How Mindfulness Can Improve Golf Performance
Prioritizing mental performance, awareness of thoughts, and the second arrow
Changing Thoughts vs. Awareness of thoughts
Advice such as “be positive”, while well-intended, is counterproductive for golfers in high-stress situations (eg. competitions).
Positivity training was not only less effective than mindfulness training, it appeared to be actively depleting attention and working memory in these pre-deployment soldiers. Since positivity requires reappraisal and reframing, it also requires attention. You use your attention and working memory to basically build a castle in the sky. It's fragile and requires a lot of work to keep it from falling apart — especially under demanding and stressful circumstances like these soldiers were facing. Positivity training seemed to be putting more strain on their already strained attention. — Dr. Amishi Jha
Positive thinking requires the golfer to change/control thoughts, which requires additional attentional resources that are already strained due to the high-stress situation one is in.
In my interview with Dr. Peter Haberl, we discussed the difference between judging and noticing feelings/thoughts. In his words:
I don’t care how you feel, I care that you notice how you feel. — Dr. Peter Haberl
Caring about the contents of your thoughts/feelings requires you to adopt a “positive thinking” approach. Using attention resources to “counteract” the unwanted thoughts.
Noticing how you feel, without any intention to change thoughts/feelings is a mindfulness-based approach.
To learn more about mindfulness listen to my two-part interview with Dr. Peter Haberl.
This article is inspired by a book I recently read titled Peak Mind: Find Your Focus, Own Your Attention, Invest 12 Minutes a Day by Dr. Amishi Jha
Unless otherwise specified, all quotes are from this book.
Prioritizing Mental Performance
The minimum required dosage for training your attention: Four weeks. Five days a week. Twelve minutes a day.
Committing to a mindfulness practice for 12 minutes per day, five days a week seems achievable.
However, our attitude towards the contributing factors of elite golf performance results in us placing “mental training” low on the priority list.
We think of time as a commodity; it has a price, and it's generally quite valuable. We don't want to waste it. And we don't see mental downtime, when we purposefully disengage from finding, gripping, and tightly pointing our attentional flashlight to some urgent and occupying task, as a valuable thing to do. But that's only because most of us don't realize how critically necessary it is.
Hitting golf balls and going to the gym feels like well-invested practice time.
Sitting in silence for 12-60 minutes to train your attention, not so much.
If you don't have time to meditate for five minutes, then meditate for ten.
If you’re not sure how to start, try breath awareness.
Breath awareness can seem deceptively simple: focus your attention on your breath, and when the mind wanders, return it.
The Purpose of Mindfulness Training
Let’s clarify what successful mindfulness practice is.
The point is not that you're never going to get distracted. That's not possible. The goal, rather, is to be able to recognize where your attention is moment to moment so that when you do get distracted, you can easily and adeptly move your flashlight back to what it needs to be on.
The reality of successful mindfulness practice is less glamorous than many think.
There is no special state to achieve…the whole point is to be more present in your current moment…You're going to feel your hip bones against the chair…every itch, every desire to move, every shift away from the present moment. You'll notice every small sensation and outrageous or distressing thought. That's success.
Our Relationship With Thoughts
Focusing on our awareness of thoughts instead of attempting to change thoughts requires a fundamental shift in our attitude towards the thoughts/feelings we experience throughout the day.
Think of it this way: Would you run outside to talk to every person who walks by your house? No. So treat the thoughts that arise for you throughout the day in the same way. You can't stop them from coming any more than you can stop people from walking down your street. But you can change the way that you interact with them. You can decide when to engage with them, and when not to, and instead, allow them to pass by.
Consider this parable called “Second Arrow”.
The Buddha asked one of his students, "If you are struck by an arrow, does it hurt?"
"Yes!" the student replied.
"If you are struck by a second arrow," the Buddha asked, "does it hurt even more?"
"It does," the student replied.
In life, we can't control whether we were hit by an arrow.
But the second arrow is our reaction to the first.
The first arrow causes pain; the second is our distress about that pain.