Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [16]
When the emotional feeling is at its most intense level, let one, and only one, internal image associated with the shot flash spontaneously in your mind; then let one sound associated with the shot spontaneously pop into your head. The image and sound are also anchors—a V-anchor and an A-anchor. They should be directly and specifically related to the shot and not to golf in general.
Now let your mind go blank and come back to the present. Take a five- or ten-minute break from reading this book and do something else to distract your mind from what you have been reading. At the end of the break return to this place where you are presently reading.
Welcome back. Take a moment to determine the nature of the state you’re in right now. After that press your finger on the exact same spot on your body when you were Sherlock. Hold the finger pressure for a full sixty seconds without reading any further than the end of this paragraph. Just pay attention to what happens inside, nothing else, and then return to the book when the sixty seconds are up.
Welcome back again. Are you thinking about the past good shot? Do you now see or hear what you saw or heard then? Do you now feel the same emotions you felt when you hit that shot? I’d be surprised if you aren’t aware of some aspect of the shot, assuming you followed my instructions. If you reactivated some of the same feelings, images, or sounds associated with the shot, you have experienced how an anchor works. Within sixty seconds you changed your state.
Now, reflect on the meaning of this experience. Do you realize that you can change your state quickly, and therefore don’t have to stay stuck in a lousy state? With a properly established anchor you have more choices about the way you want to feel, and you can activate any state automatically if your anchor is “contextualized.”
Contextual Anchors
If an anchored resource is to be useful on the golf course, it must be contextualized; that is, the anchor should fire automatically without conscious thought in the context of a special situation when a particular resource is needed, not just at any old time or in any situation. If anxiety normally takes over on the first tee, then a confidence anchor could be triggered automatically just before you approach the teeing ground. If you want to keep your cool when duffers are ahead, then a calmness anchor could be activated automatically when you first see the duffers hacking around. If a delicate putt is required, then the anchored feeling of having a fine touch could be fired automatically as you study the line and distance to the cup.
When you contextualize an anchor, it’s important to select either a movement, an external visual cue, or an external auditory cue that is always present on the golf course to serve as an anchor. Only one cue is necessary. For example, tying the laces of your golf shoes, a K-anchor, could be an anchor for generating the resource of determination; and looking at a tee marker, a V-anchor, could be used to get into the right state for making a tee shot.
Your ingenuity is all that’s necessary to identify an anchor. Using a habitual movement that occurs in a particular situation or context as an anchor is most effective, since it already is unconsciously automatic. Habitual movements could include: the unique manner in which you squat when you line up a putt, the way you hold a club as you study and prepare for a shot, a gesture of a hand or arm as you approach the ball, taking a club out of the bag.
The only limitation on your choice of an anchor is that it be “clean”—not already associated with an experience on or off the golf course. For example, looking at a wedding ring would not be a good V-anchor because it’s already connected to very powerful emotional experiences.
Making Anchors Work Automatically
To fully establish these anchors so they’ll be useful later on, it’s necessary to “fire” them consciously three or four times a day for a week or two until the anchored emotional state can be activated