Mind Clutter = Poor Golf

As golfer’s we can all agree that controlling our thoughts while we play is THE greatest challenge in the game. Mind clutter in golf kills scores! Certainly there are swing elements and physical demands, yet your mind will be the main determinant in your scoring ability over the course of a full round of golf.

There is so much downtime in golf that our minds have excessive time to fret and worry. Even in the moments when it’s time to make a shot our mind is racing around. So what do you do to alleviate this? Or more accurately, what can be done to direct the mind so you benefit from its tremendous power?

Fortunately there are many things that can be done. Yet not in the sense of adding more conscious thought techniques. In other words, we don’t want more things to “think about” while we play, do we? No.

What we want is to reduce the amount of thoughts we think and to allow an inner stillness, calm and clarity to replace our conscious mind clutter.

Too Many Tips Spoil The Broth

One of the major causes of mind clutter is the ever-increasing generation of new swing tips, fixes and cures. Especially on the internet. These seemingly helpful tools become more mind-clutter that take you out of your “flow”. Flow should be your aim.

Playing the game too much from your left brain, filled with tips and swing keys, cuts off your connection with your own flow. You want to maintain and enhance your natural connection with your subconscious. It is your right brain that is the doorway to your subconscious and it is your imagination that is the key to that opens the door.

Your subconscious has every swing you’ve ever made. It has every nuance within every swing in your personal history all filed away for your use. It simply awaits your request!

But if you keep relying mainly on your conscious thinking or more left brained “concepts”, you aren’t communicating with your subconscious at all. You’re in fact telling the subconscious to remain buried and that what matters to you is what your conscious mind is telling/asking you to do.

Use Your Mind as it was Designed

The relationship between your subconscious and conscious mind is this: the conscious mind selects a target and the subconscious delivers the swing that will get the ball there. Yet for 99% of all golfers this natural relationship has been severed, either by not knowing it exists or because of excessive left brain, conscious mind golf habits.

I can not stress this enough. If you truly want to play high level golf and hit shots you know you are capable of, you must learn to tap and trust your unconscious mind. This is done by becoming increasingly connected to your target. What does this mean? Learn to build an intense awareness between the ball and your desired target. Here is how the process works:

-> Your eyes assess the situation - you must learn to trust your eyes.

-> Feel your swing inside and sense how best to get the ball to your desired target.

-> Visualize the ball flight, or the roll if it’s a putt, and see it land on your target. Be it the fairway or the fat of the green, the bottom of the cup, or wherever you have selected your target.

-> Take dead aim

Learn exercises and techniques that build the link between your left and right brain. Your conscious and subconscious. Like mental imagery and other visualization processes. These will greatly improve all areas of your game and dissolve mental chatter. Imagine that...