Judgement

I hear this a lot as a coach. So many golfers playing with crippling self-judgement. They judge themselves for every little mistake, they fixate on all the reasons why they should be better, they will even reference past versions of themselves with unfair comparisons. I know that we all think being critical will help us achieve our goals, but when we are self-critical we are thinking, and when we are thinking we are in the “non-athletic” part of the brain. The state of flow will be interrupted by our inner critical voice. You see, great rounds of golf don’t come from beating ourselves up, but instead peak performance comes from a state of no judgement. Our thoughts must be quiet to allow our deeply engrained golf swings to just happen. We must train our brains to be the eternal optimist.

One way to start shifting your thinking is to gently redirect your mind to what you want to happen, instead of worrying about all the things that could go wrong or ruminating about the things that have gone wrong. Work on reframing the things you say to yourself to positive words rather than thinking in the negative. For example, instead of saying, “Don’t go left” try, “I’m going to favour the right side”. Our brain will hold the image of whatever you say! The first phrase creates a vibe of tightness and the second depicts a feeling of freedom. The brain doesn’t understand the word don’t, just left or right in this case, so we must train ourselves to use positives images.

Now I’m not talking Toxic Positivity here, because as a golfer you still need to be aware of the potential dangers and problems. Developing a strategic plan for working with these problems is positive thinking! It’s called being proactive and planning for all the things that may go wrong and knowing that you have a plan. You have to prepare for all the possibilities so that if they happen you know what to do. And let me tell you, after 12 years of on course coaching, anything and everything does happen. Once you have created a plan on how you are going to deal with these issues, then you have an opportunity to let go of the fear of a mistake. Mistakes happen, it’s how we deal with them that makes or breaks a performance.

So, the next time you are beating yourself up on the golf course, don’t. You have to give yourself grace and know that you are human and mistakes happen… even during our greatest performances.