’s 50 to 100 billion neurons, or thinking cells, along with the up to 10,000 connecting links to each neuron, gives us “thinking,” or information processing that is far greater than our intellectual mind can grasp or describe. The brain keeps our blood flowing, the immune system function, heart rate in sync, and a million other activities in check without our intellect intervening.

The brain is also quite capable of playing great golf with or without the intervention of intellect. Unfortunately, the intelligence of the brain is usually sabotaged by our intellect. Intellect is a great for showing up on time, determining playing partners, wagers, and orders of play, but it’s lousy for hitting the shot. Intelligence is the part of you that is great for hitting the shot.

Let’s define our terms very clearly:


Intellect is words and description used internally or externally. It is analyzation and talking inside or aloud that we have been told is thinking. It’s the stuff that makes for great articulation and lousy golf.

Intelligence is the brain’s wondrous ability to do all the things to which we supposedly give “no thought.” Yet, it is thinking at its best. It is the capacity with which great play is made to look so easy. It appears that way because, for the uninterrupted brain, it is so easy.

Current scientific understanding is that there is “mindbody.” There is not a mind and a body separate from each other as the individual words suggest. Every thought has a chemical equivalent; therefore, your thoughts are physical at the same time they are mental. When Raymond Floyd says, “The game is all mental…” he is not only conceptually correct but is “scientifically: correct as well.

And at the same time it is all physical insofar as chemicals can be labeled as physical. You simply can’t be mentally “up” without your physical system being “up.” By the same token, you can’t be “down” without “down” chemicals being activated throughout your body. When you get overwhelmingly angry, frustrated, or depressed, your body is flooded with “down” chemicals. These chemicals require hours to be neutralized.

The point is this: Everything that is physical is first mental. Every pieced of instruction you’ve ever had was mental. Every golf lesson is mental. Every component of the swing is mental. All words received by you must be translated by your mental processes before their meaning is made operational by your physical system. The fact that the brain computed the input at incredible speed does not change the fact that your so-called “physical” swing is a mental output. Even people who say there is “no mental” must first construct the sentence in their brain before it comes out of their physical mouths.

You are on the lesson tee. At the moment, the instruction is to make a full turn away from the ball. That sounds like a physical piece of instruction. Upon closer inspection though, you realize that it is your brain that must first conceptualize and imagine the turn: how far, compared to what? And then the brain translates that “image” into physical motion to be fed back to the brain for further comparison and translation back to the body (of which the brain is an inseparable portion). The observable portion we call “physical.” The non-observable portion is named “mental.” In reality, they are one. Only in words are they separate.

IS IT REAL, OR IS IT WORDS?

Imagine that you have lifted your brain out of your skull, set it on the table in front of you, and disconnected all it’s wiring from your body. Consider your body, absent a brain, for a moment. What will it do? What could it do? This is a silly question, of course, but we tend to get stuck by words. We get convinced that the description is the reality when, of course, words only provide us with a vague and often misleading representation of reality. All that really counts to you as a golfer is your personal experience-not the description of that experience.


All this may seem to be “just philosophical.” The fact is, however, that it turns out to be almost disgustingly practical if you’re not playing the kind of golf you want to play, and elegantly sublime if you are playing satisfying golf.

When we think that the words are the reality, then we tend to think that words are all we have which to play golf. We stand over the ball, talking to ourselves. We try to execute with a mass of verbal cues or descriptions.

You have played with golfers who spend a lifetime over every shot. Inside their craniums is a continuous articulation: “Take it back low, straight, then hinge first, turn, weight on the inside, back to the target, and blah, blah, blah…” All this intellectual self-awareness gibberish is exactly what blows the circuits.

Once you accept the reality that mental is physical, then you appreciate the critical nature of learning and playing golf with a mind that is organized and responsive to the golf course. You can understand that thinking goes far, far, beyond talking. Thinking is, more accurately, the wisdom of all your senses working together. Thinking is the blend of seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, and smelling. You understand that what you think is what you’ll get! It isn’t what you say that determines what you get.

Don’t move forward with this program until the foregoing is crystal clear. It’s not just a good argument. It is the basis for your golfing potential.

The next step is to now understand that thinking is NOT talking or intellectualizing. Intelligence is what gets your car down the road from point A to point B. Intellect is what you feed back to the teacher, boss, or authority. When O.J. Simpson said: “Thinking… is what gets you caught from behind,” he would have been more accurate in identifying “internal discussion” as the culprit. In fact, thinking in terms of the interaction of all his senses, is what made him great. Talking and describing the interaction is what got him caught from behind.

When you’re over the ball, you want intellectual verbalization and analyzation to be suspended. Learn to be intellectually quiet. You want to allow intelligence to take over and become sensory active-in tune and intuitive. You’ll never do this by trying. You can only do it by developing disciplined patterns of letting.

So how are you going to do that as long as you believe that thinking is words and talking? You are likely to believe that you can’t make a swing, hit a shot, or play great golf without relying on the internal controls of your analytical, intellectual mind. There is the trap! You know the knowing but can’t do the doing.

The proverbial “trick, then, is to use intellect where it is useful and intelligence where it is best applied. We need to prepare to play with intellect and then play with intelligence; prepare for the shot with intellect and hit the shot with intelligence. When we get those backwards, we find that what is supposed to be a game, becomes frustrating and defeating. If you are frustrated, the message is loud and very clear: you have reversed the order of the appropriate process in your learning or in your play, or in both!


THE PROCESS OF LEARNING

Learning to use your brain appropriately to play great golf is simply a matter of organizing information in your brain so that it is triggered at the right time for the right application. If you can learn to limit yourself with intellectual overload, then you can also learn to be quiet and intelligently resourceful. Either way, it’s all learning, and the one thing you are is a great learner.

The brain is an incredible learning machine. It stores every experience, which becomes a reference. It then retrieves those stored references and uses them in future contexts or situations -for golf and for any golf shot. Your brain doesn’t discriminate between “good” learning and “bad” learning. It just learns. It learns whatever you decide or don’t decide to put in it. Remember, if you decide that you don’t want to take the time and energy to manage your learning, then you have made a very powerful decision!

It is a very difficult notion for the conscious mind to comprehend. The intelligent brain is designed to learn. It simply builds meaning to the stimuli. It does not think in terms of “good” or “bad.” Your intellectual mind does that part.

The intelligent mind, the real master governing your life and golf game, learns anything and everything that’s put “in front of it.” It stores all of your experiences. It is a dispassionate genie that is, in effect, saying “Yes, Master, I will understand your experience, and I will store it for your use in the future.” When the next similar stimuli is put “in front” of your senses, the genie responds with its stored information.

One way of talking about how the brain learns is to say that it goes in directions. It will go in any direction that it is sent by the conscious, analytical mind. Where ever you are now is the result of this direction.

For example, when the brain is exposed to unhappiness, it will learn to be unhappy. A person exposed to an environment of perpetual unhappiness will go in that direction. Eventually the direction of the environment will lead its participants in the same direction. The same is true for an environment full of happiness. The brain simply stores the references from the environment and then draws upon those references for future behaviors.

A golfer who decides to be disgusted or upset with himself after every dysfunctional shot is sending his brain in a direction. A golfer who discriminates and emotionalizes only the so-called “good” shots sends his brain in another direction.

The human learner-brain goes in any direction that it is sent, or led, when it comes to learning golf. The genie is always responding with what was learned. So here are a few questions you can answer for yourself:

1. Have you presented your brain with a consistent model for learning golf, or have you had multiple models or no models for learning golf? Either way, the genie will simply respond accordingly.


2. Do you have one golf swing in mind, or do you have many and varied swing concepts to follow?

3. Are you clear as to which equipment will reward your swing motion and which will sanction your swing motion?

4. Do you have a way to know when you are finished learning some mechanical technique or component of performance?

5. Do you practice like you play and play like you practice?

So how are you doing? Are you doing “bad” or are you doing exactly as you learned, according to the lead of your environment? What direction has your brain gone in its pursuit of golf? What references is it drawing on? Examine these questions very closely. Your answers will help you understand where you are and how you got here.

Maybe it’s time to take your energy and focus it in a single, satisfying direction. Maybe it’s time to ask the genie for exactly what you want. Your brain doesn’t care. It will simply go in that direction and learn that which you put in. And what you put in is what you will get out. You are the “goeswith” of your thinking -you are your thinking. What else can you be? Now let’s discover a process of learning which is quick, clean, and permanent. Let’s take one piece at a time, learn it, validate the learning, and graduate to the next level. Let’s free your mental and physical energy to play golf.

BEING ABLE TO PLAY GOOD GOLF REQUIRES TWO ELEMENTS

1. An alert mind, interacting with the target and its conditions. You need to be mentally engaged.

2. A calm body, relaxed and poised, attuned to the mind’s directives. You need to be physically relaxed.

An alert mind, one that is mentally engaged, is totally focused. There are no distractions, because the mind is totally absorbed in the activity at hand.

A relaxed body means just that. It is poised and ready but not tense or rigid.

A relaxed body does not mean a relaxed, complacent, non-caring mind.

Children are often experts at this skill. So is Michael Jordan. So is any golfer playing great golf. It is a matter of knowing your own system such that you can be 100-percent interested in the objective while being relaxed enough to perform. Being 100-percent engaged doesn’t mean being physically wound up in a knot. Being physically relaxed does not mean to be mentally not interested. It requires self-knowledge and then exercising the discipline to practice this balance until it is mastered and forgotten. It is a learned skill just as is the proper grip or tying your shoes.

Being mentally engaged requires clarity of thought such that your senses can receive all of the available surroundings. The alert mind, free of intellectual intervention, receives yardage, wind, lie, elevation, humidity, and all other conditions, and calibrates the commands for the physical response. The accuracy of your calibrations largely lies in two factors.


The first, as already mentioned, is achieving the state of mind that is interested and engaged in the activity at hand yet is uninterrupted by analytical and intellectualizing self-talk.

When you are standing over a putt or a drive and are talking to yourself inside: “Okay, keep this inside the lip, make sure you get it up,” or, “Rip it down the right side and let it hook in, but don’t over-hook it,” you are in the worst of states to hit the ball accurately.

There are very, very few people who can get away with talking their way through the swing as they are performing it. Personally, I know of none. Talking to yourself may sound good, but it just doesn’t work for playing well.

The efficient mindset has your intelligence totally absorbed and immersed in the shot. The brain is seeing, feeling, and sensing the pace of energy, flight, roll and end result. You are not trying to do this, you simply are the doing of this. The senses are integrated. The chatter is subdued.

EXPERIENCE

The second factor in the accuracy of these calibrations is that the mind must have a full repertoire of experiences to draw on. The brain must have ample memories or references of experiences stored from which it can make comparisons for exact calibrations. It can draw the “meaning” of 150 yards only if it has previous references for 150 yards, and for all the other variables of this particular shot. This is exactly why experience can be the best teacher and why practice can make perfect. It is also why a beginner can’t get away with positive thinking alone. It requires a whole bunch of efficient experiences from which the mind can formulate accurate responses.

You won’t know how hard to throw a dart unless you have thrown one before. The golfer cannot be engaged with a shot without having previous references. Without references, there is no material from which the brain can make comparisons and finite calibrations. The more references you have, the more accurate you can be.

Golf is the same. The brain will simply draw from all its references. The more successful references that are stored, the more accurate the brain can elicit a proficient response.

There are two culprits which undermine the golfer’s ability to enter the realm of engagement with success references. One is fear. Fear of failure or fear of success as generated by, What will they think of me if I do good or if I do bad?” Fear invades clarity of thought, provokes internal dialogue, and is felt in the body through various sensory signals such as shortness of breath, tightness, heaviness, and others.

For now, let’s go to the other intruder to the engaged mind. That intruder is the intellectually confused mind commonly known as INDECIDSION. How could you expect your brain to charge your body with proper commands when you haven’t made up your mind on what you want to Aha! You say. You may have picked up on the dilemma: How am I going to “make up my mind” if the object is to keep my intellect out of the way? How am I going to make up my mind without talking?” The answer is that your mind doesn’t need your intellect in order to fire the system with precise and decisive commands. Your mind can be decisive without your


intellect. It does so every time your mouth opens to receive a spoonful of food. What it needs is freedom from intellect by the absence of analyzation and self-talk in those last few moments before you pull the trigger.

But indecision is a built-in part of the system! It’s designed into the institution of golf instruction. Every magazine dealing in the instruction process feeds upon indecision. A very major goal of this program is to lead you to a decisive state with each shot you play. Then you won’t need this program. Isn’t that a great ideal?!

It has been said that only the ignorant can play great golf. This is largely true, and it’s a real compliment. The root word is “ignore.” It is a great gift to ignore all the possible swing theories and techniques and simply be centered and decisive about your own swing. Can you imagine where Jack Nicklaus would be if he approached every shot wondering which swing to use, or if he were to stand over the shot with indecision rolling around his mind? Does Jack have a great swing or does he have a great mind as it relates to making decisions? Every great golfer is decisive. Every golfer playing great is decisive (at least temporarily). Perhaps indecision is the problem with Arnold Palmer’s putting. Perhaps he once putted with one decisive mechanism. Perhaps he now runs through a whole bunch of mechanical options.

In all likelihood, you have learned the opposite of ignore-ance. You are a perfect learner. You read the books and magazines, listened to the tapes, and watched the videos, and you now have more options available than Chevrolet. Instead of standing over the ball with one clear objective, you are filing through a dozen things that you must do “right.”

Now, don’t get down on yourself. Pat yourself on the back in congratulations for being a great learner. You have learned all these options from the instruction industry that surrounds you. Your subconscious mind is like a genie that simply grants you whatever you which for. Your genie simply said, “Yes.” You might not like the results of the learning, but the learning itself was efficient. And if you can learn what you don’t want -indecision, then you certainly can learn to be decisive. All you have to do is ask and then act congruently.

ONE MODEL

Claritiy and decisiveness arise from knowing and owning, your swing and short game mechanics. The only way to know those mechanics is to decide exactly -exactly, what you want them to be. You must have very, very few and perfectly clear mechanical fundamental to be decisive and play great golf. You can decide on your mechanics for yourself through your own observations.

A model is simply a presentation of what is to be learned. All learning follows a model, consciously or unconsciously. To learn how to write the letter A requires the observation of the model A.

Inaccurate ad inefficient golf swings are the results of inaccurate and inefficient models, or from the confusion of mixing so many models together at one time that the result is a mixed-up swing.


Once your brain is presented with a consistent model, it will go in the direction of that model. When the brain has followed that model consistently, it overrides previously stored models except in the environment of unique stimuli -an upcoming experience that you don’t yet have a stored reference for. Pressure is a unique stimulus, so is an unfamiliar shot that you must play. Even when presented with unique stimuli, maintaining relaxation will return you to the consistently referenced model and the rhythmic patterns of brain processing that allow the model swing to happen. In the simplest of terms: Just keep following the same precise model.

You don’t need a bunch of swings or mechanical options to play great golf. You don’t need to be a jack of all trades. You need to be a master of only one!

AVOID OPTIONS OVERLOAD

Lee Trevino says that he played his whole career with one swing thought having to do with his leg action. Now that is precise. It’s difficult to get confused by only one thought.

Having a bunch of techniques makes for great press in the golf magazines. The “knock-down” “fluff,” and “spinner” shots sound great coming back from the broadcast booth. The reality, however, is that the great players have their bread and butter mechanics and rarely switch to the fancy stuff.

And while it is true that the brain likes and is attracted to variety, you don’t need to entertain yourself with multiple golf swing mechanics. The course itself provides plenty of variety and plenty of entertainment. What you need is “one swing” from “one model.” Jack Nicklaus didn’t become the greatest player every by having a bunch of different shots. He became great through patterning one swing and then applying it to the golf course with a very masterful self and course management. I think you will find that Nicklaus plays very boring golf in terms of shot variety and very exciting in terms of score.

You need to learn to pop it, stop it, flop it, hop it, and all that cutesie stuff after, long after, you have patterned one motion from one model.

It is common to find technically-skilled golfers who haven’t converted their technical skills to the function of producing low scores. They are hung up on the idea that perfect swings produce perfect shots. When they don’t produce the shot, they believe their technique is the problem. The loop is complete-technical perfection becomes a lifelong search. Even when the technical form is mastered, it fails to elicit great scoring.

When, however, the technical skills are learned and validated, the player’s energy and brainpower can and should be liberated to shift to target processing. Then, and only then, can the shot-the function of the swing-be evaluated. The evaluation of the shot must be considered in light of the gofer’s engagement and relaxation. That is one-thousand times easier when technique is left in the realm of technique without it interfering in the function of target processing. To make it brief, you can evaluate the swing when you are thinking about the swing. You can evaluate the shot when you are thinking about the shot. The swing is not golf. The shot is golf. If you are going to be a player, there is a point where you must leave swing thinking at home and go for the score.


It is critical that you master and graduate from the primary mechanical/technical skills and get on with the more advanced and worthy aspects of golf-like enjoying the game and producing satisfyingly low scores.

A belief system that is pervasive in the golf instruction institution is that you must always return to fundamentals. Another way of saying it is that you’ll never be “done” with grip, stance, posture, and swing techniques. It just isn’t true.

First of all, fundamentals have rarely been taught in a way that are “fun” or “mental.” Nevertheless, the statement that you must keep “returning to the fundamentals” really says two things:

One, you didn’t take the time to learn them in the first place (example: Grip and Stance/Posture are frequently passed over in our zeal for getting to the ball), or…

…Two, you didn’t believe it was learned after it was learned. Your lack of validation or your indecision came back to haunt you. What if Jack Nicklaus stood over a shot not quite sure if his grip was correct?

Learning the position at the completion of the backswing, for example, is not difficult for anyone if taken by itself and focused on for an extended period of time. The same position, however, becomes nearly impossible to learn when thrown into murky waters along with a dozen other swing agendas during any single swing, or is passed over completely in the urgency to do something else in the swing.

When you have learned something, especially when it is learned in such a way that it becomes a habit, it does not go away. It is permanent. That is why you don’t have to return to the fundamentals of shoe tying, writing your ABCs, or riding a bike. Those mechanics have become habits. Imagine deciding that you needed to relearn the alphabet once a month or analyze your parallel parking technique each week! But that is what we are led to believe is necessary with the fundamental mechanics of golf. Again, it’s just not true. Give yourself some credit for being the perfect learner that you are!

Habits are very solid in terms of behavioral redundancy. Habits are formed when the brain patterns consistently when presented with stimuli. Furthermore, the human brain is the easiest one to teach and the one most susceptible to patterning.

The real reason that fundamentals SEEM to go away is that the golfer hop-scotches around to so many models and so many tips that the internal programs and references turn to muck. In other words, the fundamentals seem to go away, because they’ve never really been learned. The golfer has never followed one precise model for long enough, and with enough conviction, to allow the brain to pattern consistently and exactly with the model. The brain doesn’t know what to tell the body to do; confusion becomes the way of the golfer’s life. You can’t let every golfer you play with be a source of instruction. You must have your own solid set of criteria to know that is right with your mechanics.


As a side note, you have found the world of golf to be full of “tips.” Every golfer is an instructor. Every practice tee is a “tip station.” Tips are usually composed of hows but rarely of whys, at least without offering any real conceptual depth to the why. The recipient of the tip makes the suggested change and finds that it may give instant, but temporary, help and success.

The “tip” is a singular notion or idea. The tip temporarily reduces the confusion of searching and sorting. You center and focus on one tip. Your brain is at least made free of massive overload and confusion and is freed to operate with much greater independent efficiency. Eureka! The ball is giving much more favorable feedback. All is well! The secret has been found. For a brief period lasting a few holes or one or two rounds, you are “back,” playing great.

All good golf lessons reduce confusion by reducing the number of intellectual “how tos” that the golfer is to consider during any single swing or shot.

Your tinkering with your swing is brought to a temporary halt by the teaching professional. He or she finds a sensory-based cue on which you will put your attention and energy. Your remaining attention and energy goes to the target. The loop is closed. You are engaged and relaxed. You are playing golf again.

Until, that is, one “bad” shot follows another. It’s then back into search mode. Then it’s another tip and the cycle begins anew. Confusion raises its ugly head. Your attention and energy withdraw from the target and goes back onto self. Target interaction is lost. Relaxation and engagement are lost. Intellectualizing “what’s wrong” amplifies, until another tip clears the system.

Instead of relying on tips, you’ll find it much more efficient and satisfying to learn one basic model. Focusing clearly and precisely on one model has the same effect as the tip in that, it too, reduces the searching and sorting. The model eliminates confusion and frees your brain from overload. Take the time and energy to learn the how and the why. Install the skill permanently and with great clarity and then operate from the purity of that source. You will have built a solid base which you can come back to under all conditions. Tips and “thinkering” give way to a singular pattern, easy to repeat.

“FIT” EQUIPMENT

There is just one more consideration before moving toward that next level. It is the mater of properly-fit equipment.

You must have equipment that enchances:

1. Centeredness and squareness of hit, and2. Maintenance of balance throughout the swing as indicated by a complete and

maintainable followthrough position.

The fitting process should include the following:

1. The fitting should be done while you hit balls from a lie-board so that you are fit with the proper lie of the club at impact while the club is in motion.


2. The ball should react favorably by your judgement in trajectory, distance, and direction. In other words, it should look good and feel good to you.

SUMMARY

The subconscious mind is where all the learning is stored “beneath the surface.” The subconscious mind is the intelligent mind. The subconscious mind allows you to breath, walk, and ideally, hit golf shots-all without interference from the conscious, intellectual mind.

The subconscious mind is the ideal mechanism for playing golf. It is the conscious, intellectual mind, however, that most people use for golf. The conscious mind is analytical and that part of us which “tries.”

There are no “mental” and “physical” sides of golf. Only in our language is there a distinction possible. There is mindbody. There can be no muscular movements without signals from the brain.

It isn’t what you think that counts. It is what you do that counts. However, what you think determines what you do. Talking about the swing is a far cry from experiencing the swing. It isn’t what you say that counts. It’s what you do that counts. Analyzing the swing is a far cry from sensing the swing. It isn’t what you know that counts. It is what you do that counts. So, what do you want to do?

Are you playing golf, or are you playing golf swing? Golf is a target sport. The interaction between you and the target defines the game. But most people seem to believe that golf is defined by the interaction between you and your mechanics. To become a whole golfer playing a whole game, you must eliminate the separate parts. Right now, the mechanics represent the parts. They must be chosen, committed to, learned, and “forgotten” so you can get on with golf.

Decide what you want to learn. It is critical that you reduce the number of mechanical operations down to the fewest possible. Avoid mechanical options overload.

You are a perfect learner. If you haven’t yet been able to learn the golf mechanics you want, it’s not because you can’t learn them. You can learn anything you want to learn, and you can learn it permanently. You must send your brain in a clear, precise direction. Your subconscious, intelligent mind will give you whatever you ask for, so make sure you ask decisively, consistently, and specifically. So what do you want to learn?

To play successful golf, you must be mentally engaged and physically relaxed. The greatest intruder to engagement is indecision. Indecision blows the circuits. Indecision also leads to tension. You must know what you want-exactly-in all circumstances. Find a way to show yourself that you have mastered the skill. Graduate. You will then never need to relearn it.


SAFE PLACE

You’ve heard of Johnny Miller, who pointed the way to new levels of excellence by shooting phenomenally low scores. He was safe. His father provided a perfect environment from which he could play and take it to “the next level” without fear or anxiety. This bond to safety and an environment of freedom is the crucial issue which leads to the best golf possible.

For those of us who did not have the same kind of learning environment, an environment where there is no failure, where it’s perfectly safe to extend one’s self in imagination; once we recognize that this is the case, then it is our obligation o design the environment for ourselves. What we used to call “failure” is simply an opportunity to exercise alternatives. It is our opportunity to relearn. It is our opportunity to create our own environment. It is our obligation to learn n a way that serves our needs and values. It is all learning. We are not the victims, lucky or unlucky. We are the product of our learning.

We can, if we so desire, learn anything. Lee Trevino didn’t come from a country club environment. He designed his own safe place from which to play golf. Barbara Streisand revealed the same process in an interview with Barbara Walters. Walters said: “…Your mom didn’t push you. Your stepfather never talked to you. Who nourished you?” Streisand responded: “My imagination. I could see the project complete. My vision makes me right. Time is on my side.”

After all, what’s the worst thing that can happen to you in golf? Absolutely nothing.

WHEN I PLAY BETTER…

You can learn the existing model of endless mechanics or you can learn how to play golf. Earlier, you learned strategies you can follow so that you can be finished with the mechanics. That piece of learning in itself is a huge departure from the paradigm integral with institutionalized golf instruction.

Paradigms are institutional ways of thinking that are basic and standard to a culture or subculture. A paradigm doesn’t have to be true or even be of service. It simply has to be an acceptable and pervasive belief. A cliché is “that what is acceptable is not new, and what is new is not acceptable.” An example: Our world is the center of the universe from which all else is subordinate.

Another is that the game of golf swing is the game of golf.

Understanding the thinking of paradigms is important when it comes to deciding what you want. Sometimes we just reiterate the accepted paradigm rather than deciding what will be truly satisfying.

A golfer may say that he will enjoy the game when he plays better. So he finds a way to go from a 6 handicap to 4. Then he may find himself really frustrated and dissatisfied because he can’t get to a 3. When I play better… is a never-ending loop. Fun turns into work, and golf ceases to be inviting. The golfer turns to more effort in an attempt to “get somewhere.”


Frustration leads to hesitation, then to depression and demotivation. Finally, the meaning of golf to the brain is “this is painful-don’t do this.”

Golf has numerous trappings set in the paradigms of thinking. You hear them every weekend on television broadcasts. Pressure, difficulty, and failure are favorite themes. And, yes, there are so-called “learning situations.” Unfortunately, the usual learning is the dwelling upon what went “wrong” rather than what went “right,” and is reinforced by current paradigms. So follow conventional thinking or do something different…

For you to achieve your desired goal, however, requires two things. The first is to know what you want-specifically. The second is to define your plan for getting there. Implicit in your plan is the realization that you must think in a way that will serve your plan. That means you must choose to depart from many paradigms and be independent in your thinking and action.

Johnny Miller is independent in his thinking and action. His personal learning history has equipped him with humor and esteem, imagination, and the security to act upon his imagination. He is patient, creative, and decisive. He knows what he wants and moves congruently forward. His congruence arises from his conscious mind having clear goals and his subconscious giving him permission to acquire those goals.

You don’t have to be born a great golfer; you can develop great golf. It is “develop-mental.” As you develop it mentally, it will manifest itself physically. You are psychophysical, mindbody, one unit.

This has been the case for many great players. Ben Hogan and Tom Kite, to name a couple. Compared to their respective peers, Sam Snead and Ben Crenshaw, Hogan and Kite did not have the so-called “athletic gift.” They were not “naturals.” Their learning was developed later than sooner. Hogan and Kite designed their successes. They decided what they wanted and went about achieving their desires. They made the plan and followed through. You can make your plan and follow through. It will require commitment to your imagination.The first step to golfing success then, is to decide what constitutes success for you. What is it that you want? And, how will you know when you are there? Then go learn it!

The human brain is designed to take you in a direction. It takes you in the direction that it is learning. Nowhere else. The more clearly defined your goals are, the more discrete the brain will be in its activities – both mental and physical. The learning will change, and you will be carried in the direction of that learning. One way of talking about learning goes like this: consider for a moment that you have a magic bottle complete with a genie who grants unlimited wishes. Your conscious mind makes the requests, while the subconscious genie grants your every conscious wish. The problem that arises is the sabotaging of the genie by a conscious mind that is indecisive, at best, and that reverses its direction, at worst.

One day you asked a genie to have a long, flowing backswing, full shoulder turn, club parallel to the ground, and club head down the line. Two days later you get enamored with a magazine article that says you should cross the line at the top, loading up for an inside–out


motion. Three days later, you get a tip from Charlie and change again. You keep asking and the genie keeps saying, “Yes, Master.” Where is the consistency in that, except for the inconsistency of making contradictory wishes? The genie keeps giving you what you want, yet your conscious mind is frustrated that it is not doing better. What a joke on your conscious mind!

Nobody is saying the mind works exactly like this, but the analogy is close enough. Where do you want to go? What’s your goal? How will you know when you have arrived?

You will clarify your brain’s reference system by giving it clear and exact direction. From clear and precise references comes a composition and blending of newly-generated references and capabilities. The creative process will be set in motion and can be collapsed only through doubt and emotional attachment and emotional replay of undesirable outcomes.

PERMISSION

Permission is what your subconscious mind will allow you to do. Permission is all the learning that you have embedded below your conscious awareness, most of which occurred before age 7. These programs that you have stored in learning are what are ultimately the determining factor of your “success” and “failure” as judged by your conscious mind. You may be playing in competition. Every time you get a couple under par coming down the stretch, you “lose it” and finish a couple over par. If this is a repetitive theme, and if the ways in which the wheels fall off seem a little strange to you – the double bogey on 17 comes out of “nowhere” – then you have reason to believe that your conscious desire of finishing 2-under par is not supported by an agreeable subconscious program. There is no permission to finish 2–under. The subconscious program that pulls out the double bogey is maybe 20 years old and the result of some learning at age 4, 5, or 6.

Based upon their own learned programs, maybe your parents with the most loving of intent, told you over and over and over that it isn’t “nice” to be a stand out or that you are arrogant or unfair for “beating” your playmates at games. The meaning of “winning” to your brain is to be nice by not winning. When you get on the brink of winning on the golf course, your conscious desires are in conflict with your subconscious program. Permission is not forthcoming.

Some sports writers have confused permission with “killer instinct.” Well, you don’t have to be a killer a jerk, or a child beater to be a winner. You do however need permission to win-agreement between subconscious and conscious wishes.

It is not necessary that you search back through your childhood, rummaging for every possible experience that might have affected or defined your current performance patterns. All you really need to do is observe the patterns in your performance. When limiting patterns are recognized and the resulting actions are inexplicable through known reasons, such as that double-bogey that “always” happens when you’re playing well, then you might suspect that


your underlying programs and stored references are the culprits. Even if you don’t suspect that previously learned references are affecting your current performances it is more than recommended that you nurture yourself in every respect.

So if you want agreement between your conscious mind and your subconscious mind –if you want your subconscious mind to give you permission to achieve what you consciously desire –you can’t just wish for it by the conscious mind. To get agreement –to negotiate– takes action by the conscious mind so it isn’t what you think that counts, it’s what you do that counts. And the doing takes repetition in order for it to pattern in the brain/body system and override those previous program stored in the subconscious.

WHAT WILL YOU DOIt is the action that you take that determines the learning and relearning in your reference system. You may choose to change the memories, references, and meaning to your brain at any time you desire.

Remember that your brain (the genie) doesn’t care. The caring is a function of your conscious mind. Your brain simply learns. And the brain does not forget. You cannot unlearn. What you can do is relearn by filling the reference system with brighter, clear, more emphatic an emotionally charged references.

Relearning a putting grip, stroke, or attitude doesn’t mean that you were going to make every putt. It means that you were going to make more putts –overtime– than you did before. Perhaps, more importantly, relearning the putting stroke means that you have an entirely different outlook on the meaning of a missed putt. It may mean that it is much more important and engaging for you to make putts then it is for you to emotionalize the perceived impact of missing putts. Relearning doesn’t eliminate stimuli. It redefines the stimuli in much more productive terms.

Taking congruent ACTION upon your desired goals is the deciding element you can, in effect, override previously stored experiences in your references with new, more engaging, and better serving references. You can do so through committing to new ways of thinking, processing, and considering events and activities. The strength of your commitment, together with an appropriate knowledge base, will largely determine the effectiveness and timeliness of your newly–formed skills.

SOFTWARE SKILLSSoftware skills are exactly what it takes to convert solid mechanical skills to great scoring. Where do you think Kite, Faldo, or Norman would be with poor concentration, limiting beliefs, or the inability to relax? Somewhere in their development they acquired these skills, possibly without even knowing so. Esteem, routines, and permission are as essential to great golf as swing plane and face angle. It’s no coincidence that Gary Player politely excuse himself from any conversation that turns negative.


In part or in total, the software skills are the tools of all great players. The skills may go by different names or have no names at all. The great players might not even have recognition of how or when they learn the skills. Nevertheless, the skills are apparent and necessary for success.

Many amateur golfers have an use the skills in their professions or vocations, but when put in the golfing environment, the same person may be stripped of these essential equipment. Yet it is essential equipment. Bring it with you, wherever you go, especially to the golf course. Most businessmen and women make as many so – called mistakes in business as they do in golf. How they perceive and treat the mistake, though is totally different. In one environment it’s called an opportunity. In golf it’s called a disaster.

BEYOND TECHNIQUE

RUN YOUR BRAIN TO RUN YOUR GAMEIt’s not what you know that counts; it’s what you do that counts. Your intelligence, the part of your brain that stores experience and references, recognize the stimuli, and acts upon the meaning of the stimuli – is not substantially affected by the intellect and ideas of the conscious mind.

It isn’t what you say that counts. The part of the brain which is responsible for your motor skills and shot-production-your intelligence- is affected by experience. Experience is the true teacher of the non-intellectual mind. Experience is the guide of intelligence.

LEARNING WITH EXPERIENCEIt was not your intellect that taught you how to stand up and walk through doorway or drive your car. It was experience. In learning to walk, there is nothing like standing up and falling down, which is the teacher of walking. Bumping into the door jam or stubbing your toe teaches you where the correct opening is located. In effect, your sympathetic nervous system (that which retreat from stimuli) says, ouch that hurts! And protects you from this future happenstance to the best of its ability. You need the experiential references for what’s considered good and bad in order to have your brain store the right calibrations for success. Learning to parallel park your car also requires both references: one of hitting the spot, one of missing the spot. In golf, you need to store many experiential references for the many circumstances encountered. References are created through experience. References are not created by just talking or intellectualizing.

Experience can be a matter of physically doing or a matter of the imagination. Either one counts as experienced as long as there is incorporation of the senses. Talking or intellectualizing is not experiencing. Only when there is employment of sight, hearing, and feeling, and hopefully taste and smell, is there an experience. Imagining an event is experiential for the brain if there is activation and mixing of these different senses. Using


more than one sense is what makes it “real” to the brain. It is what makes sense to our brain.

Experience is what activates the brain to first construct and then store a meaning to a stimuli. That meaning becomes a reference. For example, you don’t have to be physically involved with a bad experience in order to learn a fear or phobia. You can experience an event “mentally” in sensory rich detail, and in doing so, your brain will learn the meaning of the event very astutely. For example, if you hear enough golf commentators refer to short putts as being matters of life and death, you may begin to fear 3-footers.

STORE FAVORABLE MEANING!Steven Spielberg makes his living by drawing his audience into a story in an extremely meaningful “mental” way. In fact, the story is full of meaning, because the audience participates with more than one sense. The audience sees, feels, hears, tastes, and smells the event in their brains simultaneous to their viewing it on the screen.

An eight-year-old can fear heights by watching the movie Die Hard. The scenes are so “real” internally and externally, that the brain learns a phobic reaction to heights without physically falling off the building. Later, this eight-year-old looks over the edge of a 20-story building and the brain discharges great anxiety reactions into the physical system. You can bet that a certain number of the audience learn to be afraid of spiders after seeing the movie Arachnophobia.

Golfers store the meaning of stimuli. They may have learned the meaning by physically doing or by seeing any event or by imagining an event in sensory-rich detail. This so-called trick is to design your reaction to stimuli. That is what it means to run your brain instead of having your brain run you.

Golf is about as rich and stimuli as you were going to get. On the course, you’re in the midst of wind, elevation changes, short grass, long grass, rough, sand –there are dozens of different textures, sensations, and circumstances encountered any round of golf. If you want to interact favorably with your golfing stimuli, then it is simple: Store favorable meaning. Therefore, experience favorable meaning! Experience favorable meaning! Experience is doing. Thus, it isn’t what you know or sense that counts. It’s what you do that counts.

PRACTICING EXPERIENCEAll of the suggestions, strategies, and exercises that follow are experiential. The more you do them, the more they become the overriding reference in your brain’s retrieval system. Make them your resource base. Practice them until you get to where you forget that you know it and you just “do it.” Practice and repeat favorable experiences and tell you forget that you know; you simply are the experience. At that point, you will have arrived.

The single most important tool – alas, the secret to golf or virtually any task or endeavor is this:


Emotionalize only the good.

Think about, reflect upon, reiterate, re-capitulate only the good things you experience. And put your full emotional indulgence into those experiences. Every round and practice session you have a sprinkled or saturated with good shots. Those are the ones to put your emotional energy into. When you reflect upon past events, whether you were lying in bed, sitting in the office, or driving down the road, select the good stuff and relive it with full emotions.

Reflect back on that great pitch you shot on #14. Go through all the details of the shot. Noticed your preparation, the lie of the ball, the distance to the pan, the amount of green you had to work with. Review your focus, club selection, decision-making, and approach to the ball. Do you all this in real time as if it were really happening. If your approach to the ball takes 5 seconds, visualize it in 5 seconds.

In every detail, relive you’re settling into the shot, your state of mind, the motion of the swing, the contact with the ball, it’s flight, bounce, role, and stopping point near the hole. Don’t leave anything out.

Most of all, relive the emotions of the shot. Bring to full amplification the great feeling you had then, and the great feeling you have now as you relive the shot. Notice how the emotions to light you, when they are felt in your body, and how they spread. Become intimate an expert at repeating these sensations at anytime and anyplace. Experience favorable meaning.

EXPERIENCE EMOTIONYour brain stores experiences. Experiences are your memory. It’s from these past experiences that your brain will act upon future stimuli. They are your references. The brain can only go get what’s in storage for future activities. Your emotional attachment to any experience is what amplifies and repeats the learning of the experience. It gives meaning to the experience.

Emotions are the glue that makes the experience stick in the brain. Emotions are the charging mechanism to the subsets of the five senses. It’s through the subsets of the brain sorts out the meaning of stimuli. The more you revel in your emotions of the good that you do, the more glue you add to your future responses.

A low handicap golfer may ask: why am I great until I get 2 under par?

The answer is simple. There was more emotion put into this so-called “bad” outcome than into the “good” outcome. The high handicapper hits a good, solid shot, smile’s graciously, and moves along. Then he tops one and feels foolish, inadequate, and embarrassed. Emotions run high and deep. The ball becomes an unfriendly stimuli. The meaning of the ball to the brain becomes fight and flight. The golfer taught his brain to take on this piece of learning through the emotional upheaval of an undesirable shot. It wasn’t play, it was damn serious


and emotionally devastating.

The 2-handicapper did the same. After finishing 3-over on the last two holes, he goes home and relives the anguish of those last two holes. He embeds emotional garbage by going over and over the experience with greater emotional depth on each review. He pays no attention and gives no emotional attachment to all the good shots he hit on the first 16 holes. Instead of the “bad” simply being a reference through which he can adjust for future desirable outcomes, the bad itself becomes the reference, the experience, the meaning to the brain of being 2-under.

All either of these golfers need to do is reverse the process. Relish the good, neutralize the rest. I know that sounds way too simple, but it’s the way you work. In fact, it is simple. It may not be easy for you, but it is simple. This is where discipline comes in.

It won’t take any more energy for you to reverse the process. All you have to do is reverse the way you presently use your emotional energy. You now put emotion into the bad shots and emotionally neglected good shots. When you finish the round, it’s the ones that cost you that stand out into which you indulge your motions. This is probably true or you would not be listening to this program.

You were just a good learner, following consensus thinking. Consensus thinking is with the rest of the cultures doing.

SHIFT INTO HIGHA strange piece of consensus thinking is that you shouldn’t be emotionally high or low during a round. You should stay level. Another word for level is numb! Do you want to be numb? Is that what you want to draw from your memory as you stand over the next shot?

It is implied in the consensus strategy that you were good enough to go form emotionally down, up to the level of neutral. If you’re good enough to shift from low to numb, then are you also good enough to shift from numb too high? Keep shifting into high! High is better. High is engaged, empowered, and proactive. Get high and stay there! Shift into your memory/reference system that is engaged with the shot at the level of high. Your brain-body has been there before. Put it there again.

Here is another piece of consensus thinking: every time you go for a lesson, the instructor is likely to tell you what you were doing wrong. After every bad outcome, you ask yourself: “What did I do wrong?” You send your brain in the direction of wrong, emotionalize wrong, and then wonder why wrong repeats.

Now, isn’t it time to reverse the energy? Isn’t it time to send your brain in the direction of right? Which one do you want? Which will get you what you want? Forget so called “positive thinking.” What do you want?


Dwell upon the good. Dwell upon the experiences that serve you. “Positive” is a label. It is the emotional activity of the desired activity that counts.

If you can’t make this strategy a part of your personal learning –if you’re not willing to fully commit to emotionalizing the good- then take this entire program and dump it in the garbage. Better yet, donate it to a junior golfer.

It is an absolute necessity to put your emotion into those outcomes that you want to repeat. Stop putting emotion into what you don’t want. Stop NOW! Your brain doesn’t care. It will store and repeat anything your conscious mind desires. What do you desire? Make a decision, and then exercise the discipline to stick with the decision until you don’t know how to emotionalize any other outcomes but those that you desire.

When you hit a serviceable shot or sink a putt, get excited. Don’t pass it off with, “it’s about time”, or “that’s the way it supposed to be.” That is what the golfers around you are doing. That is their model of learning. If you want to play better golf, then rise above the common model. Do something different. Emotionalize only the good. That doesn’t mean to deny the bad. It means don’t emotionalize the bad.

Remember the analogy of the genie (the subconscious mind)? The genie doesn’t care; the genie just says, “Yes Master,” and grants any wish. The learning part of you doesn’t care either. It’s just accepts the message. Emotionalizing the bad is the same as saying, “Hey genie, can I have more bad?” The genie responds, stores the references for the next similar stimuli, and then fires the reference to the muscle system.

Your intention is not enough. “Meaning” to put in the good is not good enough. “Not meaning” to emotionalize the bad is not good enough! It’s too late! Embedding what you want requires your total, undeniable commitment and discipline.

Take the energy you use and hammering yourself for “bad” shots and put the energy into rewarding yourself for the “good”. No more, “How can you be so stupid as to leave it short?” No more! No more! Stop! NO MORE! Hammering yourself over a “bad” shot just doesn’t make sense on any level, unless, of course, you want to say something to yourself to acknowledge that fact. Say, isn’t that interesting. Put the “bad” shots in their place. They are an opportunity to play other alternatives.

If all else fails, do this: Treat yourself like you would advise your best friend to treat himself or herself. Or, if you don’t know how to emotionalize the good, then do this: pretend that you do know how to emotionalize the good and then do what you pretend you can do.

MOVE TOWARD EASESet up your entire approach to golf, so that golf is easy. Convince yourself that all parts of


golf are easy. All parts of golf are easy. Always figure out how you can make the task – whether it be making a shot, or winning, or whatever – as easy as possible. Take out the complexity, hard work, and toil. Make it easy. Before proceeding, always ask yourself the question: how can this be made easy to accomplish?

Construct your attitude and view of golf so that you comprehend everything surrounding golf to be easy and at ease. That means that you may have to quit listening to television commentators, and sports writers, and playing companions, who all insist that golf is incredibly difficult or even impossible.

It is critical that your perceptual filters migrate toward framing all stimuli is friendly or, at worst, neutral. That does not mean that an O.B. stake is inviting. It does mean that an O.B. stake gives definition to an inviting target, rather than being an adversary out to get you. You can follow the model of the professional who carelessly backhands a 6-inch putt and says that this behavior is a good way to get “going.” You can also set your brain up so that the ease and eloquence of the art of playing is the motivating “go-getter”, and thereby save yourself a shot, and perhaps a championship.

You can set this whole thing up so that the course, architect, greenskeeper, and person playing in front of you are all against you. You can be the victim. You can fight, scratch, kick, scream, fight, and yell. You can pout about the world being against you. Poor you. You can limit yourself all you want if this is what you want.

You can also set it up so that you are in atonement (at-one-meant) with the course and it’s conditions. You can participate with peaceful engagement and ease.

Just remember this: if you’re going to do battle, there is no end to the war. The enemy has infinite reserves. You will hit it O.B., miss putts, and leave it in the trap again. That doesn’t mean that you are the victim. It means that you have the opportunity to adjust at the most subtle level of intelligence.

Moving toward ease doesn’t mean to move toward lazy. It means that in what you do, you do with a sense of grace and elegance. There is a huge difference between discipline and work. Hard work is just that. It’s never ending toil, sweat, and effort. Webster’s defines work as: “activity in which one exerts strength or faculties to do or perform something.” The question is this: what are the faculties? Is the faculty the calluses on your hands, or is it the clarity, precision, and permission in your brain?

BE INVITED TO PARTICIPATEDesign everything from driving to putting practice so that it is fun to do.

The interesting thing about fun is that the brain is attracted to pleasure. Good idea! Have you ever noticed that you would rather do what is enjoyable than what is not? Have you ever


noticed that the most productive people in business are the ones who like what they are doing? You will never hear them saying, “Oh no, another Monday,” or, “thank God it’s Friday.” The same is true of great golfers they don’t practice because they have to; they practice because they love to.

The whole idea is to make all those factors that are responsible for golfing proficiency an attractive activity. When you wake up in the morning, you want your brain to light up, sending the message: “oh boy,” and “yippeeskippee, I can’t wait to hit pitch shots today!” You want your parasympathetic nervous system –that which moves toward, not away, from stimuli – to be on full tilt so that you are chomping at the bit to go participate in the given activity.

OSWALD B. SHALLOW MOTIVATION MODEL

1. Chose to have fun2. Fun creates enjoyment3. Enjoyment invites participation4. Participation focuses attention5. Attention expands awareness6. Awareness promotes insight7. Insight generates knowledge

Keep studying this cycle of internally-generated motivation. There are those who say that hard work is the key to success. If the fun and enjoyment aren’t there, the hard work will -yield hesitation, frustration, demotivation, and bitterness. In some shape or form, it must be fun, or it will not work.

There are only three states of mind available to you. One is happy, when is neutral, and one is unhappy. Otherwise said: there is go, zip, and no. There is invited, bored, and repulsed. The happy, go, and invited state is what takes all the work out and puts the play in. It’s no mystery why kids love recess and dislike homework. It’s no mystery why golfers who love the short game are good at the short game.

The belief that hard work and nose-to-the-grindstone will get you to the goal is silliness. Working your fingers to the bone will get you bony fingers.

Look around you. The so-called hard workers are doing it, because they love it or because it gives them great satisfaction. In this case, they love themselves, which is the same thing as loving it. All successful people set it up so that it is, in some shape or form, fun to do. Sure, it is true that some people obtain permission through perspiration, while others are permitted through inspiration. In the final analysis, however, it is doing the activity for the pure love and enjoyment that takes the work out of the work and puts the discipline into play.


HAVE FUN, WHAT’S FUN?The definition of fun is totally subjective. What is fun for one person may be just awful for someone else.

Two hours daily on the putting green might be great for one golfer and for another to tears. The same board golfer, however, may be excited to put in two hours of putting competition with five other golfers who are wagering for dimes.

Fun can appear to the observer to be deathly serious. To the participant, it can be delightful and absorbing. Define your own fun and dive in.

Perhaps you want to relearn stance/posture or you want to become a better chipper, in both form and function. The first step is always to consider how you can make it fun and inviting. The fun engages all your senses and accelerates the learning as well as the negotiation with the subconscious for permission.

Before starting any drills, exercises, or learning techniques, first find the fun. Maybe you’ll want to participate with another person or group. Maybe you’ll design a setting or place in which to participate. Maybe you’ll reward yourself with low calorie, nonfat banana daiquiri yogurt at the end of each practice session. Get creative and get into it. When your brain figures out how much fun it’s having, then your success is guaranteed. But, then, who cares about the success when you’re having so much fun? It’s a great loop to get into.

OKAYNESSPractice, experience, and integrate in “okayness.”

Here’s a question to ask yourself: “Am I okay or not okay?”

Try this: “Am I still okay after shooting a high number?”

If the answer to either question is “no,” then there is a definite reframe necessary to be made. Get yourself okay, in all golfing conditions, before proceeding.

Golfers may say that they are sick of not trusting themselves as they stand over the ball. The mistrust breeds indecision, which fires the body with indiscriminate and unfocused messages from the brain. The ball goes sideways and the mistrust is confirmed. It isn’t just a sideways shot when the emotional replay is one of: “Bad me. I’m a jerk.” There is the formula for anxiety!

Walking around a golf course in a state of anxiety is just like sitting on a time bomb. Sooner or later the ball is going to end up a long or short, right or left, and you will be devastated. You flinch and your brain gets the message loud and clear. Play ceases and all activity is


used to avoid emotional and psychological pain.

Get out of your own way.

Figure out that your score is not a reflection of your self-worth. It is a game. It is a game, for crying out loud, it’s a game! As one tour pro retorted, “Yeah, it’s just my life…” Well, if you are getting deathly serious about your life, then you may be getting deathly.

That doesn’t mean you have to like the ball missing the hole, landing in a divot, or bouncing out of bounds. It’s not recommended, but you can get as mad as you want at the ball, the shot, or the outcome –but you can’t get mad at yourself. You’re perfectly okay.

Realize your okayness and nurture it on a daily basis. Practice the nurturing in both formal and casual ways every day. Take fifteen minutes out of your day. Sit down and write and verbally repeat affirmations. Look yourself right in the eye as you see into the mirror and say the affirmation allowed. There are hundreds of affirmations that you can find in books or you can make up your own. Here is just one example:

I completely and totally love and trust myself.

In all golfing situations, I am relaxed and at ease.

Golf is a game at which I play.

I play golf proficiently.

Maintain your attitude and affirmation throughout the day as you go about your life. Reward yourself for all achievements large and small. Establish or reestablish a bond of safety and security with the golf thing environment. Make the environment of golf a friendly one. As a matter of fact, make all environments friendly. Don’t wait for the golf course. Simply make the golf course an amplification of all friendly environments.

This is a crucial issue. Golf is a game. It is not serious. Drugs are serious. Malnutrition is serious. Ecological devastation is serious. Kids dropping out of school is serious. Golf is not serious. Golf is a game.

If you think that golf is serious to this: Buy a one-way ticket to Biafra. Hitchhike through the country for 30 days. Take no money with you. Survive and find your way back home. Then go play golf.

Golf is a game.

ENGAGED WITH ENERGY


Establish a new kind of scorecard for yourself.

The par of the scorecard goes like this: you are par or under if you come off the course with more energy and feeling better than when you went on the course; you should feel better after walking off the 18th then you did one stepping onto the first tee.

Now, isn’t that an interesting challenge?

Remember when you were a child? The object was to play. When you were engaged in play, did you want to come home for dinner, return to the school room from recess, or get out of the swimming pool? Yet, as adults, we come off the golf course beat to a pulp. Fellow golfers ask us how we played. If we answer honestly, we must reply that we didn’t play – we worked very hard.

Your brain ain’t no dummy. It moves toward pleasure and away from pain. And, it doesn’t pay attention to what you say in words at the conscious level. It pays attention – it is the attention –of your body language and emotional state. It isn’t what you say that counts. It’s what you do that counts.

After repeated and prolonged experiences of leaving the golf course mentally exasperated and emotionally down, your brain will get the message. It will move away from pain, avoiding the stimuli called golf. It will find ways to sabotage the reference of golf, so that it doesn’t have to be in that state of pain. Your conscious, thinking mind may override the signals and force you back out there to overcome, but until you have fun at the game, your intelligence will move away rather than towards the stimuli of “golf.”

Neutral isn’t good enough either. Coming off the course neither up nor down is no message at all. It’s called boring.

You often hear player saying, “Thank God this is the last hole,” or “I’m glad this is about over with...” Those are pretty strong messages from the subconscious and wishes to be granted by the genie. Is that the way you want to set it up? Do you want the game to be repulsive and boring?

The brain will react in pleasure, moving toward the stimulus, if we set it up that way. We want our brains to move toward the game of golf and toward ways to find more pleasure and satisfaction in it. We want our brains to find more and more subtle ways to play great golf.

Following the lead of the child playing games, we wouldn’t want to stop after 18 holes. We would be energized with the excitement of continued play. As depicted in one television commercial, we would just keep playing through the evening sprinklers and finish with hardly enough light to see the final green. We would wake up the next morning eager again to recreate and re-create. In this play, the work involved in the growth of intelligence goes on


far beneath any conscious awareness.

This strategy needs more than one or two casual tests. You might consider 20 or 30 rounds instead. Continue the observation and tell you consistently indulge in the game as play. Play hard, with full engagement, but keep it play.

When you make the game inviting enough, you will find that hours and hours spent practicing evaporate as you lose awareness of both time and energy. The other golfers will mistake your love of play to be work. They will remark to others that you are a great player, because you work so hard at the game. In reality, you are a great because of your love of the game.

Through the repeated repetition of the strategy, you will soon cultivate an awareness of your play/work relationship. This “internal barometer” will serve you to maintain a level of ease and okayness as previously discussed. Use this awareness as a monitor to maintain a relationship to the game which maintains the balance of intensity and frivolity. Within this balance is your highest level of achievement.

If all this talk of being nice to your golfer-self is becoming repetitious, then you might consider how repetitious the world of golf has become in just the opposite mentality. If you notice how acceptable it is to reinforce and emotionalize the “bad,” then you appreciate the need for repetition in the reinforcement and emotionalizing of the “good.” Beating yourself up is not a virtue.

LEARN TO LOVE THE PRESSURE

One thing is for sure: if there is no pressure whatsoever, then you know that you are not in the hunt. You are out of it.

Pressure is an indication that you were close to winning or close to a personal best. You’re excited. Isn’t that wonderful! Isn’t that what you came for? With no pressure, there’s no reason to show up. The trick is to separate stress from anxiety.

Stress is exciting and engaging. It brings the entire cycle physical system to poise, focus, and readiness. The growth of intelligence is fostered in the state of stress. Without stress, there is no growth of intelligence. In stress, the adrenocorticotropic hormone is activated. Among other things, this releases a chemical agent that is responsible for causing a massive connection of neurons. Without that chemical, there is no connection of neurons, and without the connection of neurons there is no growth of intelligence. Therefore, you experience the growth of intelligence under stress. Your references are expanded and your future encounters with stress are met with a greater capacity to successfully complete the task. Remember, it’s just a golf game. The worst thing that can happen to you is absolutely nothing. All you can do is get excited.


There you are, coming down the stretch to get through the first round of Q-school. You’re on the bubble with six holes to go. Or maybe it’s the final two holes of the state amateur, or the final putt to win your flight in the club championship, or maybe it’s to win a two-dollar nassau. Now what?

Pressure. Do you love it or hate it? Do you move toward it or away from it? Are you excited and poised or anxious and fearful? Is your mind engaged while your body is relaxed, or is your mind racing and your body overwhelmed with bio chemical charges? Are you okay? Is this a game?

As Johnny Miller said, this is an opportunity to make the idea of pressure an idea to be manipulated as an art form. Step back and call it a game. Take control, of yourself, of your own mind. Realize that pressure is nothing more or less than an image. Usually it is a kinesthetic image – one you feel through physical symptoms like sweaty palms, cotton mouth, tension, and so on. It’s as real as you make it. You can choose another image.

Say YES! Tell yourself that you love it! Recognize that pressure is just another image, one possibility out of many. Turn pressure into a gray squirrel, have it sit on a limb on that tree over there and watch you hit this great shot. Make a choice! Golf is a game. Pressures is a game. You can play both games.

If you forget that it’s golf -if you forget it’s a game -you’re very likely to tip over the edge of stress and fall into anxiety. If you forget that it’s just pressure – if you forget that pressure is a game too -stress will trigger anxiety. You won’t appreciate that it is all an image. You will think it is real, and the reality will be the anxiety. Anxiety opposes the growth of intelligence. Anxiety gives a meaning to the brain that you were not okay and that you must retreat from stimuli. Then the next time you get close to winning or to a personal best, the sirens go off and you will retreat. Your body will be overloaded with internally injected chemicals. Your body is the world’s largest pharmacy, and it’s drugs are dispensed at the direction of your psychological – emotional state of mind. Say NO to limiting drugs by playing with the game.

If you can’t enjoy the pressure, the pressure will own you. Learn to love the pressure. The pressure is your signal that you can grow. When you understand the principal and the mechanisms involved, you will seek out pressure. Pressure will be your ally. You can make pressure your best friend. How do you do it? Just do it. You are not a victim. You can call it what it is – a mind full of images. Once you realize that pressure is images, you can choose to change the image. You can be frightened by this 3-foot breaking putt. Or you can get excited about seeing the ball disappear over the lip of the cup like a car into a garage.

MASTER THE QUIETING REFLEX

The quieting reflex or Q.R., was developed by Dr. Charles Stroebel of Hartford Connecticut.


It is the most useful tool for okayness and balancing pressure that we know of. It is very simple and precise. With repeated use 40 to 60 times a day, on and off the course, your brain patterns reach automaticity, meaning, as its name implies, that the Quieting Reflex becomes your reflex. You will react to every anxiety cue automatically. According to Dr. Stroebel‘s research, this level of auto pilot requires about 18 weeks of conditioning.

As Chuck Hogan says, “Learning Q.R. won’t help you live longer, but it can sure help you from dying sooner.” For sure, what Q.R. will do is allow you to calm yourself, so you can choose any image that you want. From a relaxed state, you can make the choices that will serve your game.

There are four steps in Q.R. which take a total of about six seconds.Step 1. Recognize any anxiety cue.Step 2. Take a deep natural breath.Step 3. Exhale smoothly, smiling inwardly with eyes and mouth.Step 4. Feel a wave of relaxation flow through you, and say to yourself: “alert mind, calm body.”

Do yourself and your game a favor: Master Q.R. Don’t wait for the golf course. Employ Q.R. are in your daily life. Use it at home, on the road, on the phone, or at work. Use it in every situation that life has to offer. An excellent way to make you are an integrated part of your life is to get other people in your group involved with the skill.

Getting your spouse, kids, or caddy involved with Q.R. can be a game with great rewards. When everyone around you is doing Q.R. two things happen: One is that Q.R. is perpetuated for full term; it becomes an automatic reflex. The second is that it is nearly impossible to have conflict of any significant proportion order ration. Gee what would that be like?

It sounds way too easy. But then, great golf is always easy.

REFRAME FAILURE

Take the idea of “failure,” and give it a new name. Give it a name which mean something entirely different than “failure.”

The very word “failure” is nothing more than a label or description for a result – something entirely different than “failure.”

The very word “failure” is nothing more than a label or description for a result-something that happened as the result of action. The fact is that you acted and the ball went somewhere. “Somewhere” is not failure. It is a reference for future activity.


The ball may have traveled into the hole. Maybe it went left of the hole. “Left” is not failure. “Left” is a direction or location. Maybe the ball went O.B. to the right. “Right” is a direction and O.B. is a location. It is a reference for future shots; you need this reference to make subtle adjustments for future shots.

One response is conventional. You can whine and moan and feel sorry for yourself and, thereby, embed these emotional references into your retrieval system for future use. The more emotion you put in and the more times you remember the event and add the emotion to your internal replay of the event, the more deeply the reference will be embedded. You can hold that image. Is the image going to facilitate your desired future? Is that the wish you want your genie to grant in the future?

Another responses to observe the result. Use that information as a point of reference from which to identify another more appropriate target location. Hit another shot. Emotionalize the functionally appropriate shots. Experience, adjust, experience, adjust, and so on.

Imagine that you were throwing darts. You can get all upset with yourself if the dart misses the board, or you can use that location as a reference from which to relocate the destination of the next start. With more and more darts, you can build a reference system of great accuracy. Do the same thing with your golf ball.

Keep playing. Your brain has been biologically designed to move toward success. Just don’t interfere with conscious emotions that are conventionally learned and culturally accepted. The phrase “misery loves company” is not acceptable to winners. Your brain is designed to synthesize the best possible actions when you exercise discretion rather than when you indulge in failure.

SUMMARY

These are the “mental mechanics,” or “software” skills necessary to play great golf. Don’t deny the fact that you are human. You will do well at what you enjoy doing. You like to have fun. But “having fun” and “playing golf” are mutually exclusive terms to most people. You must make them mutually inclusive. And this attitude isn’t just a good idea. It is the foundation for achievement.

Set everything up in your golf so that it is easy and fun. Everything in golf can be fun and easy. You won’t have to fool yourself into thinking this way.

In our minds are stored references. These references are formed by our perception of experiences we’ve had. These references determine your response to a stimulus. Therefore: Store favorable meaning.


References are not just from your personal history. They can also be formed by beliefs held by you or those consensus opinions you’re inundated with (such as what golf broadcaster say). If you believe that short putts are testy, they will become your nemesis. The brain moves toward pleasure and away from pain. It’s no dummy. If the meaning to your brain of any golfing circumstance is pain, your subconscious will find a way to “sabotage” the system.

To experience the top level of play, you must charge the play with emotion. Emotions are the “glue” that makes learning stick. This is “scientific fact”. In application, you must emotionalize the good that you do. Results are not indicators of how well you’re doing. Results allow you to adjust to playing other alternatives.

Make everything about golf your ally. You must reframe failure. This is not done by associating yourself with “bad” outcomes. Don’t accept the “neutral” mindset where you expect “good” shots and put your emotions into the “bad.” Shift your emotions into high gear. Emotionalize only the good. Emotionalizing the bad means that bad becomes your reference, and becomes your response to each similar stimulus. Stop putting emotion into what you don’t want!

It’s your conscious mind that desires “good” outcomes. Your subconscious mind simply gives back what is asked for. You must successfully negotiate from permission between your conscious and subconscious minds. Permission means that your subconscious mind has the appropriate stored references to support the desires of the conscious mind.

Above all else, remember that golf is a game. It is not serious. With time, you’re also come to realize that this understanding is what leads to seriously low scores, and more importantly, serious enjoyment of the game and of self.

Practicing Golf

Golf is an easy game made difficult

by the way it is learned and practiced.

It is not difficult.

All golfers want consistency in their game. All golfers want to feel consistently good about themselves when they play golf. As a matter fact, golfers play the game of golf to enjoy themselves through the activity of golf. When we are frustrated or down about our golfing performance, we are usually upset with ourselves, not with the way we are playing.

You’ll see some interesting things if you observe golfers practicing. Most golfers, including


professionals, practice as if they don’t want consistency or proficiency. Most golfers, including professionals, practice as if they don’t want consistency or proficieny. Most practice in an inconsistent fashion and get inconsistent results. Most golfers practice in ways that get results, but not the results they desire.

It is not difficult to practice in a way that gets you what you want.

It doesn’t require any more energy than ineffective practice.

Why not practice so you get what you want?

HOW to PracticeAnother way to say this is: there is the content of your practice and the process of your practice. The content or the “what” part is about the fundamental mechanics of your game. The “how” part is about the way you learn and process information in your brain. There is the management of the objective game, and there is the management of you, the subjective portion. To be the best golfer that you can be requires the mastery and blending of both elements.

There are thousands of golfers who, from a mechanical standpoint appear to be great golfers. For various reasons, however, they remain just on the edge of manifesting perceived potential. They just don’t quite make it. The element that prevents their conversion from a great ball hitter to a great golfer is at their ability to manage themselves and to score proficiently when they get on the golf course.

Similarly, there are millions of amateur golfers who play a “good game” on the driving range or make the perfect practice swing, but “fold” when they are faced with the “real” shot on the course.

The greatest single obstacle to good scoring is the lack of “good” practice. The golfing industry has provided a huge and never-ending volume of mechanical content. At the same time, there is a huge gap in how to learn and how to practice in a manner that will get you what you want. The net result is that the golfer, professional and amateur, feels like a failure. In reality the golfer is succeeding at drawing in information but is starving for knowledge. The golfers overwhelmed with stuff he is supposed to do but has no way to learn how to accomplish it.

Dave Pelz, the game’s leading short game instructor and researcher, astutely pointed out a very revealing characteristic of the Jack Nicklaus’ success formulation. Throughout the Nicklaus’ hey-day, which spans generations, Nicklaus’ name could not be found among the statistical leaders. Nor was it in the list of the top five fairways hit, greens hit, longest drive, fewest putts, and so on. He was number one only in the number of tournaments won and amount of money won. So, what makes him so special?


Nicklaus was the game’s best ever manager. He managed himself and the process of getting the ball around the golf course. His ultimate management skills were no accident. They were developed through the precision of practice. These are skills that any golfer can learn and master.Nicklaus has said, “I have never had a careless practice shot.” Most of us fail to make it through the 10th practice ball before yielding to care-less-ness.

Nicklaus has said, “I attempt to see the completion of every shot before making my swing.” Most of us scrape, fire, scrape, fire, scrape, fire, with little or no purpose except to scrape the next ball into firing position.

I have observed Nicklaus in many hours of practice and warm-up. Every shot is with purpose. Every ball is hit with intention and with his attention. Every warm up leads to his personal go signal. It is clearly evident that he is not searching for the “next mechanical Band-Aid.” He is rummaging through his internal resources, strategically sorting for the known, reliable and repeatable process that he knows to be efficient for him. Because this process has been repeated thousands of times before, his personal go signal comes forth rapidly. This process is synonymous with consistency. His consistency of practice translates to his consistency of play.

You can have all the consistency you want.

It can be the consistency that will produce your best, desired outcome.

All you have to do is ask consistently and practice consistently.

Know what you want, and practice anyway that will get you what you want.

It’s that simple.

And your choice.

Your brain does not care. Only your conscious mind does the caring and makes the judgments. Your brain just goes in a direction, any direction you send it. It will go in random, spontaneous, haphazard directions if that’s what you “teach it.” Or it will go in a precise, desire direction if that’s what you teach it. It is your choice. If you send it in random direction, then be satisfied with random performance. If you want precision, then practice with precision, and you will get it. It is your choice. You are the “it.” Remember, your brain simply learns. What does your conscious mind want your brain to learn and produce?

MENTAL PRACTICE

Now here is a bizarre, ignorant and limiting label. It suggests that there really is a such thing as a mental, and that mental is separate from physical. It suggests that there is a part of you that is functioning on its own without influence from or upon the rest of you. This is HOGWASH!


The language system and words we use create a disastrous illusion. Some people insist that golf is all physical. Some say that it is all mental. These are just words. They are not realities. The word reality is not a reality. It is just another word, descriptive and conventional. We are limited by the words. The words collapse choices and performance. There’s only one you, simultaneously mental and physical. You’re the it. It’s the you!

To practice “mentally” (note the quotes), is to practice physically. Mental practice is simply the repetition of experience at the internal level. The storage of these experiences is the reference in memory that charges and creates your physical activity. You’ll notice that outdoor “physical” (note the quotes), is an effort to duplicate with your body that what you have in your mind. Why not practice indoors where you can build precise and desirable internal references? Then use the outdoor environment to discover which stimuli complied with desired references and which do not. Those that do not are not failures. They are indicators instructing you on what internal references to collapse and rebuild, so our conscious mind is satisfied and gratified. This mental-physical connection is a vast domain. It is much too large to approach in this writing. What follows is a general and simple guideline of mental practice:

Specify a few minutes of quiet time each day. Get in the habit of “thinking” about your game.

Specify the task or theme of your “thinking.”

Stay on task. When your mind wanders, simply let distracting thoughts pass. Gently bring your mind back to the subject matter.

Clarify the subject. Let your mind sort through generalities, and decision and defocused representations and tell the subject is crisp and precise.

Bring the task or subject to a desired outcome. Feel the sensations of successful outcome. Anchor the feelings.

Sort through undesirable outcomes. Observe, dispassionately, those outcomes. Then, change those outcomes to desirable outcomes. Feel the sensations of success and anchor.

Foster relaxation and humor. Clear, Rich imagery is a “goeswith” of comfort.

Find your best environment. It might be on the couch or hammock, in the shower, or at the beach at sunset. There is an environment that promotes your richest imagery. Go find it.


Persevere. The more you practice in your mind, the easier it will get. It’s like muscles; use’em or lose’em. All you need is to exercise your imagery, and it will get stronger and stronger

THE “HOW” PART OF PRACTICE

Now you know what to practice. The real art of practice is how you go about your practice. Your brain, which is the true learner and responsible for your scores, will learn anything. The “subconscious” and experiential part of your brain places a “meaning” on all the varied golfing stimuli. There are situations on the course where you are confident, fearful, nervous, powerful, perplexed, just interested, threatened, and all other emotional responses. Those states of mind are all a part of your perfect learning.

Your subconscious has learned the meaning of certain stimuli. When the stimuli arise in future golf shots, golf holes, and golf environments, your brain simply recognizes the stimuli and accesses the meaning previously learned and stored.

You may have had great tea shots on number 14. All things being approximately the same, your brain remembers the friendly stimuli, and you regularly feel confident on the 14th tee.

Perhaps Ben Wright told you how scary a left to right three footer was on some Saturday afternoon. You were absorbed in the drama of the telecast, so you imagined and internally experienced what he was saying. The putt was missed, and you were sympathetically devastated for that player on the tube. Your brain, however, didn’t understand that this was not about you. You embedded the emotions. Your brain learned and stored the meaning.

Next Saturday, you face a left-to-right 3-footer, and you find yourself overwhelmingly nervous for inexplicable reasons. Your subconscious is simply acting out the meaning of the stimuli. It was simply being a perfect, non-judging learner, sending us messages through your body.

The good news -no, the GREAT news- is that the subconscious portion of you will learn anything that you wanted to. This means that you can practice in a way that stores extremely precise and satisfying responses to stimuli. Or, you can practice in sloppy ways which produce deserving responses on the course. Either way you choose to practice, your brain will simply learn to store those meetings. It will do so without judgment. It just learns, stores, and responds.

HOW TO PRACTICE


The following general guidelines on how to practice will go a long way toward lowering your scores. All these become a part of your practice habits and routines, your brain will convert the meaning into lower scores on the course.

#1 WARM UP YOUR BODY

Warm up your body. Stretch, gently swinging a couple of clubs. Hit pitch shots up to 50 yards. Never swing full tilt until your body is fully ready.

#2 WARM UP YOUR MIND

Center and focus your objectives. Clear your mind of distractions; settle into your lead sensory system, visual, auditory and kinesthetic. Allow for the centering of your mind and acute recognition of your personal internal resources.

#3 DECIDE WHAT TO PRACTICE

Adhere to your predetermined agenda until it’s accomplished and validated. Don’t let yourself be distracted by other possibilities that may seem captivating at the moment. Do not be distracted by golfing partners or those who offer free and unsolicited vice.

#4 MAINTAIN YOUR INTENTION

Know why you were doing this agenda and how it will contribute to your lower scores and satisfaction. Maintain your intention throughout the practice.

#5 MAINTAIN YOUR ATTENTION

Like Nicklaus, you will get what you put in. Keep your attention on each shot and reach repetition of your activity. This is what it means to practice effectively.

#6 DON’T TRY. EXPERIENCE. ADJUST. EXPERIENCE

Trying is a clear signal that you’re not doing. To try is to be on the outside of a desired activity “trying” to get inside the desired goal. There is no such thing as “try” in human experience. “Try” exists only in language. Your conscious “will” only gets in the way. Relax, focus, and experience. Simply adjust, experience, adjust, experience. Stay with your predetermined objective. Focus on what you want, and then be receptive to your sensory signals for the adjustment portion. Continue your experience through each repetition, comparing the actual experience to the desired outcome. Adjust.

#7 ISOLATE DESIRED OUTCOME

You will become confused and disorganized if you multiply desired outcomes as you practice. Keep isolating the intent of your practice session. What is it that you want to accomplish? Remain fixed upon the goal.


#8 EVALUATE ONLY YOUR DESIRED OUTCOME

If you are mastering a swing component; balance, for example, then evaluate only your balance with each swing. Don’t be confused by the quality of the hit or ball flight. The ball flight was not your intent nor the focus of your intention. Don’t mix apples and oranges you’ll end up with “appanage” juice and it will taste awful! After you have accomplished and validated balance, then you can shift intention and attention to ball flight and make a legitimate evaluation of ball flight. This will be a huge departure from normal practice and require your unwavering discipline until it is part of your practice habits.

#9 PRACTICE. REST. PRACTICE.

Learn to pace yourself, so you do not become fatigued, whether mentally or physically. Notice when your internal clarity and precision begins to fade and take a break for short period to regain your attention.

Golfers often practice right through their attention span. Their focus widens and so does their precision and proficiency. They blame a breakdown of mechanics for what is really a “breaktime” by the brain. Your mind wanders when it is tired and so do your shots.

#10 PRACTICE SUCCESS. ANCHOR SUCCESS.

Now here comes the really big deal! This is the part that generate success, getting you what you want. So you better know what it is that you want! There are three simple, sequential parts that you can make habit forming to get exactly what you want. When you get good at this you’ll be great at golf.

Step 1. Execute your intent. (This may be a golf shot, balance, or whatever you deem appropriate during the particular practice session) step one.

Step 2. Anchor desirable outcomes. (The task is finished) OR

Recognize an undesirable outcomes form a disassociated mind. Disassociated means to be a detached observer. Without emotion, just witnessed their actual outcome did not match your intended and desired outcome. For example, you wanted to hit the green, but the ball actually hit the greenside bunker.

Step 3. Replay in your mind the way you would have it be, e.g., the ball hits the green. Replay it so vividly that you sense the emotions of a desired outcome. ANCHOR the emotions.

Q. What is an anchor?

A. And anchor is any unique physical gesture which accompanies a specific state of mind.


Most golfers are very good anchoring. They hit a bad shot, amplify the emotional distaste for the shot, and then bang the club on the ground, say a specific word or frown in a specific way. The anchor with great emphasis and precision the very emotions they would never want to repeat. By doing so they become very consistent (which all golfers want) at repeating what they consciously dislike.

Just reverse the process! Anchor the emotions that you do desire! Every time you hit a good shot, smile inwardly with your eyes and mouth at the very moment that you feel the pleasurable emotions. Smile with exactly the same intensity and duration each time. You are giving your brain a powerful message and cue. Then, when you want to retrieve the message, you only need to smile inwardly with eyes and mouth.

There are a million gestures you could use for anchoring. You could tap your foot, pull your ear lobe or wink an eye. I suggest an inward smile, because your endocrine system discharges endorphins and other enhancing hormones as the brain recognizes the message of smiles and pleasure. As Roger Miller sings, “You can be happy if you have a mind to.”

The whole trick is to anchor at the exact state of mind you want.

#11 VALIDATE SUCCESS

Every time you do it right, take the time to recognize its rightness. Thank yourself for your accomplishment. Ingest and digest your successes, big and small. Trap those successes in your mind and claim them for your own. Just do it. You don’t even have to believe it works. Just do it.

#12 ACHIEVE, THEN LEAVEThen fill your mind with your success until the next practice session.

Many golfers practice until they get to “the perfect zone,” hitting the ball great or executing their intent with great proficiency. Then they think, I’ll hit 100 balls to make it muscle memory. They practice to a point of exhaustion, perform miserably and leave in a miserable frame of mine.

When you’re doing it perfectly, it’s time to stop, anchor, validate and leave. This is a choice that which Mr. Nicklaus is a master.

Keep a small journal in your bag. Keep a diary of the elements and personal resources, inventories. Over time, you will notice in your process the development of patterns that are most productive for you alone. There will be subtle shifts in these patterns, which will be easy to document and follow as you keep a written record.

These 12 steps may, at first, seem a bit much and a bit arduous. Actually, it is a whole lot easier than the haphazard and undisciplined practice that yields random results. It is a matter of settling into a routine process that becomes quite natural after a few weeks of continued


adherence.

UNIT 3 SUMMARY

1. The single greatest obstacle to proficient golf is the lack of efficient practice routines.

a. Consistency comes from consistent practice.

b. Your brain doesn’t care. It just learns.

2. The target is the object of golfing.

a. Keep your mind organized. Focus on the process of target.

3. There is no failure. There’s only an opportunity to learn. Send your brain any direction and make choices that serve your desires.

CONCLUSION

This is not the final word on practice. You are. You can choose to practice in a consistent and generative fashion. Learn mechanics and put them away. Practice the game of golf and all its parts. Practice anyway that puts the parts together in a way that is enjoyable and produces what you want. Entertain yourself with your imagination. Nurture your sense of humor and self-esteem. Learn to like yourself a lot through the game. It is a game.

P.S. AS A GOOD idea, all of this is worthless. Its worth is in your practice, integration and mastery. It isn’t what you know… it’s what you do that counts.

The entire reason to prepare is to let go. There is no other reason to prepare. It is a self-defeating process to prepare and then keep preparing. Yet it can become a never-ending cycle that traps the golfer in a self-constructed cage.

A woman professional recently revealed a poignant story. She was all ready to tee off for tour qualifying. She felt ready, prepared, confident. She had shot 66 in yesterday’s practice round. Her teacher approached her as she hit her last couple of practice shots. He commented that she was taking the club back to much inside. Her mind shifted to self. She shot 88. The rest was, as they say, history. In one instant she went from being fully prepared to being induced into the epitome of unprepared.

Preparation has, as its goal, the end in mind at all times. The preparation is simply the means to the end. The end is to be set free and play.

It is true that many golfers, perhaps most, skip over the preparation part in their eagerness to get on the course and golf their ball. For many golfers, perhaps most, this is perfectly legitimate in light of most golfer’s motivations and desires. The majority of golfers are


probably not interested in fierce competition, zero handicaps, and setting course records. Most golfers want to exercise, socialize, and recreate. It’s hard for the competitor to understand, but not all golfers are trying to beat the world, another player, or themselves. They do not thrive on competition. Therefore, it is not a necessity for them to follow a process of strategic implementation of new skills. They can be happy in the process of golf. They don’t have to be chasing the magical score to enjoy themselves and the game.

PREPARE TO COMPETEThe funny thing about kids playing Little League baseball or early junior golf is they just want to play, participate, and enjoy. It takes adults to teach them competitiveness, winning, losing, and content. It takes a model for learning to occur. For some, just the play is enough.

For the golfers who do want to compete, the obligation is clear: build success in a self-determining, self-actualizing process. The competition maybe internal, external, or both. The strategy is obvious. Playing and competing best comes at the end of other fundamentally important building blocks, so that the foundation of play and performance can be sustained. The foundation can be built from the very beginning as one is entering the game for the first time, or it can be relearned and rebuilt by the experience player at any point in the golfers life.

For the player who does want to compete, this person must be free to do so. This person must be prepared to do so.

Most golfers have reversed the process. They think that they can effectively complete by playing first, then backtracking to fill in the preparation later. Very rarely does this work. It’s almost always results in massive confusion and defocusing of energy.

THE CYCLES OF SUCCESSI mentioned that there will be temporary lulls in your performance excellence. Temporary lulls are not a breakdown of mechanics and habits. They are the result of being human. These lulls are not only natural but are necessary. They are needed as reference points to remind and maturate you to get on with your excitement engagement with the game. If you played at only one level, even if it was the optimum level, the game would become incredibly boring and demotivating.

You can observe for yourself how tour players perform and make their money. For all tour players, approximately 75% of yearly income is made in approximately a five-week period. There is a correspondingly five-week period when the player does not make caddy money. The remainder of the year is a much more level performance.

The point is that the five-week downcycle should not be considered in light of being something wrong. One way to respond to a downcycle is to panic, believe your habits and mechanics have deteriorated, and run off into an exasperating search for changes and fixes. A


much better way to serve yourself and your game is to respond with understanding and patience. Let the cycle run its course. Be nice to yourself. Then come out of the cycle with confidence and self-belief, hitting on all cylinders, all phases of scoring. Acting with patience allows you to play better during the high, low, and mid cycles. You can raise the proficiency of the entire cycle by exercising patience and nurturing overtime. Your old lows will not be so low, your midcycle proficiency will go up, and your new highs will surprise and delight you as you score better than you, at one time, thought possible.

THE PEAK EXPERIENCEThe ultimate objective is to play golf to its fullest. You’ll play beyond any ability to describe your performance. And you’ll come to appreciate that the articulating the performance is not only unnecessary but quite impossible. The shot will become pure experience, absent from discussion at any level. You’ll understand that the ultimate shot experience cannot be described as ball-to-target any more than the description of mental and physical are realities except in words.

Only in the description is the hole 150 yards away, as if the hole could be anywhere without another point of reference. That other point of reference is you and your golf ball. You, ball, and target are mutually inclusive. Only words create the illusion that the three are three, and thus mutually exclusive.

This is perfectly understandable and driving your car down the road. You, car, and road all go together. The road is a goes with of the driving. It’s difficult to distinguish whether you are doing the driving, or the road is doing the driving. Where does the information from driving come from? Remove one of the elements: road, car, or you, and there is no driving. The same is true of golf. Remove target, ball, or you, and there is no golf. It takes all elements to constitute golf. They are the goeswith – they are one item. Only the words create the illusion of separateness.

This sounds like some wild philosophy or esoteric new-age gibberish. It absolutely is not! It is pragmatic, practical, and mechanical. Every person listening to these words has experience of disappearing into the zone or peak performance level. That is why they play: to repeat and prolong the experience.

Yet, the description is so in adequate as to be virtually useless. It is exactly why science cannot prove or disapprove the existence of The Zone. It is impossible to quantify with words and data that which, by definition, is absent of words or description. Scientists may say that this peak performance encounter does not exist because it cannot be proven as to how it “works”. They haven’t been in your shoes, yet are saying that one, your experience doesn’t exist, or two, that you were crazy. You can, however, become free to have the experience for longer durations and with fewer distractions and interventions. You can make the awareness that you are in the peak state of mind less and less scary and more and more natural. You can


amplify the characteristics of the desired state if you so wish. This entire program is designed for that eventuality, and this is the very reason to follow it with precision and let go and simply play.

For sure, the peak experience arises form part of the mind-body responsible for primary processing. It does not arise from a part of the brain that verbalizes incessantly about “how” to do the doing.

If, however, you are not willing to play – Without threat or anxiety – then you will be compulsive in “figuring out” how to play. Your “figuring” will turn the game back into words, descriptions, trying, preparation, and technique, further pulling away – not toward – your desired goal and biological design. This is the meaning of Michael Murphy’s quote from Golf in the Kingdom, “Our relationship to paradox is the barometer of our enlightenment.” The paradox is that which is so difficult for the intellectual mind is so easy for the intelligent mind, which drives the intellectual mind quite crazy.

THE DISCIPLINE OF PLAY

Play does not preclude discipline. Discipline is what it takes to adhere to the first five units of Play Like in Your Dreams. The first five units are the verbal and intellectual considerations which lead to the freedom to play. Intellect has its place, and that is understanding this material so that you will prepare yourself to just do it. After preparation, however, there is no further need for intellectualizing the play.

When you are playing golf, totally falling in love with each shot you hit, you are in a pure experience of concentration. Literally, your mind is concentrated. All your energy is absorbed into the activity at hand you are on distracted, because you indulge completely into the love affair. It is the opposite of trying.

When golfers try to concentrate, they end up concentrating on concentration. They grit their teeth, squint their eyes, and block out their distractions. For the “triers” there’s no such thing as positive in human experience, which is unfortunate.

You cannot not. In order to “block out” the O.B. the distraction – you have to represent it in your mind. You may give the O.B. your attention by saying “Don’t think O.B.” Well the harder you try to not O.B., the bigger more vivid, and empowered the “it” – the “not” – the O.B. becomes. If you tell yourself don’t hit it O.B. you may get confused between don’t hit it O.B. and hit it O.B. Don’t think of the Empire State building right now. What was the first image that came to your mind? Obviously, the Empire State building.

On the other hand, falling in love with the desired shot – the destination, bounce, role, flight, impact, and sensory connection to those elements – then occupies your mind with new and appropriate multi-sensory images. There is no longer O.B. there’s only the shot. The target


interaction is giving life, vitality, and empowerment. Literally, the efferent commands from brain to muscles are increased to your advantage.

If you need proof of either of the preceding scenarios, all you have to do is hook up to any sophisticated biofeedback machine. You won’t, of course, get proof, because proof is only in your experience. What you will get however, is extremely compelling evidence you can see and hear on a monitor that you witness on the spot. You will witness the results of bio chemical electrical charges flowing from your brain through your nervous system to your muscles. Sensory experience is real and observable!

After a little practice in biofeedback, you can affect the temperature of one of your fingers separately from the rest of your body, after doing that, you’ll find it easy to relax your hands over a 3-foot putt.

The point is this: quit trying to concentrate. Instead, fall in love with every shot. Play it for all it’s worth. You don’t have to block out. All you have to do is become totally interested.

REACHING THE ZONE

When you find yourself in this elegant and graceful place where your performance is at ease – easy – just let it be. It is a natural state. What makes it a natural is the trying. By way of analogy, it can be said that being culturally smart is the downfall of the natural state. The paradox is this: the more information you have, the more you can interfere with great play. While the neocortex is unique to the human species and provides us with enormous brain power (intellect), sabotaging your skill. Hence, it is really the smart golfer who is willing to accept that his brain can get along quite nicely without an intellectual override. The more you realize that you were designed for success, the less you have to try to be successful. You can simply play. Experience. Then let your primary process, your intelligence, adjust. Experience, adjust, experience, adjust. After the round is over, you can recollect – re-– collect – the sensory experiences which characterize your peak performance. Then relive those experiences, amplify an anchor.

You may find some or any of the following: you feel and elevated state of bodily relaxation. Perhaps you feel lighter or heavier, faster or slower, warmer or cooler, more or less density in your body. You may feel the sensations in your hands or arms or shoulders. It may be in your chest or stomach or legs. Your voice, especially or internal voice, maybe silent or monotone or lower or higher. Your internal talk maybe slower or with more cadence. Find these internal auditory senses present during great play. These are your personal distinctions. Then in practice at home, office, practice range, or practice green, put yourself into these experiences, amplify and becoming a cute Lee intimate with these distinctions. You can do so with patience, practice, and self-nurturing.

With the mechanics of the so-called physical portion of golf behind you, habituated, and


validated, you enter the realm of mental mechanics. The mental mechanics follow very much the same kind of learning progression as the mechanics of physical technique. As with the golf swing you are very likely to be grasping and uncomfortable at first. With attention and repetition, however, you’ll find comfort, then competence, then mastery of the skill.

You have always had your unique personal sorting mechanism as a result of your personal learning history. It is very rare, however, that you have been asked to observe the internal signals which a company your best performance. The signals are not obscure nor are they difficult to recognize. They will take some time and patience to be identified, cultivated, and used to your full advantage.

Confidence is made of real “stuff”. The word confidence is a broad generalization which has precise distinctions for each individual golfer. Keep a journal or notepad for identifying your own personal distractions from the aforementioned lists. Add to the list as you noticed signals not on the list. You will observe a pattern and reoccurrence of your personal go signals which are internal to your brain and body.

Your brain must have a way to sort out the meaning of the stimuli at hand. Good play and poor play don’t “just happen.” There is no such experience as just happens. Every experience is sorted by your brain in order to make meaning and response from it.

You may lose it on the course when your internal voice is loud and fast or when your internal visual pictures are fast, murky, or dark.

Great play maybe simultaneous with a quiet or slow internal voice. Pictures maybe clear and bright and the target isolated. Every golfer has his or her own, personal internal process for sorting good, neutral, and poor results. The key to managing the sorting mechanism is the patient identification of your personal signals. By keeping an ongoing list of these personal signals after every round and practice session, you will find a pattern emerging in your notebook.

Over time, your intimacy with these signals will become apparent. It will become obvious to you that one emotional/psychological state of mind is advantageous while other states are too obviously limiting to consider or aren’t those in which you would indulge. Your list of go signals becomes as different and distinct as is a 3-iron form a 7-iron. You can decide to call upon these confident signals when you so desire instead of waiting and hoping for them to fall out of the sky by some random accident.

Just like the physical mechanics, you will want to keep mental mechanics off the course – off the field of play. You want to avoid the pitfalls of mechanical, intellectual paralysis by analysis. Acquiring mastery of the software functions requires the same discipline and separation from the course as does the hardware functions of physical mechanics. In either case, the absolute worst thing you can do is to intervene into play on the course. Intervention can be a matter of self-awareness in the realm of swing mechanics. The intervention can also be in mental mechanics. Both are devastating to ongoing play. Practice off the course until it


becomes fundamentally natural on the course. Practice until you forget that you know and just do it.

MAKE UP YOUR MIND

The very best way to make sure that you are not in the peak performance zone is to introduce confusion. Confusion can be brought on by a number of different stimuli; however, most golfers have a very few unlimited ways in which they personally specialize in confusion. As discussed in previous units, it can be through pressure, doubt, mechanical options overload, targeting of security, visual, auditory, or kinesthetic distractions, and many others.

In all cases, the brain is overloaded to some degree. That is why the game is easy at times and very uneasy or dis-eased at times. The answer is to return to a mind of precision, play, or clarity, the opposite of confusion.

This decisive state of mind in which the intellect is tempered is more frequently characterized by a mind that is relatively free of internal dialoguing, internal chattering, and verbal run-on or internal arguing. Examine the use of your internal verbalization over many rounds of casual, recreational, and competitive play. Take an accurate accounting of how your internal conversation and dialogue or monologue is processing during poor, mediocre, and excellent performance. You will reveal a significant difference. It may be that you are very quiet or completely silent during great shots. It may be that your internal tone of voice changes or that your voice is much slower or it’s volume is significantly lower.

A golfer’s internal voice during poor play is much like the internal voice of the insomniac when sleep is impossible. Insomniac should be spelled i-n-s-o-m-n-i-Y-A-C-K, since it’s practitioners are keeping themselves awake by yacking. Slowing, toning, and turning down voice volume gives a whole different meaning to the brain. Overload is reduced, confusion is relieved, and the brain is freed from more appropriate activities – like low scores. Counting sheep slows, monotones, and quietly internal voice. Counting sheep is more appropriate strategy for producing good golf shots then is reciting a list of swing commands. It’s how your voice is used that counts. You’re likely to be amazed at how quickly you could manage your golf game by simply managing the volume, speed, and tone of your internal talking.

When your internal voice quiets, your intellect subsides, and your shots become extremely consistent. The game borders on boredom. You may find that the zone is somewhat detached from so-called normal states of consciousness. Trying, and all its effort, ceases.

Letting go of the effort and of the trying seems to be in total opposition to the idea of hard work and internal permission gained through all the time you’ve spent in preparation. Yet this is the purpose of preparation, and it needs its own preparation. The whole purpose of preparing is to allow you to let go so you don’t have to try. You don’t prepare to keep preparing; you prepare to quit preparing.


You need to be ready for effortless great play. You need to appreciate that it is, in fact, an acceptable, no, desired and natural state. Don’t let it scare you. Prepare for its eventuality with your attitude and intellect.

PRACTICING THE ZONE

So many golfers and counter that “thoughtless zone” and then let it scare them or deny its existence. They may explain that they played “unbelievable” or “over my head.” Well isn’t that the point? Isn’t that the purpose?

So, when it happens it needs to be accepted, nourished, and validated in order to be repeated. Why be yanked back into “normal states of consciousness” which produce normal kinds of inconsistent and unsatisfying play?

Reverse your attitude. Expect the mindset of easy proficiency. Acknowledge your acceptance and comfort with the state of mind and this kind of play. It is, simply, what you do. Gary Player has made a life skill of this mentality. He accepts the notion that he is prepared to play great golf. It is said that he will not accept or even listen to other scenarios. When sitting with other golfers, Gary will politely excuse himself and leave any conversation that begins to dwell on “poor me” stories.

When you reach The Zone, you will also find that finishing a round of golf is a disappointing event. It is a rude awakening to discover that it’s “time” to stop “playing.” Your batteries were charging, and effort was suspended. You feel better coming off the course then going on the course. This is exactly why it is important to practice coming off the course with more energy and with a lighter, brighter then when you started the day’s play.

You can go after the desirable levels of proficiency from two directions: you can wait for some random, spontaneous stimuli to “get you going.” You can make a good putt, save a par, or make a good recovery shot to stimulate you and fill you with confidence. But why wait? Why not be confident first?

You can start from the other end. You can go ahead and experience what it’s like to be in a desirable state and have your experience stimulate peak play. You can practice feeling good. Practice coming off the course feeling good.

If you are suspect of this kind of thinking, then just do this: Next time you’re feeling sad, down, frustrated, or depressed, simply jump in the air as high as you can, reach for the sky and yell “Yes!” Then see how depression works. Much of our success can be set up with previewing and perpetuated with reviewing. Both words say exactly what to do.

Preview is to view the event previous to its occurrence. See yourself, the course, it’s conditions, the competitors, desired outcomes, recovery from difficulties, and the implications of success. Rehearse all of the possibilities and then give emotional charge to the outcomes that you desire.


The so-called “trick” is to indulge yourself completely in this exercise. Forget that it’s an exercise. Make it real. The reality occurs when you not only see the impending event but also here, feel, taste, and smell the event in 3-D, technicolor, and surround-sound. Indulge all your senses so that you are completely absorbed in the event. This is what practices is for and about at any level. There is no other reason to hit balls, chip, putt, or practice “mentally.” It’s all for the same stuff and it all works mechanically at the neuro-physical level. Just go to a theater in your mind where you are the star and the storyline is totally absorbing and engaging.

Review-the view in reverse requires the same indulgence in what you want. Review, in all your senses, the good things that you did. Absorb yourself in those experiences. The more you do so, the more familiar, comfortable, and natural the peak performances will be to you. They will continually be become less surprising and more acceptably natural.

Practice does make perfect. What do you want to become perfect? Why not move toward a desirable state of perfection? To move toward a desirable state does not mean that it will work to practice only when it’s convenient. Moving toward a desired state means that practice must be disciplined, consistent, and on deviated. As the Nike commercial says, “Just do it.”

Previewing your desired play must be separated from the mechanics of expectations. You should not get into a mentality of expecting anything! Expect nothing. In every way shape, and form, expectations are counterproductive to proficient golf. Sure it’s great to think about winning the tournament. It’s perfectly wonderful to consider all the benefits of winning. But winning is not the point.

The point is to play every shot with maximum engagement and poise. The point is to play every shot with your complete and undistracted indulgence. Winning will be a great perk, but a secondary to playing every shot with total and complete absorption.

Previewing and reviewing keep building references in your brain without interfering with ongoing play. When you are playing the shot, there’s only the shot.

Expectations keep you from playing the shop. Instead of the shot, you are playing what if? What if I make, miss, do good, too bad, and etcetera. You are, at least, one step removed from simply playing the shop, indulging completely and ball-to-target!

The only surefire way to avoid expectations is to fall in love with a shot at hand. Get so enamored with hitting this ball to that spot for the pure fun of it that nothing else exists.

Then there is no failure of any kind. And outcome is all that there is. The ball goes somewhere! It can’t go “bad” nor can you be “bad.” The ball simply goes to a spot from which you will hit it again. In this environment of play, you will adjust, experience, adjust. The work will go on underneath the play.

SUMMARY


Playing golf is the easy part. It is easy, because you have prepared for play. But exercising both mechanical and “mental” skills through the training outline in previous units, you have been preparing yourself to play. Your mechanics are settled; you are in control of your brain. You are running the show. This preparation is usually omitted by most golfers. In their eagerness to get onto the course, they overlook developing the foundation of choosing and habituating mechanics and of learning to shift into the mindset of excellence. This is normal, and understandable.

To achieve the level of play that you want, however, you must prepare. We know that peak performance experience, The Zone, is one in which you just “do it.” But you can’t really just “do it” unless you’ve prepared to just “do it.”

The ultimate goal is to become lost in The Zone – that indescribable atmosphere that surrounds play at this highest level. The Zone is found through letting go and allowing yourself to meld with the target, the ball, and with the conditions surrounding them.

The whole purpose of preparation is to “let go” to just “do it.” The key misunderstanding most golfers have is in accepting the fact that there is golf after mechanics, golf after preparation. Once you have prepared, there is no longer reason to continue preparing. If you follow the plans and methods outlined in the previous units, you will have confidence in the quality of your preparation. And you also understand that once preparation is finished, it’s done. You are prepared, now golf your ball!

Preparing yourself to play and then “letting go” doesn’t mean that you’ll birdie every hole. It does mean that your energy and focus will turn away from an awareness of self-techniques and strategies and toward integration and interaction with the target and it’s conditions. Such is the stuff of greatness.

Although you’ve prepared for play, there are a few keys you should take with you on each round. One is to commit to making decisions on the course. Indecision is the nemesis of great play. Decisions are made at the conscious, intellectual level. If the intellectual mind does not quiet, the subconscious, intelligent mind cannot just “do it.” Indecision prevents the intellect from subsiding. Another is to commit to assuming the demeanor of a champion. And everything you do, walk, talk, think, and act like a champion. Make it your goal to come off the course feeling better and more energetic than when you went onto the course. Make this your new “scorecard” and your new “par.” Move toward each new shot and each new hole with more energy.

Although we feel that this program is light years ahead, we also believe that we’ve just scratch the surface in terms of potential accomplishments. You are an achiever. Show us the way...


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€¦ · Web viewBeing the efficient learner that you are, and by following the lead of institutionalized golf instruction, you have been in a deductive process, tearing apart your