When I was playing Division III college golf, I went through a particularly uninspiring stretch of putting. Someone advised me to tell myself, \u2018I\u2019m the best putter in the world\u2019 each time I set foot on the green. He was trying get me to create confidence so big that it removed any doubt from my mind. He was trying to help me fake it until I made it. I understood all of that, and I appreciated that he was trying to help, but it didn\u2019t work. <\/p>\n
I\u2019d get on the green, say that line to myself, and then I\u2019d get confused. The rational part of my brain would chime in and remind me that even though I was a better putter than I\u2019d been showing lately, surely, I was far from the best putter in the world. I was playing DIII after all. If I was the best putter in the world, shouldn\u2019t I be playing up a division or two? If I\u2019m the best putter in the world, how have I missed so many putts? As you can imagine, this is an odd string of thoughts to have as you\u2019re walking to your ball, trying to get a read. <\/p>\n
By the time I\u2019d be standing over it, I was rattled and unfocused. I stopped doing it. It clearly didn\u2019t work. But I never fully understood why. <\/p>\n
Jason Sousa, a former professional soccer player who now works as a performance coach to high-level athletes of many sports, including golfers, says that elite performers don\u2019t try to be positive, instead, they try to be accurate. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey use neutral thinking, objective, observable facts that bypass emotional chaos,\u201d Sousa writes. \u201cElite performance isn\u2019t about being hyped up. It\u2019s about being present.\u201d <\/p>\n
Neutral thoughts work better than overly positive thoughts because they don\u2019t create that mental friction I was feeling between reality and what I was trying to convince myself of; known in neuroscience as cognitive dissonance. In my situation, an overly positive thought about being the best putter in the world was so at odds with the reality that I was aware of, that it created more mental stress. <\/p>\n
So, instead of saying \u201cI\u2019m the best putter in the world,\u201d I should\u2019ve said neutral statements to myself when I got on the green. Looking around the green, there are plenty of facts to notice: <\/p>\n
\u201cI have a downhill putt, it\u2019s going to be fast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy playing partner is going to putt near my line; I need to watch what her ball does so I can learn as much about this line as I can.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe miss for this lag putt is short.\u201d <\/p>\n
Telling myself I\u2019m the best putter in the world didn\u2019t make me a better putter. But reinforcing facts about the putt at hand can help me hit better putts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I was playing Division III college golf, I went through a particularly uninspiring stretch of putting. Someone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[44,2777,82,18481,4313],"class_list":["post-47584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-golf","tag-instruction","tag-story","tag-why-being-unrealistically-positive-doesnt-work-on-the-golf-course","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}