Cognitive stress such as worrying, negative thoughts, anxiety, frustration etc. makes it difficult to concentrate and make decisions. Remembering and recalling information also becomes difficult if stress has taken over.
15.1. Illustration: The Starting Point
Source: Acuity World
The Starting point in New NLPTM by Acuity World draw a distinction between red zone which is negative and the green zone which is positive. Likewise, there is a line between the past and the future. You can think of a positive past experience. We call that Present State or PS. You can also think of a very positive past experience. We call that PS+ or present state plus. In similar fashion, you can think of a future experience. We call that DS. Desired state. You can also think of a very positive future experience. Desired state plus. DS+.
Some people choose to think of a red negative experience in the past or they decide to think of a negative future experience. This may make sense for some, if it concerns a simple system like a car that lost its wheel.
In golf however, we are among other things working with the golf swing. That is not a simple system. It is a very complexed system of movements. If you try to make it simple and think of one or two things, you might get the rest of the components in the swing wrong. As an illustration, let’s just say there are 500 components in the golf swing. Thinking 100% on one of the things may make that component of the swing right. How about all the others?
The book and the system Inner game of Golf by Timothy Gallwey which you can find on www.theinnergame.com tells us how not to think about the golfing technique at all when playing. The idea is that the body and mind already have the ability to perform the best possible swing. We just need to get out of the way. Basically, you are your own worst enemy when it comes to golf. Get the mental game right, enjoy the game, don’t think of technique and you will start having fun which will make you play better golf. This approach is not far from the approach in the books Zen Golf and Zen Putting by Joseph Parrent which you can find on www.zengolf.com.
The book Inner Game of Golf is a mastodont within golf and you can find Golf Instructors who use the system when instructing.
The takeaway here is that none of the books I read about the mental game of golf or high
performance achievements tell us that being negative does any good for our golfing. They all work in the green positive zone.
Equally, going mentally down makes going up harder. The distance between the bad state and the Good State is significant. It is easier to access the Good State from the green positive zone than from the red negative zone. Even better, to access the Good State from the Good State or from a similar positive state because the distance is nearly zero. Meaning, you need to make the distance as small as possible. You do that by being in the green zone as much as possible. You can be different places in the green zone. You can be ecstatic, and you can be very relaxed. The question is which is best for you golf game.
