For the February 2004 Coaching Hour we talk about self-coaching, based off of our reflection on an article in Golf For Women magazine. That article describes the emotional state of performers during positive and negative experiences and explores the correlation between how emotion can drive both types of performance, rather than being a result of the performance itself.
Gil: Tonight I want to talk to you about self-coaching. I want to preface what I’m saying by telling you that I stole most of the guts of this information from two ladies. One named Linda Mariott, and one named Pia Wilson, who write for a magazine called Golf For Women.
While I was in one of the waiting rooms waiting to be poked, prodded and MRI’d, I picked up a magazine. I didn’t even look at it and opened right up to this article. It was a two-part article, and once I got through it, you know what I did to that waiting room—I practically ransacked it looking for the other issue. It came out in 2001 and damned if I couldn’t find it, so we had to write to the publisher and get them to send us the other magazine.
This is a very unique article in that it divides the emotional curve or spiral that you go on when moving into a zone experience and when you experience a negative or downward spiral. It’s the first time I’ve seen it divided into separate categories, and I’m excited about sharing it with you tonight.
It’s important that you understand that self-coaching has to do really with just one thing, and that’s guiding your emotions when you are practicing or performing. That’s all it is when you’re self coaching. You are taking control and guiding your emotional response to successes and to failures. Before you can begin to work with the emotional side of self-coaching, as you well know, it’s important to get your swing mechanics down and it’s also important that you develop certain self-talk phrases that have to do with swing mechanics.
These are things that you can say to yourself like “soft hands” or “laser focus” or “lateral move,” and it’s important that these particular self-talk phrases are personal, and that they’re yours. Hopefully through our prodding, you have begun to develop self-talk phrases that are beginning to become more subconscious and just happen whenever somebody gives you a compliment or whenever you encounter adversity and conflict. These self-talk phrases just come out and they’re all positive, and I’d admonish you all to continue working on that.
As I’ve said, coaching yourself mentally and emotionally is the key to consistency and success. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing because self-coaching is all about being able to control your emotions based on the result. You’ve got two choices when you act. In our instance, when you shoot a target, you can either be happy about the result or you can be neutral about the result. The mantra is either happy or neutral. Your emotions tend to feed on themselves, much like a snowball going down a hill, and they’re either going to feed on themselves in a positive way or a negative way. It’s important to understand this emotional spiral, whether it’s positive or negative.
As I said earlier, these two ladies have divided these emotional spirals, the upward spiral and the downward spiral, into two categories. They have taken it from the neutral state, to each emotion that you experience going to the end of each one of these spirals. The upward spiral begins in the neutral state. There’s no emotion when you get to station one. Then it goes from being neutral to interested, then engaged, then confident, then you slip into the zone and ultimately you slip into a euphoric state. You’re just happy and everything’s just happening without any influence of yours whatsoever.
Now the downward spiral goes like this. It starts again from a neu- tral state, and this neutral state thing is important, because when you’re in a neutral emotional state, your adrenaline curves are togeth- er. You’re neither too excited or too fearful. You’re just there. So the downward spiral starts from neutral, and then, when you experience failure or adversity you become hesitant, then you become confused, then frustrated, then angry. After that, you become depressed.
Now, I know for a fact, having been around you guys and this sport as long as we have, that we’ve all experienced both sides of these spirals, but your reaction emotionally to whatever happens when you shoot, (or in anything else you do for that matter), your reaction determines which spiral you’re going to take. In order to ensure the probability that you’re going to take the right spiral, I think it’s important that you understand not only the different levels of the spiral, but also begin to appreciate how they each build on the previous one to create the end result. And that’s what I found most unique about these articles.
I want to go through each one of these spirals. I want to begin with the upward or positive spiral, and obviously this is an ideal situation. You’re shooting well. You’re in the present. You start out in a neutral state. You’re there to perform. You’ve trained, and your mind is clear. You’re not thinking about score or results. You’re just there.
And this neutral state has no expectation. It just means that you are ready to perform. You’re at the first station. Your job at that point in time is to make the plan and shoot the plan. Let the routine take care of the rest. The routine will center your thoughts and your actions. And after a few shots, maybe a couple of pairs, maybe a whole station, you go from a neutral state to being interested in what you’re doing. You’re no longer waiting to shoot. You’re no longer just arriving. You’re in the game now. You’re excited about shooting. Each station is a puzzle and you’re there to solve the puzzle regarding the breakpoints and how to take the pair.
When you become interested, you’re totally in the present and you’re looking forward to the next pair. You’re looking forward to the next station. And then you become engaged, and the plans become more and more obvious. You have no fear about breaking the targets. Your breakpoints become more obvious to you. You begin to be more connected with the targets, and you even become more centered and in the present regardless of the result. After about the fourth station, you become confident. Now, follow these different steps and see how each one builds from the previous one. You’ve come from being engaged, to becoming confident. Because you were so engaged, you become confident. The voice is tied up in the breakpoints totally. Doubt is gone. Commitment to the breakpoint becomes much easier. Your belief in the plan and your ability to execute the plan grows.
You begin to have “the feeling”; you know, it doesn’t matter what the targets do, I can deal with them. Your belief in yourself grows into greater trust in what you’re doing. You hear phrases like, “I’ve seen this before. I can do these. That one there, and that one there.”
Belief and trust in the plan become even easier. And if a miss occurs, it’s analyzed, dealt with unemotionally and corrected. Around station six, having moved through the confidence phase, you slip into that zone and everything just flows. There are no mechanical thoughts about technique or lead, it’s just breakpoint one, breakpoint two, breakpoint one, routine and pull.
Your body and your mind work effortlessly together, and you’re just there taking part. And again, if a miss occurs, you correct it and leave it on the ground with the empties. After a couple more stations, you’ve gotten more into the zone and it’s easier to focus and easier to feel. You kind of transcend into a euphoric state. You’re happy. It’s easy. There’s no gun. There are only targets and breakpoints and all the targets are breaking. And this is one that I’ve never thought about: your internal pharmacy is manufacturing healthy chemicals that maintain this state of relaxed concentration. Your buddies have to tell you when it’s over. You’re so deeply involved in what you’re doing, in focus in feel and in rhythm that you don’t even know you’ve shot the last station.
Now, did you see how with those steps, one led up to another one? Did you see that? From neutral to engaged to confident to the zone and to the state of euphoria. I think it’s important you all understand that you can’t go to station one and walk into the zone immediately. The zone is a product of how well you handle the emotional transition from station one into the middle of the course. And it will happen at different times, but you will go through these five steps every time you go into the zone. It’s important that you understand that.
It’s easy for you to control your emotions when you’re shooting well. (Laughs) And you can’t go straight from the neutral into the zone. You’ve got to go through the steps.
Gil: Now let’s take a look at the downward spiral. Again, the down- ward spiral starts in the neutral state. Because once you’re at station one, if you’re not in a neutral state, if you’re not there just to perform, the expectations will get in and you’ll start trying to shoot a score. The first time you miss, you’ll start worrying, “I can’t drop anymore,” and you’re toast.
So you begin in a neutral state. You miss a few targets, ones that you know you should have hit, and you can’t forget them. Now listen to the steps. You begin in the same neutral state that you began in when you went into the zone, but because you can’t control your emotions on targets that you miss and you feel like you should have hit them, hesitation occurs. Doubt gets in. You check the lead. Mechanical thoughts enter. The voice is there. Rather then going back to focus, tempo, feel and trust, you say, “Where was I? Was I ahead? Was I behind? What am I doing? Is the plan wrong?”
I think Dean Olson described that as “going crazy”. Well, this whole thing is going crazy, this is just the first step. Judgment and blame come in. Remember that judgment and blame are the sons of doubt. And your self-talk is anything but positive.
So from hesitation you go to confusion. And in this confused state, nothing is working. So you’ll try anything. You’ll change your mechanics. You’ll try swing-through. You go to pulling away. You go to mounting real fast and chasing the bird. You ask your squad mates, “What’s going wrong? What should I do?” And you’re trying anything that you can to correct it. But you’re so confused that your grip pressure increases, you speed up, your feel is gone along with trust, your self- worth is going down, and because you’ve gone mechanical, the voice is in big time. And the voice begins to beat you up.
Hesitation to confusion and then to frustration. Negative self-talk. “God, I always do this. Why did I do that? Why am I here? I’m shooting like crap. Oh no, another right to left, I didn’t touch the right to left on that last station. These are bullshit targets.”
Self-talk like that leads to self-destruction. It also leads to conscious corrections. Mechanical thinking. As I said earlier, it doesn’t matter what you do because you’ve gone through that confusion state and now you’re in the frustration state. Nothing seems to work. But the reason nothing seems to work is because the guy you trained to perform is not there because you couldn’t control your emotion in order to keep him in the game.
So you go from frustration to anger. You get really pissed off. Blame and judgment come in. They consume you and they lead you down that road to destruction. You’re pissed. You just want it to be over. And you go from there to depression. “Why do I do this? Why do I spend money just to put my name up on a board to be humiliated?” The sad part of the story, again, is that you did it to yourself because you couldn’t control your emotional response to the things that happened to you.
You’ve got to be able to stop and discard the emotions that create the downward spiral. And it’s got to be stopped in the hesitation or confusion state. That’s the first two. It’s got to be stopped there. If it’s not stopped there, if it goes any further, it’s almost impossible to turn it around. Do you see how each one of the steps in both of the spirals leads to the next one, which leads to the next one, which leads to the next one? This is how a zone experience is built, and this is how a negative spiral is built.
Gil: It all comes back to this: You’ve either got to be happy about the result, or be neutral, because both of the curves begin in a neutral state. When you recognize the downward spiral you’ve got to learn to return to a neutral state. And you do this through association or disassociation.
When you give emotion to an experience it becomes a part of you. That’s why you’ve either got to be happy or neutral. Something bad happens, you miss a target, no emotion, it just happens. Remain neutral. When you don’t give it emotion, you’re disassociated with it. When you’re disassociated with what happened, it cannot control you because you are now controlling your emotional responses to what’s going on around you. You want to associate with the good things. You want to disassociate with the bad things. It’s something that happened. Remain neutral. It wasn’t the desired outcome but it happened and you can’t do anything about it.
Jack, when you start getting pissed off thinking, “Damn, I missed another target, I won’t be able to shoot a 90 today,”; that’s expecta- tion. And you see how expectation pulls you out of the present and puts you in the future or the past? Be happy about the result or the cir- cumstances or be neutral. There are only two choices: happy or neutral. Now, how do you associate with things? Self-talk is a big thing.
We’ve talked about that several times. I hope in my heart of hearts that you’ve all begun to develop certain personal phrases that come out of you whenever you are in any situation that you might be in. You’re in the lead. You won the tournament. You’re not shooting well. You just missed a pair. You just missed all but one target on a station. You’ve got to have phrases that come out of you that are a subconscious response.
Something like, “Commitment to the breakpoint makes it happen for me. It feels good to focus this well. It’s easy to trust when I feel the connection. I love shooting a shotgun.”
Those are some of the things that I was talking to Virgil about earlier today and he needs to begin to develop those phrases, so when he’s shooting well and people come up to him and say, “Man, you’re burning them up.” He doesn’t have to think, “Oh shit, what if I say I am, will it be expectation?”
Man you’re burning them up, Virgil. Boy, it feels good when I focus this well. It’s really easy to shoot when I can feel the target in my hands like I am today.
He’s taking a potential expectation-creating situation, controlling it emotionally and reinforcing what it is that has given him his performance up to that point. Self-talk is an important thing, but when the situation presents itself, you can’t be thinking about, “What do I need to say?” All that has to be dealt with ahead of time.
You need to develop self-talk that allows you to reinforce the things that help you perform well. When you run a station, enjoy it. Remember what it felt like; it feels good to run a station. Really enjoy it. But don’t fall into the trap of saying to yourself, “Yeah, I ran that one, but it was easy.” It doesn’t matter whether they’re easy or hard; when you run it, you run it.
If you shot seven out of eight, remember the seven. Enjoy the ones you hit over and over and over while you’re performing. Don’t even for an instant think about the one that got away. And don’t look at it as, “Man, I had to have that one. I should have hit that one. I know how to hit that one.” At that point in time, you’re starting that downward spiral. It’s just a miss. A miss is just a miss. It’s gone. You can’t do anything about it. Leave it behind. When you miss one and you know you’ve made the correction, replay it in your mind as a hit before going to the next pair.
I was talking to Virgil, as I said earlier. He was talking about his ability to visualize and he said, “What really helps me most is if I can get in a stand and really visualize myself shooting that target breaking in that breakpoint three or four times. If I can do that, it’s a dead target.” So if you missed one, make the correction, whatever correction you need to make to kill the rest of them. But before you go into the next pair, visualize it in your mind. Visualize yourself hitting it before you go into the next pair. Continue to practice your visualization.
Virgil was telling me that he felt like it was taking a long time to develop this skill, but it was getting quicker. And it’s just like anything else. It’s just like analyzing targets, or analyzing pairs, or figuring strategy, or getting the connection, or knowing where to look. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. The easier it becomes, the quicker it happens. So continue to practice your visualization.
Now, to disassociate something, first of all, you have to accept it. You have to accept the fact that you missed the target. It doesn’t matter whether it was a hard target or an easy target. You missed it. It’s okay, it’s over, let it go. But you need to remain neutral emotionally. When you say, “I missed that one and I needed it”, or “I missed that one and I should have hit it”, you’ve put emotion into that miss and you’ve associated yourself with the miss.
If you accept the fact that you missed the target and you replay it in your mind and you make a change, then you haven’t given that miss emotion. You have not given that miss the power to pull you out of your upward spiral going to that zone and pull you into the downward spiral leading to frustration. You’ve got to remain neutral, especially in the face of adversity.
Log in or become a member to read the rest of this article.
