In golf, as in life, preparation and mastery of your skills through practice and perseverance is extremely important to building confidence and achieving peak performance. Equally important is your ‘presence’ in any given moment. You can achieve that by learning how to properly focus your mind to break free from the past or future, and into a level of inner peace connected to this exact moment. By peace, I don’t mean complacency or relaxation. I mean that you achieve an acceptance or level of inner peace in which you are able to be present (in the ‘here and now’) and accept what is happening around you. That peace then helps you achieve peak performance by limiting the effect of typical agitations, frustrations or angers, that come from thinking about what you “should’ve, could’ve or would’ve” done differently. So achieving peak performance is possible, as you acquire and maintain skills in mastery, presence, and inner peace.
One of my ‘Self Suggestions’, that I have found to really help people in trying to achieve peak performance, pertains to being prepared and confident. It is one of the many techniques I include in my Golf Product, and greatly increases performance as people apply it to their golf game and their life. This suggestion states:
“I train my mind to see good in myself, to feel prepared & confident in who I am & what I bring to my game and life.”
How can you train your mind to see good in yourself, and how does that help achieve peak performance? Part of the problem you face when you reflect on yourself and your game, is that you might only focus on your faults – what needs to be improved. That is because a large percentage of people only see their faults and the faults of others. When you feel like there is lack, that there are problems or that things are constantly wrong and need to be fixed, you are limiting your abilities. You actually, physically, decrease your energy by thinking that way.
When people experience this decrease in energy, they tend to label it with different words like: sad, upset, down-and- out, lethargic or maybe even depressed, irritable or guilty. There are all different kinds of feelings and emotions to pick from. When people do that, they are actually labeling the sensation of the cells of their body. When those cells are in that kind of decreased energy/lower vibration state, they do not perform very well and actually cause the body to shut down – literally. So obviously, people are not able to perform to the best of their ability when their bodies are shutting down and cells of the body are not functioning in the best way they could be. Not an ideal state to be in, that’s for sure.
But what can be done about that in order to improve performance?
Training your mind to see the good in yourself is going to increase your cell vibration, which increases your energy level necessary to achieve peak performance. As an effect of having a more uplifting way of looking at yourself, and a more uplifting energy, your performance improves. It is a process that starts with awareness, and it is possible to achieve peak performance with this technique. Training your mind to see good in yourself starts with first cutting out, stopping or eliminating the negative thinking of yourself, or the tendency to only think about what you are doing wrong or not good enough. You must stop that first, and then begin to focus on what you are doing right; how hard you are trying, how you persevere through challenges, how far you have come and all of the progress you have made.
This is another tendency people have, of constantly seeing their lack or what they “could’ve, should’ve or would’ve” done better. So achieving peak performance requires you to train your mind to see the good in yourself…and feel prepared. It is a shift in perspective to start to recognize in yourself that you really are prepared, and able to achieve peak performance.
So how do you do that?
First of all, you actually do have to practice the mechanics and mental skills you previously learned to help you achieve peak performance. You will not feel prepared if you’ve been slacking off. If you have not made your sport and practice a priority at all, you will feel you have neglected that area. There is no way of mentally overcoming that other than by deceiving yourself. Or, you could look at the fact that you have spent many years of perfecting your skills and just because you took a few weeks off, does not mean those skills have gone away. You can still feel prepared even if circumstances have caused you to not practice as frequently as you had preferred. So, you need to see the shift in mindset from being hard on yourself in thinking you will not perform well, because you did not practice, to thinking you will perform well because you have many years of experience and skill development.
Whichever road you choose in your mind, will either increase your energy and cell vibration or decrease it. Either one will affect your performance. So now you have a few options on how to proceed. You can practice as much as you feel is reasonable, in balance with your human self where you take care of all aspects of your life to the best of your ability. You do not want to feel lack in any area when you are trying to perform well in your sport; especially in certain areas like sleeping, eating and exercise, as they will immediately affect your performance. To really feel prepared, includes taking care of those things you truly have control over; your health, well being, relationships, work and practice of mechanics and your mental skills. That is how you can best prepare to achieve peak performance.
So “I train my mind to see good in myself, feel prepared and confident,” in order to achieve peak performance. I have talked a lot about confidence and peak performance in sports in other articles and teachings over the years. Confidence in who you are comes from choosing to focus on what you do well, progress you have made, and what you offer to each moment. So being confident in who you are and what you bring to your game and life is a critical factor to achieving peak performance.
As you reflect back on feeling prepared, you need to realize that your level of preparedness is what you bring to your game and to your life. You then need to ask yourself what level of confidence you bring. That should really be equivalent to how prepared you feel, if you want to achieve peak performance.
Therefor starting now, begin the process of training your mind to see good in yourself, so you can achieve peak performance in your game and your life. You undoubtedly harbor a lot of old habits that are limiting your performance and need to be broken, so new habits can be made. If you need any help with that beyond what I am offering here, I am available to you. You can contact me or, like many people around the world, you can purchase my help products.
Just remember my suggestion: “I train my mind to see good in myself, to feel prepared and confident in who I am and what I bring to my life and game.” I wish you well in implementing this and hope you come back to my website tips for more information in the future. Achieving peak performance is possible with these techniques, and you can do it. Have an amazing day!