Want to improve your golf?
Do you love golf? Want to improve your game and love playing more but something gets in the way? Maybe you have been struggling to get that perfect shot. You keep studying the game, learning new tactics but still mess up at the time that you want to improve the most. You might have even bought some new kit to find a way to improve your game. You don’t want to give up, but it’s so frustrating and embarrassing at times.
Are negative thoughts ruining your game?
Stop. Are you imagining this? Are you really as bad as you are thinking?
Do you keep telling yourself that you can’t show yourself up anymore?
Everything seems to be going fine until you get to that place where you have been before on the golf course.
You line things up and get your body prepared for that swing of the golf club. You look around as you check who might be watching. You hit the ball but instead of going where you want it to go its way off course again. This might be the second, third or more times that things have gone wrong there. You can’t understand why and the more you try not to mess up the more it happens. You feel like an idiot.
Furthermore, it always happens in the same place.
You can’t believe what is happening again?
Well, history is repeating itself again. All this fuels your low confidence and low self-esteem.
If you are lacking confidence in playing the sport that you love you probably have that feeling that you are not good enough. But you weren’t born with that label ‘I’m not good enough’, because everyone is fine. You are not useless at golf if you have had training and want to enjoy the sport. Rather someone or something in your past made you feel that way.
So where did this come from?
Low confidence and anxiety feelings come from your past experiences.
You might have been laughed at at school for no fault of yours. You might never have got the praise that you longed for from your parents, relatives or friends.
Or perhaps you gave yourself too high standards that were difficult to meet and you felt you didn’t achieve enough. We all do things like this sometimes but if it continues it can make us feel that we aren’t good enough to do things we want to do like play great golf.
Added to this, we can inadvertently keep reinforcing this cycle of not being good enough so our confidence and self-esteem goes down further.
The problem is that we start to believe that we aren’t good enough and can keep telling ourselves that we can’t get that hole in one!
It sounds simple and it is but we get stuck and start believing that we are useless. That makes us feel tense. If you are too tense your body doesn’t move in the right way to give your best shots. If you get angry with yourself or anxious that also contributes to poor shots and worry.
This is how it starts in golf.
So when you first make a mistake on the golf course it makes you feel anxious.
If someone is watching it makes you feel embarrassed or frustrated. Next time you come to that same place you worry that you might repeat the last drama and because you worry about it and feel tense, yes, you might do it again. Now you are in a cycle of negativity. See how easy it is to allow a past hiccup or something that someone said or did when you made a mistake before to keep influencing you to do the same mistake again.
And if you have that additional stuff from the past when you didn’t feel good enough you are now on a conveyor belt of anxiety and self-doubt!
But we can all change. Change your belief in yourself. Change how you think, feel and behave.
Start with positive golfing ideas
So how can you improve your golfing performance and get past that negative barrier?
Tips to success
The first tip is to model a confident golfer. Notice how that person walks. Notice how they speak and the things they do before they take their shot. So do some copying of confident actions. Start to feel more confident that you will get things right by pretending that you are confident and just doing it.
Secondly, don’t be afraid to ask a great golfer for tips on dealing with the barriers. Most people are happy to help out and are pleased if you admire their game.
Next, you need to start talking to yourself. When you hear yourself saying you can’t do something, reframe the sentence and tell yourself that you will be able to do it soon. Notice other negative things that you say to yourself and see if you can change them to be more positive.
Getting a good work/ life balance is important. Decide on a holiday if one is due or treat yourself to something nice. Maybe you like going for a massage or another sport.
We all have a need for a community so chat with friends and spend some time with friends and family.
Look after your body by eating a healthy diet and getting enough sleep. All these things will help with your performance. Too much alcohol and cigarettes won’t help.
If other things are in balance and feel right this golfing difficulty will seem much smaller and you will be able to overcome the problem.
Finally, hypnotherapy helps sports people to overcome stress, anxiety and difficulties with their sport. Did you know that Tiger Woods has used hypnosis? Olympic athletes use hypnosis when they have barriers to improving their performance so you could as well. They can have hypnosis from their coach or practice self-hypnosis.
For more information about hypnotherapy for sports performance contact Linda at Awaken the Change.
