The Struggle
On the first tee of the final match of the 2017 U.S. Mid-Amateur, I was not freed up.
I was anxious. I was mentally in the future thinking about potentially playing in The Masters if I won that day.
I was in a place where I felt like losing was unacceptable. I had to win.
Problem is, because I felt like I had to win, that means somewhere underneath I was scared to lose.
This always happens. You can check it for yourself. Whenever you’ve been in a situation where you felt like you had to play well, were you freed up? Or were you constricted? I’d venture to guess you were constricted. And there’s a reason for that.
Here’s what I call the Fear Formula:
The more you need **something to go well, the more fear you feel.
The less you need **it to go well, the more freedom you have.
It’s a direct trade-off: high need = high fear. Low need = high freedom.
The Solution
In his book The Foundations of Winning Golf, Jon Sherman opens with a chapter titled “Let’s Define Winning”. He breaks down how difficult golf is, and why defining success based on score or leaderboard results is a recipe for frustration.
To contrast it, he says:
“However, if I am open to all possibilities, there to learn, and armed with a list of smaller, more achievable goals – I can reduce the pressure I am placing on myself to perform.”¹
What he’s describing here is the second part of the Fear Formula. He’s reducing his need for the result to go well by prioritizing acceptance and working a process of smaller bite-sized goals to achieve. Which he says reduces pressure, but we can sub out pressure for constriction. We can safely say these things give Sherman more freedom.
Yes, this is the cliché idea of “trust the process and the results will take care of themselves.” Sure it’s cliché, but it also works with how our brains are wired. We are designed to watch out for threats and avoid pain.
So if we perceive a threat (like losing a USGA Championship and missing out on the opportunity to play in The Masters) then our brain will help us avoid the pain. We will tense up and get quick.
But if we can reduce the perception of threat down to something more manageable, there’s nothing for our brains to help us survive. We can freely pursue.
But how?
How can we reduce the perception of threat? To use Sherman’s tactic, we can shift our priorities to things that are pretty easy to achieve. And more importantly, the consequences for not achieving them are really tiny.
Failing to hit a fairway is much less consequential than failing to win a USGA Championship.
And failing to commit to a shot is much more in your control than the outcome of the entire match.
When consequences are small, fear is small.
One thing for you to work on this week:
In order to free up, you have to reduce the fear. And in order to reduce the fear, you have to reduce the need for it to go well. And in order to reduce the need, you have to shift your perspective to something more achievable.
To-do: Increase freedom by making the goal more bite-sized and achievable, like the parts of a pre-shot routine.