How often do you ever stop and look at how far you’ve come in golf? How about your life in general? In this particular article, I have pulled a self-suggestion from my hypnosis products that relates to the idea of “looking back” in order to achieve greater confidence in where you are today. I believe it will help you understand the importance of building, reinforcing, and strengthening certain kinds of healthy thought patterns that lead to better performance in your golf game and in life. You can accomplish this through repeating the suggestion daily, several times a day, in order to master the skill. The more you master the skills that I teach in your day-to-day life, the more naturally they will come to you and carry over into your golf game.
The topic I want you to consider here is realizing how far you have come. In working with many athletes over the years, I have observed where people tend to see and think about things with a negative perspective. This could be based on their “programming,” what they learned from listening to others, what they learned growing up, or from typical conversations they engage in every day. People tend to limit themselves in their thinking, and you can really see this with golf. You see people looking at what they were unable to do, or wishing they could have played a hole better. Sometimes at the end of a round, they even look back at what went wrong in the round instead of all the things that went well.
That is a tendency you need to change and break free of, if you want to improve your performance in golf. So how do you do that? First, let’s take a look at the following suggestion: “I see how far I have come, just as a mountain climber can look behind and feel proud of his obvious accomplishments.”
Why don’t you go there visually right now? Take your mind, as if you are a mountain climber, and see yourself reaching with your arm and grabbing hold of a rock with your hand, or noticing your foot placement as you scale a cliff or rock wall. Obviously every step of the way is an opportunity to be present, or a challenge that presents itself. You must be confident in your skills, knowledge and abilities to truly be able to perform well as a mountain climber. The same is true in golf, and in many other areas of your life.
The skills used by mountain climbers are all really great mental skills that will benefit every golfer, but what if those mountain climbers kept feeling like, “I am not far enough along,” or “this is not as far as I should be,” and were constantly ridiculing themselves and looking at their lack instead of abundance? How does that differ from the mountain climbers who can turn around and feel proud of how far they have come and can recognize their skill levels improving over time?
Maybe some mountain climbers have gone from climbing small cliffs to large ones and onto mountain climbing excursions, and can see how far they have come from the very first day when they learned how to tie off and where to place their hands. All those basic skills that they have moved far beyond and built on now enable them the ability to be out there successfully implementing all they have learned. Recognizing that gives them confidence in themselves and motivates them toward achieving even greater heights. The same is true in golf.
There is progression that takes place as mountain climbers practice and continue learning and climbing more and higher than they ever have before. Then as they take a moment to look back, they can see that they have come a long way. They can see how far they have come with all of the skills they have learned, their improved performance, and ability to participate in that sport the way they would like. They can also be proud of what they have accomplished.
Let’s take a look at that same concept with golf. Remember the basics and when you first started playing. Realize how far you have come from day one, when you first learned how to grip and swing a club, read the green, align your putt, define the speed…all of that. Take a moment right now to reflect back on the basics, and really remember how you felt when you learned those things. Reflect back on the progression you have made over time with those skills, and see how far you have come with them. Notice that you are now at the point where you don’t have to consciously think about a lot of them anymore. The fact that those skills just come to you automatically now, when you used to have to think about them and practice them over and over, is really huge progress! Recognizing that progress will help you feel more confident in yourself when you step out to play, and improve your golf performance as a result.
I’d like you to take a look and see how far you have come, starting today. With that level of thinking, go about your day and golf game from a mindset of seeing growth and abundance, feeling appreciative, strong and confident, versus feeling lack, that you are not good enough, that you are not far enough along or that things should be different. If you don’t play golf today, I would suggest that you apply this to your life, work or relationships, and find a way (or several ways) to see how far you have come. You can do this in one area of your life, or take yourself through different areas. Go back to the beginning of that particular area, look at your skill set then and what you had to learn, and recognize your growth and how far you have come from then until now.
By doing this in different areas of your life, you will easily be able to transfer that way of thinking over into your golf game, but it won’t work from doing it just one time. You must train yourself to think in this manner on a regular, daily basis. Look at abundance in your life rather than lack. Look at your progression and how far you have come, rather than thinking you should be better by now. Feel confident and good about how well you play golf, rather than down on yourself or like you aren’t as good as some other players out there.
I challenge you to repeat this suggestion from my golf products over and over: “I see how far I have come, just as a mountain climber can look behind and feel proud of his obvious accomplishments”. Congratulations on how far you have come in so many different areas of your life and golf game! I wish you well in applying this today and every day in golf, in your life or any other sport, and am here for you if you need any help. So get out there and do this for a week, and watch how your golf performance improves as you really see how far you have come. Thanks, and have a great day!