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You list your negative, limiting thoughts in advance of your round, so it becomes conscious. Then you go to a relaxed state of mind. Close your eyes and slow down your breathing. Experience in your mind the pain these actions and thoughts cause for you. Feel the tension, feel the nausea as your ball lands in the pond or as you run your putt twenty feet past the hole. Once these feelings and thoughts are so real they are palatable, reverse them. Throw them out. Toss them into an imaginary bonfire. Get rid of that list. When the thoughts are gone, create a thought and an image to replace each and every negative image. Focus on your goal and create the thoughts and images that will allow you to achieve that goal. Go back into that relaxed state, imagine and actually feel the mechanics of your swing. Feel the elation of hitting your drive 275 yards straight down the fairway. Feel the effortless swing and the pure joy of draining a thirty-foot putt for birdie. Visualize yourself performing at your peak. It sounds simple and it is. The key to successfully executing guided imagery and directed imagination is to worship the process. You have to make a commitment to regularly rehearse and release the negative qualities, replace them with the positive images and results. You have to worship what you want to be doing and pay attention when you clutter your mind with negative thinking that sabotages that goal. Otherwise, you are going to end up with the same mixed bag of results. If you do something imperfectly, that is what gets stored in your memory. Conversely, if you do something correctly, that is what gets stored in your memory. “Perfect Mental Practice” is what creates perfect results. Sue Stebbins CLH, High Performance Coach, Norwalk, CT works with individuals, executives and organizations on high performance coaching for sports, corporate peak performance, stress and conflict. Creating Your Own Mental Golf Academy Create your own Mental Golf Academy. Mentally create a place where you can go that is reflecting the best aspects of yourself and your game. This room is where you celebrate your peak abilities and peak experiences. In this room you become energized. You have a sense of command over our experiences. It is your ultimate learning center, your mental golf academy. Once you have found this room it is time to practice. Guided imagery or directed imagination works by relaxing yourself for three or four minutes. Get into a relaxed state of mind. Shut your eyes, focus on your breathing and tell your body to relax. Concentrate on your favorite golf course, Augusta, St. Andrews, or Pebble Beach. Focus on feeling really good, recall images that are relaxing and tranquil, like your favorite course at dawn covered in dew and you and your caddy are the first to play it that day. Imagine yourself in your ideal golf academy. Make it bright, make it comfortable, including a big video screen, a video tape player, and a soft leather chair. Turn on the video tape player. See yourself in the situation that is causing you a problem. Actually feel the problem, physically enter the video screen. Then see yourself taking the videotape out of the VCR and throwing it away in the garbage can. Put in a new videotape of your perfect golf swing. Focus on the tape playing our ideal swing. Project yourself into the screen and be in the body of the person performing the swing. The key is to first disassociate and then associate. Watch the screen, then step into your body and feel your body hitting this shot. It should help your game significantly with all the feelings of confidence. Amplify these feelings of confidence by repeating the image and sensation three to five times. Create a trigger word like “Augusta” or “Chivas Irons” and know that you now have a link to your peak performance state. Your trigger acts as a tool to automatically access this peak performance state. Incorporate this trigger word into your pre-shot routine.
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