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How To Make Golf Confidence A Habit By Using The Psychology Of Golf
In my experience and discussions with golfers of all levels, I find that most golfers looking for confidence even think about the possibility of creating confidence as a habitual way of thinking. Perhaps this is because they do not understand the psychology of golf, which is fair. Hence, hopefully this article will shed some light on the fact that making golf confidence a habit is possible, regardless of your results. Let’s chunk this down into two topics of discussion; Confidence Building and Habit Formation. Starting with confidence building, it is valuable for you to know and understand that confidence has two dimensions. These dimensions are recognized as Trait Confidence and State Confidence. The Trait Confidence is the dimension of confidence that most people are familiar with, which is the level of innate confidence that one possesses day in, day out and has been developed through trials, tribulations, experience, circumstances, self belief, self perception, etc... This is the confidence that you can see a person owns when they get on stage or they don’t own and are bashful. This is the confidence that is closely tied with the ego and is very much existent on a subconscious level. This level of confidence that we all have, whether it’s high, low, or average, actually is already so much a habitual underlying thought, that it is often a huge project, involving many hours, to increase this sort of confidence. Thankfully, State Confidence is a horse of a different color! State Confidence is available to everyone at any moment in time and is based on a choice and a conscious thought. State confidence is the confidence one feels immediately after a positive result. For example, you just hit a golf shot that flew perfectly, felt effortless, and went exactly where you wanted it to go. Immediately, you will experience some level of increased confidence for the next shot. In fact, very often the confidence is increased, and the golfer swings harder on the next shot to produce the same sort of long distance result, which leads to a loss of balance and a result that is not as good. Then where is the confidence? It differs for all, however, there still might be some hope and a little of that confidence left to find that perfect shot again. Whack, the next shot is seldom as good as that one perfect shot, and slowly but surely, the confidence is back to zilch. Does this sound familiar? The point here is to recognize that State Confidence took place immediately after seeing and experiencing the good result. The golden nugget is here. Realize that psychology and science understand that an image in the brain and subconscious mind is the same, whether the image is from a moment ago, or a year ago. Hence, before hitting a golf shot, you can trick your body into feeling confidence by resurrecting a positive image of a golf shot you made last week, month or year. In fact, what’s even more exciting about State Confidence, is that it does not matter what you imagine yourself doing well, (it could be anything) your body will be in a confident state which has been scientifically tested to increase strength, and lower heart rate! Now that State Confidence is better understood as being readily available to anybody, as long as they choose to think of a positive image of themselves doing ANYTHING, the question is how to make it a habit? There is only one answer to forming a habit and that is REPETITION. In order to make golf confidence a habit, you must repeatedly think of something that you do well before every golf shot. It can be the same thought. This is not going to make you a scratch golfer in a day, month or even a year. However, it will impact your game once it is a habit. How does it make sense to be in any other state of mind other than a positive one that empowers you? It doesn’t. So start forming the habit. It will take longer than 21 days in a row. The easiest way to get it formed will be to drop it into your pre-shot routine, which should be habitually repeatable. If you do not have a pre-shot routine, make this conscious confidence way of thinking the first step that you do every time you approach a golf shot. It will be a good start to a routine. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Want to learn more about confidence in golf and other aspects of the psychology of golf? Visit my website at www.GetGolfConfidence.com for helpful tips on building golf confidence. |
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