Living that tournament life... let's dive in and adjust accordingly.
Most athletes at the elite level are extremely physically fit. An athlete with a focused mind is unstoppable. So those who excel and rise to the top are the ones who have a calm and focused mind and those who can be resilient in the face of adversity. It's those great performers who attain high levels of excellence because they are committed to ongoing learning.
One element of ongoing learning involves a process of self discovery - reflection and constructive evaluation.
Tournament golf isn’t the same as practice rounds for many golfers. To start minimising the gap between practice & tournament experiences, constructive evaluation is crucial. It's important if you want to make meaningful improvements in the quality and consistency of your tournament results. Those who consistently perform at the top of the world are actually superb learners, have a lot of self-knowledge and are great at stretching their limits.
Now that tournaments are back on and you played a couple of them, it’s very likely and normal that you’re experiencing things and situations that you weren’t experiencing before during practice or training.
Tournaments bring about extra pressure and heightened emotions because of the completely different meaning & condition golf is played at. It’s a normal physiological reaction of the body. In turn, the mind reacts to the different chemistry of the body.
Expect conditions to be different at important events or major tournaments. There's usually a faster pace, a busier place, and sometimes more waiting around. Expect that people behave differently at big events.
If you step back and look at distractions or demanding situations from a distance afterwards, you realize that most of them are things that can be resolved. If you can evaluate effectively why those situations/emotions arose and what has happend, you can use that newly gained knowledge to help prevent it from happening in the next tournament round.
Below are 4 journal type questions that will help you evaluate effectively after your tournament.
Through reflective self evaluation, greater clarity comes into your game performances automatically. It provides you the opportunity to act on those discoveries that lead to your best game focus.
While you are reflecting I challenge you to apply an inside out versus outside in approach. An outside in approach is something that was rewarded in school. School thought us how to look outside yourself for the answers. Your new inside out and more empowering skill that you develop as you move to higher and higher tournament levels in your golf career, is where you start to turn your focus inward for the answers.
As you go through these journal type questions, be present of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations that happened.
In fact, be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation that caused you to react.
Don’t judge it. It’s an invitation to be honest and look yourself in the mirror.
Things you wan't to stay away from when evaluating your performances:
UNCERTAINTY, FEAR, SHAME, JUDGMENT, REGRET, SUFFERING, SELF PITTY, BLAMING, EXCUSES, WORRY, FEELING SORRY, CONFUSED, LAZY, DISHONEST, DRAMATIC, BLACK AND WHITE, SELF CRITIQUE, CLOSED MINDED, LACK & PROBLEM FOCUSED
You want to stay away from these behaviours that causes your thought process because they drain energy and take you further away from your ideal focus.
What you want to look for during evaluations because the goal is to make it CONSTRUCTIVE & providing ENERGY/clear direction:
- asking curious questions about the situation - be interested in gathering evidence to inform conclusions
- being able to deal with complexity and gray areas - asking helpful, open-ended questions (how might it be possible? What part of this looks possible?) - it is forward moving
- seeking solutions
- speaking in a calmer tone - speaking from a fundamental stance of self-support
Of course it's also important to look at the following question:
How was your commitment to your physical routines & your recovery process?
Following your dreams can be both terrifying and exciting.
Courage is facing exactly that!!
Those who are courageous don't wait until next season to start improving their performances.
So it occurred to me that you may not have seen the testimonial on this page...
The one in which Jeff shares his story. It's super inspiring!
You won't be the first to think after that:
I WANT THAT TOO.
So here's an invitation to you:
You can now claim your spot to start in September with the 1:1 High Performance Program.
Decided you don't want to wait until then?
And join other High Performance golfers in July?
Then it may just be that you have already paid off your investment in August because you'll have already added meters & years to your golf life.
(september will be the FINAL opportunity in 2021 to get started with me as your coach!)
