January 2020, You Are Where You Are

It is the start of a new year, and like many other golfers you may be asking yourself what goals do you have for this coming 2020 year?  Tiger Woods wants another Green Jacket and Rory wants another major....but what about you?

Though it is easy to sit down and jot out new goals it is also just as important to reflect on how your last golf season ended the way it did?  I am based here in San Diego, CA and each year Esther Hicks of Abraham-Hicks visits San Diego  here in LaJolla, about 2 blocks from where I coach for GOLFTEC. She gives a seminar at the Marriott Hotel on the law of attraction and how your thoughts and emotions affect your reality.  She is due here again this February.

At one of her Seminars I attended she mentioned to the audience that everyone in the room has dreams and visions of where they want to go, or what they want to create.  Since she talks a lot about the Law of Attraction she always mentions a persons feelings or emotions; she calls it your Vibrational  Energy.  I have always liked that for golfers, because as we golfers know, we have many emotions and feelings when we play.

But she also stated to the audience that you have these dreams of what you wish to create for your future,  but that is not here now.  She stated; "You are where you are, but you are wanting to get something or do something in the future".

Because you have just finished the 2019 year/golf season, I think it is a good idea to look at where you are now?
How has your season ended? What did you like about it and what did you not enjoy? What strengths in your golf game did you gain and what pains in your game still bother you?

Self assessment is never easy and sure as a swing coach I can assess your swing motion, the arc of the club, low point and the clubface and determine what parts are sufficient and what parts of the swing need improvement.  

However I bet if you have reflected on other previous years you probably have found similar situations and feelings about your game.  Thus 2 or 3 years ago what did your "You are where you are" answer look like?  Probably similar in some ways.  Why is that?

Golfers are funny because they put so much emphasis on the swing and not enough acknowledgement as to what they think or how they feel when they hit a shot on the course, practice on the range or even visualize their future game which they wish to create for 2020.

Golfers are creatures of habit (as is everyone) and those habits are basically mental programs you acquire over time and these habits of thought have feelings associated with them.  For example, you sit on the first tee here at Torre Pines and the rough is 5 inches deep today in preparation for The Farmers Open hosted here in 3 weeks.  You say to yourself;" I do not want to  hit my tee shot in that long rough".   That thought has an emotion attached to it, one of fear, anxiety, even depression.

Your mental programs are not only around golf, you have them about your work or your home.  Next Monday most of the work force will return to the office, the highways will be jammed in rush hour traffic and probably Sunday night you will begin to think about your week coming up.  Those thoughts of being back in your office, around certain people you do not like or about a situation you will have to handle will also have an emotional attachment to them.  I call them 'emotional charges'.

No matter where we are in life we are creatures of habit, we wake up at the same time most days, our first thing we do is probably look at our smart phone.  You take a shower, get your coffee and head to work, probably the same route you drive every day.  We see the same people at work, and probably eat lunch at the same places most of the time.  You get the idea.

On the day you play golf you head to the range to warm up, and you probably have many thoughts about your swing and those thoughts lead to emotions you will have as you warm up.  If you miss-hit a few shots as you warm up, you may panic and worry about what is about to happen and of course those thoughts have emotions too.  I bet if you look back at your season last year you can see many times where something happened on the course and a thought then occurred (your reaction) and that thought had an Emotional Charge to it.  Can you see what I am suggesting?

Golfers become creatures of habit even if they are not aware of it or they do not like the habit.  

Your golf swing is a habit also.  In fact your swing is like a program you have on your computer.  Your brain has a mental file your driver swing, on iron shots, on wedge shots , and on putting.  These are all mental programs that you have a habit for.  These habits are Subconscious thought patterns and they occupy most of your mind and daily routines you take for granted.  How much do these subconscious programs take up in your mental computer bank you call your mind?    Are you ready for this astonishing answer........95%!  Yes, 95 percent of what you do daily is a mental program, from how you shower, get your coffee, get to work , do your tasks at work and of course your golf swing. 

What is alarming about the fact of subconscious programs we have is that they are not only a thought and action pattern but they also have an emotional reaction to them.  In golf if you hit your tee shot in the rough on the first hole at Torre Pines and then cannot get out and advance the ball far toward the green you will have an emotional reaction to that situation because you fear the lack of distance of that shot you just hit, increases your chances of bogey, or double bogey as you play the first hole.  Your past loops of thoughts and actions have placed you where you sit today!

You are where you are today.....based on your past thoughts and emotions.  Yes I hear some of you beating the drum of "what about my swing" but what you create in your game first begins with thought.  Nothing can be created without first the thought of creating something and then you would visualize the thought and have an emotion associated with it.

Because 95% of your life is Subconscious programming that means you have 5% available of Conscious thought to create something new.  This blog post is not about how the 5% works, it is simply here to nudge you to reflect on why or how "You Are Where You Are"?

As I mentioned, self reflection is not easy but in my new book "Alchemy of Golf" it dives you first into understanding how you got to where you are now.  The book has two challenging areas that golfers will have to take on and look into away from the course to help them see how the past has dictated their present and what they can do in the present to create the more empowered future. The book is due out this spring but until then you can reflect on your past of 2019.

So these next few days, I would suggest you humbly look within and see how you have arrived in your golf game as you start the new year? Yes you have goals, and I get that.  But you also have past thoughts and feelings and emotions.  As you reflect you will see you have had similar subconscious programmed thoughts before.  Those habitual thoughts have been there quite a while, longer than you will want to attest to.

But to make real change in 2020, the old thoughts and emotions you had that have limited your performance in the past will have to be changed.  If they are not, you can re-read this on Jan 1 2021 and probably feel the same then as you do today!