Try Renewal Rather Than Resolutions for Golf Improvement

Traditionally, this is the time of year when people develop resolutions for making changes and improvements in various areas of their life, including golf. The idea of resolutions is a good one, but as we know, all too often we loose steam after a month or so and the desired results don't come to pass. What often happens is that we set resolutions that are exceptionally lofty or difficult. While a motivating challenge is good, excessive goals can cause frustration and burnout. When it comes to our golf game, it's common for our resolultions to "bypass" core skills or exceed our abilities, including our mental ones. What happens is that we strive to do something better without having to strengthen the core skills that are needed for the change to successfully occur. With this in mind, an exercise that I have started as part of my positive golf approach, instead of traditional "resolutions," is the renewal of my focus on certain key core skills for the year. These are skills, both mental and physical, that I feel are especially important for yielding improvements and more positive experiences in my particular game. I have listed the ones here that I have chosen for 2010. I encourage others to do this same exercise and share your comments here on the blog about how it has helped your game. One of the benefits you will notice is that this exercise helps you get more comfortable and adept at developing positive habits. Picking three core skills for renewed focus throughout the year gets you used to doing something positive on a regular basis. The format of this exercise, with frequent attention to core skills, is also more conducive to success rather than burnout or frustration that may come from resolutions that are excessive or difficult.

So, here's to your renewed focus and success in 2010!

Core Skills for My Renewed Focus and Practice in 2010:

1. Forget past mistakes and poor shots. I still have a tendency to dwell on mistakes and poor shots long after they occur and it distracts my focus away from more productive thinking. It is a mental tendency of mine that deserves more attention and change.

2. Cultivate and use a greater sense of feel in my putting. I have tuned in and developed this skill with great success for my full swing (and written about it in my ebooks), and now I plan to use this practice to a greater degree with my putting.

3. Strengthen my patience and persistence. Patience and persistence are two skills that are enormously valuable to long-term improvement in golf, or anything for that matter. It takes continued mental discipline to practice patience and persistence and stick with new mental and physical techniques to see them through to fruition. I still get impatient and want to see results more quickly and sometimes feel like "throwing in the towel" when changes don't occur fast enough, so I am going to give renewed attention to strengthening my patience and persistence this year.

Here's to positive changes and great golf in 2010!

Rick Semple
Positive Golfer
Co-Founder, TheHeartofGolf.com
http://www.TheHeartofGolf.com