Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [14]
Frequently, the answer that some people give to the second question, “What stops me?” is “I don’t know. If I did, I’d do something about it.” Yet there are ways to uncover the answer to this question. One way is to guess. By guessing, you’ll be tapping into your unconscious mind; and frequently guesses turn out to be quite accurate.
If you have no good guesses, take another approach. Replay in your mind what you’re doing incorrectly and compare it to the way you want to swing, using your own past performance or someone else’s performance as a standard for comparison. When you identify the differences between how you mentally regulate what you’re doing and how you mentally regulate what you want to do, you’ll have some important clues as to what’s stopping you.
Frequently, it’s your emotional state that stops you from playing good golf. If you change to a just-right emotional state, your grooved swing will return. By paying close attention to the mood you’re in, you may have the answer to what’s stopping you. Perhaps you have been annoyed, impatient, skeptical, despairing, feeling hopeless, whatever. After identifying this stopper state, all that’s necessary is to replace it with its opposite.
This isn’t always as easy as it might seem. Sometimes it may be impossible to discover all the factors that keep you from achieving your outcomes. You may need the help of a golf professional to refine the mechanics of your swing, or you may need the help of a skilled counselor to deal with unconscious conflicts; such conflicts could interfere with maintaining the mood you need to play well.
Nonetheless, knowing how to identify and use your internal resources is a valuable process in itself; so let’s look at it now.
Accessing Internal Resources
Fortunately, NLP has formalized the normal human process of tapping past experiences and making them automatically available for use in present situations. The Sherlock Holmes Exercise is part of this process; you already know it. By reliving past experiences in full detail, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover that you have more resources for playing better golf than you thought you had. When you discover this, you’ll trust yourself more and you will build your self-confidence.
Anchoring is the part of the process which makes your internal resources—your past experiences and feelings, still available to you in your subconscious—automatically available to play better golf in spite of conditions that conspire to make the game difficult. Anchors keep your resources stabilized so your game can become more consistent and enjoyable. Let’s turn to the process of anchoring in general. Later you’ll learn how to use a variety of anchors for specific aspects of your game.
What Is an Anchor?
An anchor is either an internal or actual external sight, sound, feeling, smell, or taste—a stimulus—that triggers the sensory details associated with a particular past experience. For example, when you see an old photograph of yourself as a child, it usually stirs up memories of that time in your life. Similarly, when you see azaleas and dogwoods, you could think of the Augusta National. It’s the same with a special song.
It’s a fact that our conscious and unconscious thoughts—what we see, hear, feel, smell, and taste internally—directly affect our moods or internal emotional states. Consequently, we can become conditioned to respond emotionally in the same way over and over again whenever we generate a particular thought or whenever a particular stimulus is experienced. You vaguely remember hearing this from someone else, don’t you? Yes, it was Pavlov who got the dog to salivate simply by ringing a bell.
Our lives are full of anchors, some of which have powerful effects. The sight of the American flag or the sound of “America