Practice Stopping The Stress to Improve Your Golf...
This time of year, we hear a lot about stress and what it does to us. It is amazing what fear, worry, anxiety, and other stress-related thoughts do to our body, from restricting blood flow to making our muscles rigid and tight. Our heart beats faster and our breathing is fast and shallow. Overall, our body is limited from performing at its optimum best. When it comes to golf, it is amazing how many problems on the course can be linked to a stressed mindset. When we are feeling any kind of stress on the course, a whole unpleasant host of things start to happen. Our swing motion may become tense or abbreviated, we may pull our arms in or up, we may swing too fast, we may get the "yips," the list goes on.
So what does stress at this time of year have to do with golf? Well, even if you can't get out on the course right now, you can still practice being aware of when you are having stressful thoughts and feelings in other aspects of your life. A real key to stopping stress is to be aware of when our limiting thoughts and feelings are occurring and nip them in the bud before they start limiting our body and our outer activities. Be aware of when you are saying limiting or negative things to yourself like, I'll never get this done or, There is no way I can do this. Then, you can take a "mental time out" like I like to do when I encourage myself to "lighten up," and I regroup in my mind by saying some positive Can-Do type things to myself. By practicing mental exercises like this now, you'll be more in tune with yourself and more prepared to stop the stress next time you are out on the course.
Here's to good golf thoughts!
Rick Semple
Positive Golfer
Co-Founder, TheHeartofGolf.com
http://www.TheHeartofGolf.com
This time of year, we hear a lot about stress and what it does to us. It is amazing what fear, worry, anxiety, and other stress-related thoughts do to our body, from restricting blood flow to making our muscles rigid and tight. Our heart beats faster and our breathing is fast and shallow. Overall, our body is limited from performing at its optimum best. When it comes to golf, it is amazing how many problems on the course can be linked to a stressed mindset. When we are feeling any kind of stress on the course, a whole unpleasant host of things start to happen. Our swing motion may become tense or abbreviated, we may pull our arms in or up, we may swing too fast, we may get the "yips," the list goes on.
So what does stress at this time of year have to do with golf? Well, even if you can't get out on the course right now, you can still practice being aware of when you are having stressful thoughts and feelings in other aspects of your life. A real key to stopping stress is to be aware of when our limiting thoughts and feelings are occurring and nip them in the bud before they start limiting our body and our outer activities. Be aware of when you are saying limiting or negative things to yourself like, I'll never get this done or, There is no way I can do this. Then, you can take a "mental time out" like I like to do when I encourage myself to "lighten up," and I regroup in my mind by saying some positive Can-Do type things to myself. By practicing mental exercises like this now, you'll be more in tune with yourself and more prepared to stop the stress next time you are out on the course.
Here's to good golf thoughts!
Rick Semple
Positive Golfer
Co-Founder, TheHeartofGolf.com
http://www.TheHeartofGolf.com
posted by Rick Semple at 12:36 PM
