#thementalgame
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Golf: Great Expectations Never Did Anyone Any Good
Golf is best played with hope in your heart and a positive outlook. It can be tough at times to maintain this mindset throughout your round. However, negativity never did anyone any favours out on the golf course. Better players and champions will tell you that keeping your head in the game is paramount to winning and performing well. The Stoic golfer understands this from the outset and employs mental strategies to cope with the pressures and pitfalls inherent in golf. Golf: Great expectations never did anyone any good – just ask Charles Dickens. There is an old Zen saying, ‘always walk with one shoe wet.’ This prepares the traveller on the journey in case it rains.
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Golfers Require Courage & Fortitude
Too many golfers go into their rounds like balloons blown up and they collapse in a heap after the first prick deflates their great expectations. Golf is a challenging test over 4 to 5 hours. It is played on a large area full of penalty areas and hazards. Think about it. We must traverse this green universe as if we are making our way through a maze. We have to navigate our golf balls up and down dale. We must deal with disappointment and the occasional triumph, as we strike our way through 18 holes worth of golfing grit. It takes courage and fortitude to stay the course.
Unrealistic Ambitions Flounder In Golf
How many times have you fallen at the final hurdle, bogeying or worse the last hole or two? How many times have you nearly got there, only to see it crumble before your eyes? Every stroke counts in golf. Every damn shot, including those missed short putts you should have made. Our minds play a massive role in competitive golf. What goes on upstairs and beats in our hearts makes a huge difference to our scores a lot of the time. It is hard to stay awake to that fact for more than 490 minutes. Those key moments over those putts you just have to make hover in a seemingly timeless haze. Hearts pump blood and the simplest stroke becomes a crazy test of resolve. What the hell – golf sucks some times.
Photo by Ric Rodrigues on Pexels.com Hands up who has walked off the green after making birdie, feeling damn good, only to make a poor swing on the next tee and end up giving that stroke right back. I call it the Post Birdie Syndrome (PBS). Mind games are everywhere in golf. They get you when you are feeling too good and they get you when you are down. Stoicism teaches you to deal with adversity by embracing it and not hiding from it. Welcome the challenge your mishits bring. Take in a few deep ones and breathe the frustration and disappointment away. Overreacting to bad stuff on the golf course usually compounds the problems and turns bogeys into doubles, trebles, and worse. You gotta walk tall on the golf course no matter the shit that came before. I like to think about disabled golfers and how tough it is for them – it puts my complaints into perspective.
Photo by Kampus Production on Pexels.com Golf: Great expectations never did anyone any good. So, as you can see it is a balance between maintaining your equilibrium and keeping a lid on the dreams and desires. Battles are not won without getting your hands dirty. You gotta develop a thick skin as a golfer and not allow your hopes to fade when you make a few mistakes as you will in most rounds. We must keep putting our necks on the line and fronting up with our best stuff again and again. Golf is a ferocious beast because we have to pay attention to every little thing but not overly sweat the small stuff when things don’t work out. These conundrums are why we love this unique game so much, I suppose. A useful thing to do is to pay attention to your mindset during your rounds of golf. Otherwise, you are fated to keep repeating the same old stuff that undermines your game every bloody week. See if you can chart the key moments in your round when you lose the plot emotionally and in terms of your mental acuity after that. When the bad feelings and destructive thoughts cloud your judgement and sink your score. Documenting your rounds of golf can reveal a host of useful information that can be used to turn things around. Stuffing up shots can have you feeling like a fool and quickly getting down on yourself. I have heard grown men berating themselves, as if they were dads grilling their naughty child. The golf course can be a smorgasbord for psychologists and trauma specialists. The green cathedral can echo with cursing and confessions of inept blunder.
Photo by Thomas Ward on Pexels.com Golf can be a grisly affair for the delicate self-esteem of sensitive golfers. Playing partners rarely tread lightly on the crushed egos of their opponents. There is no fool like an old fool on the golf course. Sometimes, I know myself, I return home after a disastrous round of golf and am thankful that there are no loaded weapons in my domicile. The greatest game can treat you with disdain. Conversely, if I have surprised myself with a half decent performance on the links it can lift me up for the rest of the week or until I try my luck out there again. Have you had that experience where you hold back from rushing out to play again so that you can savour the rare feat of a job fairly well done? Perhaps, this is more in keeping with secret men’s business for the golfing tragic. A sad reflection best kept to oneself. Onward and upward my brethren of golfers. When the mist clears and you can see the flag flying up ahead on yonder green it is a special feeling. Morning has broken and the sun’s rays are streaming upon the fairway. It is good to be alive and good to be a golfer. I was walking in the rain the other day, having just started my round, and I was excited to be out in it and playing golf. How unmodern. We live in a world and era where we avoid the great outdoors in inclement weather. Our lives are inside lives in the main. We sit on chairs and stare all day at screens. How sad that sounds. Golf gives us something to do outside. We can interact with nature whilst going about the business of playing golf. Verily I say unto you. Golf is good! Wisdom from The Stoic Golfer: Finding Inner Peace & Focus on the Fairway by Robert Sudha Hamilton Available at Amazon & https://www.golfdom.com.au/shop/ Read the full article
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#TheMentalGame sheds a light on topics that effects so many. Thank you @Sportsnet and @MovemberCA for letting me be apart of this initiative and bringing awareness to the mental health conversation! https://t.co/yr1uOpLSyz
— Tyler Motte (@tmotte_14) February 22, 2021
#tyler motte#canucks#vancouver canucks#mental health#mental health in sports#depression#anxiety#sportsnet#TheMentalGame#hockey
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@cascade_lacrosse THANK YOU! Stoked to get my R back. Very quick turnaround even during the Holidays! 1 week. The best helmet on the market! #passiontoprotect #lacrosse #lax #thegamewithinthegame #thementalgame #LaxWax #LacrosseWax (at Hampton Beach, New Hampshire)
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The Mental Game: Strategies For Success In Golf
The game of golf demands an enduring vigilance because of its temporal magnitude and general unpredictability. It looks to the uninitiated, uniform and repetitive, but to those who play the game it is a dance on the edge of an abyss. The mental game: Strategies for success in golf are essential if you want to win. We all develop these to some extent, whatever our level of skill or commitment to golf. Keeping our mind free of negative thoughts is pretty important over nearly 5 hours out there on the course. It is not easy and we could all do with some helpful suggestions.
Marcus Aurelius
Stoicism & Developing Mental Skills
Stoicism is an ancient philosophy that has endured because it works. Two thousand years is a long time to be continuously in print, which is the length of time Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations has wracked up. Greek in origin, Stoicism is so named after the style of building in Athens that housed it. A stoa was a covered walk-way or portico at the side of a building. This mental strategy for living a better life is predicated on using our reason to cope with the ups and downs. Golf is full of ups and downs, in terms of things happening we enjoy and abhor. Our emotional reaction to these eventualities can upset the apple cart in terms of how we meet the challenges of 18 holes over nearly 5 hours.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Pexels.com Strategic Thinking On The Golf Course Stop now, and remember those key moments from recent rounds of golf, which have sunk your hopes. Be honest. Take the time to rerun those memories and how your feelings affected your golf. We have all had those episodes, when bad breaks have gone on to torpedo our scores and the remainder of our rounds. I don’t think that I would be alone in, also, having those times, when having just registered a birdie we stuff up the very next hole with a bogey or worse. It is the ups and downs, on the emotional scale, which can negatively impact our performance. This is why many top golfers, tournament professionals, look like they have had a personality extraction. Stoicism teaches us that you cannot ride the roller coaster of emotions and expect to stay balanced. Our Golf Swing Affected By Our Feelings The golf swing, as many of us know, is a very sensitive process. You can lose your rhythm and tempo at the drop of a hat. Your elation and your angry frustration both impact on your ability to swing the golf club and putt. Think about how easily putting is affected on those smooth slopes on the green. The energy generated by anger and by elation will find its way into your golf swing. Golf is a game of millimetres; and a good shot can be ruined in terms of outcome if it is too good. Too much energy behind a swing can put your golf ball in the back trap. Golf is a dance on the edge of an abyss. Every time we pull out the driver on the tee, we are dancing with potential danger. A lot can go wrong on the journey that that long shaft makes from backswing to follow through. How we feel affects how we swing. Greg Norman & The Mental Game at the Masters Golf Is A Dance On The Edge You know, I call upon the 10 Stoic principles, or at least 3 of them in particular, in every competitive game of golf I play. Time after time I have to remind myself to use my mental skills to overcome the negative feelings that threaten to engulf me. Golf is played over this huge arena with all these penalty areas and hazards. It is a game of snakes and ladders. We all need to develop a commitment to a set of values that can stand up to the disappointments in golf and life. I have found that you need to practice these mental skills. A Stoic golfer will prepare for every round philosophically and psychologically. In my new book, The Stoic Golfer: Finding Inner Peace & Focus on the Fairway, I have listed the key principles necessary to win the mental game of golf. You will learn how to: Develop a strong, clear vision for your golf game. Let go of distractions and focus on the present moment. Cultivate a positive and resilient mindset, even in the face of adversity. Harness the power of visualization to improve your performance. Deal with setbacks and failures with grace and determination Find joy and fulfillment in the game of golf, no matter your level of skill. Wisdom from The Stoic Golfer: Finding Inner Peace & Focus on the Fairway by Robert Sudha Hamilton Available at Amazon https://read.amazon.com.au/kp/embed?asin=B0BV1216BJ&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_H3JWZPD3M9V9NC5XCGTX ©GolfDom Read the full article
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We are SOLD OUT of #GameDay candles. All orders placed before today will be fulfilled. Head over to @jimalaxhq to get some, they have a few left. We should gave more in stock in a few days. #soldout #LaxWax #lacrosse #LacrosseWax #keepitfresh #thegamewithinthegame #thementalgame (at On the Beach)
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