Here is a list of the top 10 mental mistakes golfers make. At least these are the ones you talk about at the bar after a round of golf or in the office the next day. Although I would normally like to know a lot more about the individual before offering advice, I have included my initial suggestions on how to approach each problem with golf psychology.
Number 1: let your self-talk run wild
Ask a good hypnotist to set up a post-hypnotic suggestion that you go into a trance as you go through each take, or use self-hypnosis to achieve the same result. Either way, you are allowing your unconscious mind to continue playing the shot to the best of your technical ability while keeping your conscious mind chattering away from the action. That seems to work for Tiger Woods.
Number 2: toughen up your difficult shots
Learn to use hypnosis or an anchoring technique of NLP to relax before planning any shot. Then control the inevitable self-talk with a post-hypnotic suggestion to relax every time you hit or putt.
Number 3: Worry about the Yips
This is basically a mental hardening on a specific difficult shot, so I would handle it in a similar way by learning to use hypnosis or a NLP anchoring technique to relax before planning any putt. I am planning a future article specifically to address the issues of overcoming yips.
Number 4: Tell yourself what NOT to do
I’m sure you’ve said to yourself, “Now don’t throw it in the water” or it could have been the water, the trees, or the wrong side of the green that you were trying to avoid. Your unconscious mind doesn’t know how not to do something. If I ask you not to think of a blue elephant, unconsciously you have to imagine one, you probably have! If you want to give yourself or someone else a suggestion, write in positive progressive language. It would be better to say, “Now, let’s hit this ball on the fairway over there.”
Number 5: meditating on your mistakes and bad shots
The key is to learn from your mistakes, bad luck, and bad shots before putting them in the past, where they can no longer worry you. Again, you can make sure you do this with the help of post-hypnotic suggestions using self-hypnosis. Tiger Woods handles this well despite, or perhaps with the help of, his tantrums when he takes a bad or unfortunate shot. Once you hit a bad shot like this, you’re free to hit the next one to the best of your ability, as if you’ve never hit the bad one.
Number 6: “Try” to consciously control your swing mechanics.
Do you remember how difficult it was to tie your shoelaces the first time and now it’s just an automatic process? To see what I mean, write down the step-by-step instructions on how to tie your shoelaces and then give them to someone else and ask them to follow them to the letter. Even if they are successful, it will take much longer than simply using the unconscious program. Now imagine consciously following those instructions in the time it takes to swing a golf club.
The only effective way to swing a golf club is to disconnect your conscious mind and all your thoughts on swing mechanics and trust your unconscious mind; You have already programmed it to repeat the best shot you have ever made. And the way to make sure you do that is, as before, by installing a proper post-hypnotic suggestion through self-hypnosis.
Number 7: criticize your shot and look for flaws in your swing
Even using hypnosis, you will occasionally miss an opportunity or have bad luck. However, that is no cause for criticism and certainly no reason to change swing mechanics on the field. Just learn from the shot and move on.
Number 8: comparing yourself to another golfer
You can learn a lot in golf by watching a good player in his prime, but the real challenge in golf is playing against the course. It doesn’t really matter how well or badly your fellow players or opponents are playing. If you play your best and lose, then well done and well done. That is one of the many special things that I love about golf.
If it still bothers you, install the post-hypnotic suggestion that you will treat each shot as if it is the last you will play. There would be no reason to stop on your previous shots and there would be none in the future, so you better make the most of the one you are playing now.
Number 9: think about what could go wrong
In your mind, you unconsciously interpret this in a manner similar to telling yourself what NOT to do. Your unconscious mind will have to think about what could go wrong and then do everything it can to make it happen. If you want to assess what could go wrong, that’s fine, before deciding what you want to happen. Then you can use your post-hypnotic suggestions and self-hypnosis to bypass your conscious mind and let your unconscious programming continue with the desired shot.
Number 10: Worrying that other people are watching you
If you are using hypnosis and NLP to control your state and concentration during the round, you will not be aware of or concerned about the actions of others. Even if they have negative or critical thoughts about you, those thoughts are in their heads and not yours. Once you enter your gambling trance, you will be blissfully unaware of your conscious self-talk.
So what are my general conclusions?
Now, it won’t surprise you to learn that all of my suggestions revolve around the use of hypnosis and the appropriate post-hypnotic suggestions. You can also benefit from the use of other carefully selected golf psychology techniques. However, if you use them without the hypnosis and post-hypnotic tips, you will probably forget to remember to perform the techniques with every shot.
One of the reasons I did not benefit from the Indoor golf game And the many other books, DVDs and CDs that I bought in my early years is that none of them installed any way to remember not to forget to follow the techniques they taught me when I needed them. The closest anyone has come to achieving it has been Dr. Karl Morris with his Circle Game, but even that only worked very intermittently for me.
It would be an improvement if he had a caddy every time he played and the caddy had a checklist of all the golf psychology instructions he had to remember. Even then, I would still need something like hypnosis to handle the interference from my conscious mind while doing the shots.
