Well the good news is, there is something we can do about it on the golf course when we’ve lost control in our mental game:

In part three I said that our subconscious mind is the realm of all of our emotions and that it reacts symbolically. This means that it does things and acts when it is presented with something that triggers one of its automatic responses. For example, a lot of people will suddenly change their attitude when they see a person in a uniform of authority, such as a police officer uniform or maybe a military uniform. Their reaction could be a positive or negative one, but all the same when it all comes down to it, it’s just clothing.

Throughout each and every day we subconsciously react to things such as logos, flags, monuments etc. The point I’m trying to make is that your body can instantly manifest a physical change without any conscious effort, simply by being exposed to a symbol of some sort and it’s all controlled at the subconscious level. Having this knowledge, psychology and NLP have come up with some ways to take advantage of this for creating positive states and change. I’ve found it to be useful on the golf course as well.

So let’s say you’ve just lost your cool on the last shot, but the next hole coming up is very important. You now know from reading my last lesson (lesson 3) that there are chemical processes at work in your body and so you need something strong, straight away, as an antidote to turn your mental state back around. One suggestion I have for you is to bring something with you in your golf bag. It could be something like a special handkerchief, it could be your lucky hat, or it could be any item that you feel is your symbol for a creating a resourceful state. Something that you had with you that you associate with a successful achievement from your past (an anchor to that experience), like a trophy. Your body has the ability to instantly change its chemistry if you’re really good at communicating with your subconscious mind.

Studies of people who display multiple personalities have shown that these people instantly change such biological functions as: brain-wave patterns, blood flow patterns, muscle tone, heart rate and even allergies (from the book Holographic Universe) when their personalities change. That is how amazingly powerful our subconscious mind is. You can turn off the anxiety as fast as you turned it on.

You possess this same skill. It’s just a matter of thinking about it in advance and using some sort of symbol/trigger to help you get there when you need to. How about bringing a picture of someone special with you to pull out when you need it. Or a picture of yourself in a great moment. It doesn’t even need to be a good moment, just something that’s has a very strong memory attached to it that can help to at least get you back to neutral. This is all very, very possible and if you’re one who is prone to letting negative emotions get to you and affect your game, this is a very good strategy. You can do it very easily and all on the sly by just going into your bag and opening your wallet for second and taking a look at that picture right there on the golf course. But it could take some time of repeating this trigger before it takes full effect of being able to work, so do this often – even when you’re playing great. Actually it’s a good idea to do this all the time with your great shots, then it will really be an anchor to your playing good golf. If you only use it when you need to on your bad shots then eventually your symbol or trigger could take on a whole new meaning for you and you’ll associate it to your bad shots. So use it regularly, especially on your good shots as well. I strongly suggest you integrate a good trigger into your pre-shot routine. You wouldn’t notice it, but many top pros use physical triggers in their pre-shot routine (subconsciously or consciously – either way, they do it).

The last thing I want to leave you with on this subject is that we can become addicted to the anxiety and emotions. Yep, no kidding, just like an addictive drug. Some of you may be surprised to learn that you can actually become addicted to feeling angry or frustrated. Why in the world would we do that? The answer is the same as why do people like to go see horror movies? It makes them feel alive, they get an adrenaline boost. It helps them express passion that they may otherwise be lacking. It’s not that we consciously WANT to be angry. It’s just that those darn peptides cause the cells to go crazy, vibrate, move. If you want to see a funny explanation of that in a movie I recommend you see “What the bleep do we know.”

Anyway, again, it comes down to awareness. Take an honest look at yourself and ask yourself if you’re in the habit of getting angry. Can you play a full round of golf without losing it? Play your next golf game with only that goal in mind (to stay in complete control of your mental state), and don’t be at all concerned about your score. Then, at night when you do your mental practice and self-hypnosis or accelerated learning visualizations, see yourself in complete control of all your emotions and mental state. In your mind play that day’s round of golf just like you see Retief Goosen at a major. Rehearse it regularly just like the astronauts did before the first mission to the moon.

Remember, Winners win in advance!

About the author: Craig Sigl is golf’s anti-practice expert. For years, he struggled to break 80 like so many amateur golfers. After throwing his clubs in the corner of his garage and giving up, he discovered golf’s secrets that changed his life and renewed his game. A year later he scored 77 on a championship course. He then went on to drive his handicap down to a 5, make a hole in one, and record his first under par round…all without practicing. He is now a mental toughness trainer and teaches his methods to golfers worldwide. To learn more about breaking 80 without practice go here now.

Alright, I understand that, but what next? What if this happens again? What will I do?

Just to reiterate what I said in the last article, it is best to prevent this sort of thing than to have to try and recover from it, right? I’m sure you’ll agree. So after I came to that realization, I started on another book-reading binge to get some more answers. First of all I went back through my NLP training manual to look for help.

I think the first thing we need to know is that the subconscious mind is the realm of all of our emotions. What exactly is an emotion? According to Daniel Goleman, emotions are, in essence, “impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us.” Daniel’s book ‘Emotional I.Q.’ is a really interesting read and it characterizes the actions that follow each of our emotions and their purpose.

It’s a bodily reaction, a release of a pattern of molecules, or chemicals, if that’s easier to understand. This is all controlled by our subconscious mind and is triggered by our senses taking in something and then it being filtered to become our internal representation of that event. It all happens automatically in our subconscious because of the way we have shaped our internal representations over the years through our culture, experiences, upbringing, personality, etc.

These molecules get sent throughout the body from release points all over the body, not just from the mind, and bind with cells to cause them to take an action that is appropriate for that emotion. This is from the book: ‘The Molecules of Emotion’ by Candace Pert phd.

The thing you really need to get from this for golf, is that once this happens, it takes a some time for these molecules that bind (ligands) to unlock from the receptor sites of our cells. So no matter how determined you are to come back to normal after an outburst, like when I threw my club that day, I was up against a chemical process that just takes time to normalize, if I let it.

So with this new scientific knowledge under my belt, what should I have done differently in that club throwing scenario? Well, the next hole I played was a par 3 about 220 yards. Yes, a tough hole. I usually play that hole with my 4-wood that requires a full swing and very good contact to make it there. Normally, I play that hole with confidence and I focus just on swinging it freely like I do with my driver. I pick my spot on the huge green and have the confident thought before I swing that I have the potential to birdie this hole like every other hole. But this time, unbeknownst to me, all those chemicals were locked onto my cells into a pattern that was getting me physically ready for a confrontation (which resulted from my anger on the last hole). This prevented me from my normal swing having much chance, and as a result, I hit a very poor shot that went way right, resulting in a terrible lie and approach angle.

So what should I have done instead? I should have used my next club up, my 3-wood, choked down a little, used a more compact swing that has less chance for error and doesn’t require the finer touch, and played the hole far more conservatively. I should have used my go-to shot. The hole had a huge front opening so if you lay up short you’d have an easy chip up to the hole. If I was going to lay up at all, that’s where it should have been. The object of the game for me on that hole should have been to just get through this hole with no more than a bogey and a good chance of par; to just survive my unresourceful state. To wait it out and allow my body chemicals time to normalize again. With my lack of understanding of what was going on inside my body instead of giving myself the time I needed, I was lucky in scoring a double bogey, I continued to be p.o’d, then I went to the next hole, a par 5, and again played it like I normally do (going for it in 2) and ended up with a triple bogey!

Many golfers, once they lose their cool, think they have to “make up” for their choke and they start “going for it” for everything. They take more chances than normal. They get all fired up and vow to erase that last miss with a birdie. Like when you lose a bet at gambling you think you should go double or nothing. But, we really should be doing the opposite after a bad, negative experience.

We need to scale back, retreat, and regroup so that we can come back strong after our body chemistry returns to normal, which it will sooner if you use this strategy. Then when it does, you can become more aggressive again if that’s how you normally play. I had to give you all that scienctific junk so that you would see the value of this strategy, and you won’t have to throw or break that golf club!

In part 4 the suggestions I’ll be giving you to help with recovering after you lose control is based on the fact that our subconscious mind reacts symbolically.

About the author: Craig Sigl is golf’s anti-practice expert. For years, he struggled to break 80 like so many amateur golfers. After throwing his clubs in the corner of his garage and giving up, he discovered golf’s secrets that changed his life and renewed his game. A year later he scored 77 on a championship course. He then went on to drive his handicap down to a 5, make a hole in one, and record his first under par round…all without practicing. He is now a mental toughness trainer and teaches his methods to golfers worldwide. To learn more about breaking 80 without practice go here now.

Often it’s even the golfers who play golf for the intense competition and big money who ultimately play for those same idyllic reasons.

What I’m really saying here is that we don’t deserve to get angry or frustrated when we’re playing golf. What? No, we don’t. But I just missed a 3 foot putt that cost me $100 and yes, I am angry about it and experiencing frustration! Go and reread the first paragraph again. Doesn’t it seem downright silly to be angry given all that? Just the fact that we have enough money to be able to spend some of it this way puts us in the top 5% of people on this planet who can even afford this luxury!! Do you know how lucky we are to be able to even play golf? Billions of people don’t know where their next meal is coming from and so we have only the right to be thankful and grateful. And yes, even a duty to really enjoy everything about this game, even the times when we don’t play so well.

The thought I hope comes to your head now is: “I never thought of it THAT way.”

That’s what we call “perspective”.

I know, I never thought of it that way either until recently. We take so many things for granted in our lives and I’m now going to make every effort to be grateful and thankful that I can play this great game. This new attitude towards golf will not only keep my body’s natural balance in order, but I believe it will also do something good for my spirit and end my golf frustration.

I have to admit to you, I threw a club a few years ago! It’s true! I was so angry with myself for missing a putt that I believed I should have holed. I winged my putter about 30 feet toward the next tee (didn’t want to have to do any extra walking you see- Hah!) You know, I wasn’t even so angry that I missed the putt as much as I was for not following all of my own advice that I’ve been giving out. I didn’t follow through and didn’t hold my finish and so the putt was a weak stab. I was angry for not living up to my own expectations. And how many times have I preached and written about not having expectations? And there I went and did it myself!

The really ironic thing is the fact that I had expectations of myself to play the way I instruct others to, perfectly, all of the time. And this was exactly the cause of me not playing the way I teach others! That’s the reason why I missed that putt! If I had put myself in the correct frame of mind BEFORE playing golf that day, and kept myself in that frame of mind, then I would have given my subconscious mind the opportunity to consistently follow all the instructions I’ve been giving it – including making sure that I hold my finish on all of my putts. It all goes back to internal representations, it always does.

Your frustrations come from you expecting something to happen and you can’t figure out why it doesn’t or how to prevent it. You allow yourself to get wound up in this endless cycle of “why me?”

More confession time: That day that I threw the putter, I was on the 6th hole and that putt was about 4 feet for a birdie. I had parred all 5 holes prior to that. So even after missing that putt, I was still at par. So I tried to pull myself together, because I was well aware that there were plenty more holes yet to play. But guess what, the chemicals in my body had already been released from my little tantrum. My minimal brain had already taken over my neurological processes. I read in the book ‘Emotional IQ’ by Daniel Goleman that when this happens, you are at the mercy of that part of your brain for awhile. Normal patterns of electrical impulses in the brain get redirected so that some information doesn’t get registered in parts of the brain that help with making informed decisions. Have you ever heard someone say something like “I’m so mad I can’t even think straight?” That’s actually a physiological fact.

I thought to myself, “No worries, I’m an expert at this kind of mental control so I’ll be fine”. But I was not fine! I was in denial and I carried on playing golf in the same poor manner that I had been prior to losing my cool. And I went on to double-bogey the next 2 holes! I never really recovered that day and my score showed it. I vowed to go home and figure it all out and find out why and never let it happen again.

You know, we’re all human. Give yourself a break! Get in the state of mind at the beginning of the round where you believe deep down that no matter what happens you’ll continue to enjoy the thing you honestly love to do – PLAYING GOLF!

What I really want you to get from this article, this lesson, is that the best cure for negative emotions is prevention. It’s so much easier to not have a loss of emotional control in the first place than to try to recover from one.

In Part three of this lesson, I’m going to discuss what you can do to get back into control when you do lose it.

About the author: Craig Sigl is golf’s anti-practice expert. For years, he struggled to break 80 like so many amateur golfers. After throwing his clubs in the corner of his garage and giving up, he discovered golf’s secrets that changed his life and renewed his game. A year later he scored 77 on a championship course. He then went on to drive his handicap down to a 5, make a hole in one, and record his first under par round…all without practicing. He is now a mental toughness trainer and teaches his methods to golfers worldwide. To learn more about breaking 80 without practice go here now.

The majority of us golfers have watched the golf comedy movies like Caddyshack, Tin Cup, and Happy Gilmore. If you’re one of the few who haven’t, then I strongly urge you to do so. Actually, I really encourage you to see every golf movie you are able to obtain. Recently I watched two golf movies. One of those movies was “Bobby Jones, a stroke of genius”, and the other movie was “The Greatest Game Ever Played”. Both of these movies actually brought tears to my eyes. Seriously! And I’m not embarrassed to say that. Each of these golf movies were about conquering tremendous obstacles and success in both golf AND IN LIFE. Both movies tugged at my emotional chords.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the comedies are great as well, for what they are! But, a number of the characters’ actions aren’t what you should do in your own golf game. Watch those comedy kinds of golf movies with discernment. Enjoy them and come away from them with a big smile and just think “what a great sport I love that has so much fun, joy and laughter to go along with it.”

We all seem to enjoy those comedy golf movies because us golfers so desperately desire for a pro golfer to be expressive, to display their emotions and to be a “performer” like Happy Gilmore. Lee Trevino, Fuzzy Zoeller and Chi Chi used to give us some of that entertainment and we loved them for it!. We crave entertainment! That’s probably, ultimately why John Daly is a favorite pro golfer. He wears his emotions on his sleeve and we can all identify with him. He shows his anger, he swears, he lets us know about his troubles in his marriages etc.

But take a look at who the top golfers on the tours are: Retief Goosen, Vijay Singh, Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Phil Mickleson, Annika Sorenstam. They’re all rather dull to watch. Out of those golfers, the only one we ever see displaying his emotions is Tiger Woods. Tiger is an exception, as you’ll sometimes see him show his disgust and anger at a bad shot. But Tiger Woods has had many many years of mental training in managing his emotions and he has clearly learned very well how to compartmentalize. Nevertheless, 99% of the time Tiger is as robotic and cold-looking as those others. Sadly, it’s only the rare golfer who plays great golf at a top level and yet is also entertaining for us to watch at the same time.

So, I’m really sorry to point this out, but Happy Gilmore is merely just a fantasy. If you really want to score well then you need to become more like Retief Goosen with regard to your emotions. Why? Because of the mind-body connection and communication system. You’ve possibly heard this phrase casually bandied around in relation to a number of issues related to health and healing. And indeed, it does apply there for sure. But what is it?

I’ve been asking this question for awhile now and I believe I finally found the answer in a book called: Molecules of Emotion by Candace Pert. She was a government research scientist trying to find ways to help drug addicts recover. Her studies led her to fighting aids and other diseases. And it all boils down to this:

We create our own body chemistry with our habitual thoughts.

That’s the mind-body connection and the more I learned about it, the more my golf game improved.

Are you aware that research has shown that a huge percent of cancer patients had experienced major life changes just before they were diagnosed with the disease? A large number of you will know firsthand about the effects stress can have on your body. Anyway, I digress, so let’s get back to the subject of golf.

The bottom line to all of this for your golf game for you to know is that your body chemistry, which affects the actions of all of your cells, is very delicate and it doesn’t take much to get it out of balance. And it is all controlled by your subconscious mind that has as its primary directive, to PRESERVE THE BODY. So when you feel negative emotions, your subconscious mind acts in such a way as to do what it thinks is necessary to first and foremost keep you alive. This comes in direct opposition to playing a game like golf!

When you set if off balance with an emotion like ANGER, it prepares for a confrontation. This involves sending adrenaline out, sending peptides to cells everywhere to communicate the need to either prepare for battle or to shut down so that the cells that need the resources for battle get them. Many of those cells are NEEDED for playing golf! Many of those cells are located in your brain that are used to make good strategic decisions about your next golf shots. Those resources are needed in the nerve cells that you use for touch and feel on the putting green, for example, and they won’t be getting them!

You see, before I started learning some of what scientists have been discovering over the last couple of decades in this area, I just wasn’t convinced about all this emotion and feeling stuff. I simply didn’t give it any attention or thought. I figured that the key to my golf improvement was just another golf lesson and a few buckets of golf balls away. Of course, I noticed that the top golf pros were all very calm, steady, and emotionless. But I believed that it was because they were naturally like that, that they were merely born that way. WRONG! Those men and women have worked very hard to DEVELOP those attributes and skills with regard to controlling their emotions in their golf game. I think most of them probably didn’t actually need to learn all about the science of neuropeptides, ligands, fluid transport systems etc. to be convinced that they needed to do this to play golf well. They probably just observed that they played better when they developed their emotional I.Q. and so they worked on it just like they do their putting stroke.

That’s exactly what we need to do also, if we want some easy scoring benefits… Without Practicing. And here’s the good news: any golfer can develop and improve on this for the rest of their golfing life. Even more good news is that you don’t have to be a complete robot. Remember when I talked about your 3 different personalities on the golf course. Go ahead and have fun and laugh and smile during your personable phase. But, if you want to score lower then it’s vitally important to gain control of your negative thoughts and emotions.

Recently I read an article about “Terrible” Tommy Bolt in which he said that he admitted he has left a lot of money on the course because of all his temper tantrums over the years. He also said “It thrills crowds to see a guy suffer. That’s why I threw clubs so often. They love to see golf get the better of someone, and I was only too happy to oblige them. At first I threw clubs because I was angry. After a while it became showmanship, plain and simple. I learned that if you helicopter those dudes by throwing them sideways instead of overhand, the shaft wouldn’t break as easy. It’s an art, it really is…And never break your driver and putter in the same round.”

In part 2 of this, I’ll share with you some more solid ways to help control your emotions…now that you’re convinced you need to!

About the author: Craig Sigl is golf’s anti-practice expert. For years, he struggled to break 80 like so many amateur golfers. After throwing his clubs in the corner of his garage and giving up, he discovered golf’s secrets that changed his life and renewed his game. A year later he scored 77 on a championship course. He then went on to drive his handicap down to a 5, make a hole in one, and record his first under par round…all without practicing. He is now a mental toughness trainer and teaches his methods to golfers worldwide. To learn more about breaking 80 without practice go here now.

During the late 60’s when the U.S. was at war in Vietnam, U.S. Air force col. George Hall, was a pilot who was shot down over Vietnam and captured as a prisoner of war where he spent 7 ½ years in p.o.w camp. Before capture, he weighed better than 200 pounds and was an avid golfer who had gotten himself down to a 4 handicap. The first thing he wanted to do when he was released was to play a round of golf. He was invited to the 1973 pro-am New Orleans PGA Open. And he shot a 76! After not having played golf for 7 ½ years, and losing a 100 pounds, he played to his handicap the first time out. After the round, some members of the press came up to him and asked him “so, was that beginner’s first time luck?” He says: “luck, I never 3-putted a green in the last 5 years!”

What was he talking about?

He spent those years in prison playing golf in his mind. Yep, it’s for real. The first couple years he reported that he replayed rounds that he had already played in his life prior to being captured. And then the next few years he played new rounds on courses that he knew and some that he didn’t.

Very powerful story, but it’s just a small example of the power of our human potential, which brings me to another p.o.w veteran, Col. Edward L. Hubbard also from the air force. He wrote a very inspiring book called Escape from the box. The Wonder of Human Potential. I had the extreme privilege to listen to him speak when he came to my home town. He’s a very powerful motivational speaker and he told us in person: “we have no clue as to the wonder of our human potential. It’s way beyond anything you have ever done” and the one thing that really struck me in his book and presentation is that he kept saying that he and everybody else in that camp were all average ordinary citizens, that they were not special in any way except that they accomplished extraordinary achievements simply because of the situation they were placed in.

Let me tell you about some of these achievements. For starters, when they first went into camp, they were not allowed to talk to each other so they had to learn this tapping code to communicate. They would tap a rock on the floor using a code to represent letters. The column would be the first tap and the row number would be the second tap. So if you tapped once, and then twice, then that would mean the letter “G”. If you tapped 4 times and then 3 times, the letter “O.” Oh yeah, C=K.

They spelled out words and communicated to each other this way. In a cell next to col. Hubbard was Edward Alvarez, the first pow captured in that war. He taught col. Hubbard the Spanish language using this tap code. When col. Hubbard was released and made it back to the states, one of the first things he did was to enroll in a college Spanish class and he passed the final exam on his first day! So then he tells us about a lady in the audience of a different seminar who interrupted him when he told this story. She said: “I don’t believe you did that. I don’t think that is even possible, there is just no way you could have learned a language by tap code.” Right in front of everybody, he says: “lady, I did it, it’s completely true, there’s a hundred guys in that camp who will vouch for it, and I don’t care if you believe it or not, it’s your loss if you don’t. In fact, if you think that’s unbelievable, I know a guy who learned 4 languages by tap code and that’s just the beginning of things.”

They were able to teach each other classes in literature, math, physics, anatomy, and other subjects, all from their head, from their memory when they took this education before they were imprisoned. They were absolutely amazed at their own ability to recall this information that they had learned sometimes years before.

If that isn’t enough, they had phenomenal physical achievements as well. They used the power of incrementalism to do this. Col Hubbard said he made it up to jumping rope 3640 times. He was able to do 660 push-ups without stopping. 2,700 sit-ups without stopping. And they did it all on 300 calories a day in their diet! That’s less than most of us have for one meal. And you think it’s hard to get up enough energy to exercise after a day at the office? Hah! Incremental improvement and competition is what they give the credit to for that. Incrementalism is where you’re doing just a little bit more every single day and over time it becomes a great feat.

The competition they had between each other spurred them on as they made little bets on who could do the most jump ropes in one day for example. These guys would absolutely laugh at you if you said you couldn’t break the score of 80 in this game of golf where you hit a ball that’s not even moving! After their experiences, they’d probably tell you they could shoot par within a year of taking up the game! The Japanese language has a similar term, Kaizen that means continuous improvement, or always getting just a little bit better just like incrementalism. I have the Japanese symbol for Kaizen on a board hanging on my wall that my former boss gave me as a going away gift when I left my job as a Fedex manager. It reminds me of this principle every day.

There are so many people out there like them that do not accept limitations and you shouldn’t either.

About the author: This is article is just a snippet from the great product called Break 80 Without Practice by Craig Sigl. For years Craig struggled to break 80 like so many amateur golfers. After throwing his clubs in the corner of his garage and giving up, he discovered golf’s secrets that changed his life and renewed his game. A year later he scored 77 on a championship course. He then went on to drive his handicap down to a 5, make a hole in one, and record his first under par round…all without practicing. He is now a mental toughness trainer and teaches his methods to golfers worldwide. To learn more about breaking 80 without practice go here now.