Golf_ The Mind Game - Marlin M. Mackenzie [5]
This complex form of mentally regulating human behavior is called a cybernetic system. Feed-forward and feedback mechanisms are constantly in operation as the athlete performs, usually out of conscious awareness. The internal regulatory systems of the body are constantly comparing ongoing internal and external sensory data with the output of the muscles that bring about our intended behavior, like hitting a golf ball.
Let’s say you’re standing on the tee of a par 3, 175-yard hole with about 160 of those yards across a pond. Information about where you would like the ball to land, how you want to be set up to the ball, and how to swing is fed forward into the entire operation of planning and executing the tee shot. Information about how the club actually feels in your hands, the actual alignment of the club face, the stability of your stance, the smoothness of the swing itself, and certain important environmental information, like the wind, is constantly being fed back to your mind, either in or out of your awareness.
Comparisons are continuously and rapidly being made in your brain, consciously and unconsciously, between information that is fed forward and information that is fed back. When the comparisons match, no change in the operation of the system is initiated. Voilà! You tee up the ball, plan the shot over the pond, make a silky pass, and the ball lands five feet from the pin. Your unconscious mind is so sensitive, it makes your reaction and adjustment during takeaway to an unexpected breeze a breeze.
Metaskills techniques are designed to affect the basic elements of the golfer’s mental strategies, especially the internal comparison processes he uses to evaluate his swing. The techniques are designed to change or stabilize a golfer’s performance by changing how he thinks—how he processes sights, sounds, feelings, smells, and tastes in his mind.
Just-Right Emotional State
Although people’s programed mental strategies for hitting golf balls are different, what’s common to all of us is the fact that we must be in an appropriate mood or emotional state for a particular strategy to be activated. And each of us has unique just-right states for accomplishing different tasks. When you are in the just-right state for a particular task, the patterned sequence of all of the auditory, visual, and kinesthetic information that represents your experience of having done that task before is automatically and unconsciously fired off before and during the execution of that task. However, if you’re not in the right state, the strategy for the task will be defective because key elements in it will be missing.
I’m sure you know that the state you want to be in while going for a six-foot downhill breaking putt on a slick green will be much different from the state you want to be in when you take that 175-yard drive over water. On the one hand you want a delicate touch; on the other you want to muster the power needed to prevent a splash.
Because of the centrality of the emotions, many of my metaskills techniques are based on identifying and anchoring the appropriate internal states for hitting different golf shots. When they’re properly anchored, the swing will be executed automatically. Getting into those just-right states is part of what this book is about.
Beliefs and Values
Golfers can’t leave their beliefs and values behind when they head out to the course. A belief is something accepted as true without certainty of proof; a value is something important to each individual, and serves as a guide to making decisions. They are at work during every golf game, affecting the golfer’s moods from moment to moment. Since moods influence mental strategies, beliefs and values either facilitate or intrude on what could be very pleasurable.
Compare the emotional responses of two different