The Struggle
I spend a lot of my rounds of golf trying NOT to feel negative emotions. I’m supposed to be grateful and happy all the time. I’m not allowed to feel any kind of negative emotions. I’m playing golf, after all. This is supposed to be fun!
But the problem is, we will always run into issues if we try to stifle our emotions. In effect, we are telling our brain and body “you’re wrong, you’re broken, stop doing that.”
That’s a really great way to spend the entire round fighting yourself rather than playing golf.
Instead, we can choose to see our emotions and accept them. Let ourselves feel the nerves, the agitation, annoyance, distraction, excitement, frustration, impatience, calm, chaos.
As Josh Waitzkin says in his book The Art of Learning,
“The only way to succeed is to acknowledge reality and funnel it, take the nerves and use them. We must be prepared for imperfection.”¹
A lot of us have too high of expectations for ourselves. We expect ourselves to be perfectly calm, composed, and happy every minute of a round of golf. That’s simply a very unrealistic expectation.
Golf is full of ups and downs. By definition, half of our golf game will be above average, and half below average. And I’d venture to guess that our emotions follow the same math. Half of the time, we will feel above average, and half the time we will feel below average.
But when we fall into the trap of expecting good golf and feeling good 80, 90, 100% of the time, when in reality it’s 50%, the bigger that expectation gap the more dissonance we’ll feel.
Waitzkin again,
“Instead of denying my emotional reality under fire, I had to learn how to sit with it, use it, channel it into a heightened state of intensity… I had to turn my emotions to my advantage.”²
Easier said than done, so how can we use our emotions to our advantage?
The Solution
I’ve always liked the idea of using our emotions as a reminder. When we start to feel agitated, we can train ourselves to use the feeling of agitation to notice and accept it, and perhaps address the agitating source (which might just be how we’re perceiving a situation).
For example:
Lately, every round I’ve played I’ve started the first 4 or 5 holes feeling rushed. Like if I don’t hurry up then we’ll get too far behind the group in front of us and start holding up the groups behind us. Which will make others judge me for being slow, and I’ll be the source of their misery. As a people-pleaser, this is my kryptonite.
This causes me to rush through my pre-round warmup and my pre-shot routines, not read putts as thoroughly, and just stay in a subtly agitated state the whole time. And it gets even worse when one of my playing partners is going slow. I’m trying my best to play fast, and they’re playing slow, how dare they???
But my way of addressing this is first to go into the round knowing this is my tendency. I set myself up to notice the agitation when it happens. And then when it inevitably happens, I use it as a trigger to practice acceptance. I will take a few deep breaths, 4 seconds in, 8 seconds out, and ground myself back to the present.
So instead of being agitated, which leads to rushing, which leads to worse golf, I’ve now used the early signs of agitation as a trigger to go to an even better place than I was **before ** I was getting agitated.
Which usually has the effect of me realizing no one is actually playing slow, no one is miserable, and this is indeed very fun. And my game almost always improves because of it.
This is using my emotions to my advantage.
One thing for you to work on this week:
Take stock of your typical emotions that happen during a round of golf or a practice session. Notice the things that will happen 50% of the time that you expect to happen 20, 10, or 0% of the time.
But instead of fighting them or denying them, you accept them. And then turn them into a trigger to move into a better place emotionally. Use them to ground you in the present to where you are playing more freely and having more fun.
To-do: Notice and accept your emotions. Use them as a trigger for a good mentality.
Sources:
- Waitzkin, J. The Art of Learning. p. 207 (paperback)
- Ibid.