THE POWER OF THE MIND

There is no question that to play our best golf we must learn to access our powerful unconscious mind........most of the time.

I will explain what I mean by “most of the time” in a couple of minutes, but, just let me briefly clarify a couple of concepts:

The human brain is divided into the “left side” and “the “right side”. The mind is the brain “in action”.

The “left side” is related and “controls” the conscious mind. The “right side” is related to and “controls” the unconscious, subconscious, automatic or intuitive mind.

For all purposes, we will consider the concepts of left side, left brain and conscious mind to be synonyms. Equally we shall consider right side, right brain, unconscious, subconscious, automatic or intuitive minds, to be synonyms.

Now, let´s get back to business.

There is no question that we play better golf when we are using our right brain, or our unconscious, subconscious, automatic or intuitive mind. This is very like driving a car. It´s not easy to learn to drive, but once the brain has automated the necessary skills, it becomes second nature, and we can drive unconsciously.............we  carry out a conversation, think about other things, and we hardly remember how we got to our destination.

We can drive so well, and effortlessly, because our unconscious mind is incredibly powerful. In fact, as we have mentioned in other articles, it is one million times more powerful than our very limited conscious mind.

It´s the same in golf. When we are relaxed, “in the zone” or “in the flow”, we are capable of playing great golf because we are hitting the ball with our powerful unconscious mind.

The problem starts when we try too hard, we are in a tournament, we are under pressure and we play as if we were beginners. This occurs, so many times, and even at the PGA TOUR level, because we start trying to play with our very limited left side, or conscious mind.

Let me go back a bit and explain why I said we must play golf with our unconscious mind...........most of the time.

The reason for this is very simple and logical. While our “left side”, or conscious mind is very limited in terms of controlling our bodies, and at swing execution, it is excellent at planning golf shots.

This is because our conscious mind is our rational mind, it´s great at calculating, it remembers consecuenses of past actions and keeps us conservative when managing our way around a golf course..

So, a key element of my Mental Method is to play golf with our unconscious mind, except for those moments when  we are planning our next shot.

In fact, in my opinion, the essential piece  of any on course Mental Method is the ability to “switch over” to the unconscious mode just before striking the ball, and until we start planning our next shot.