|
There's nothing more frustrating than hyping yourself up to play
really well then starting with a couple of double bogeys. Advice,
please, on how to recover from the mental disappointment.
After your first double bogy, you may already be on track to
thinking and acting yourself into more bad play? As negative thoughts,
pessimistic self-talk and, images of disappointment, disaster and
failure flood your mind. Then you start feeling really bad about
your performance, and yourself, as frustration, impatience and
sinking confidence build. The trick is to reverse this self-fulfilling
spiral of despair. Here's how . . .
The power of 'armchair golf', where one hour of 'perfect' mental
work equals ten to twenty hours of physical (and unlikely 'perfect')
practice, is the key to a reliable and rapid recovery strategy.
To master the 'bad start recovery method' you must follow the instructions
below carefully;. You will need to prove to yourself that it works
well at home to guarantee recovery out on the course, whenever
you need it. Now, find a quiet relaxing place and a comfortable
chair:
- Firstly, imagine (with your eyes open or shut) in your 'minds-eye'
seeing a younger resourceful (calm, composed, confident,
etc.) playing version of yourself in the first frame, in a black
and
white movie on an imaginary screen, in front of you.
- Then, remember a time when you took two double bogies, or worse,
on your first hole of that round? And as you think about
that specific time. Run the movie super fast forward of that
event and, white
or black out the most intense part of the movie. Run movie
to the end where, in the last frame, you are again fully resourceful.
- Now, imagine looking out from your own eyes and noticing everything
going on around you as if you were actually there. Then run
the same movie, in colour, backwards, very quickly.
Do steps 1 to 3 as many times as necessary to delete your negative
emotions (frustration, disappointment, anger, annoyance, blame,
or whatever) by saying "I'm going to run this until all the
feelings have disappeared".
Now, imagine a similar 'double bogy, or worse' situation occurring
sometime in the future, which if it had happened in the past, you
would have felt that emotion, and notice if you can find that old
feeling, or you may find that you cannot. Repeat three times. OK?
All you have to do on-course as you notice your performance faltering
(negative self-talk, images and feelings) just run through steps
1 to 4. Over time you may notice that the process becomes easier,
more streamlined and automatic. You have now 'self-programmed'
yourself to deal effectively, safely and confidently with any future
'double bogies, or worse'.
 |
| © MIND4Golf Academy 2004 |
|
