Golf can be challenging in many ways, but we can make it even more challenging when we don't make the conscious decision to be mindful as we play and practice.
In this episode, we discuss the power of intention-attention to create more positive outcomes in your golf game:
Making the most of your practice time
Removing time as a negative variable
Incorporating measurement into your practice
If you're ready to work smarter than harder on your game, this episode is just for you!
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Dr. Greta:
Welcome to the Smart Golfer podcast where we help aspiring golfers improve their skills, strategy, and knowhow for better performance, fun and play. I'm your host, Dr. Greta Anderson and I am beyond excited to help you move from just hitting balls to playing your best golf. So let's get to it. Hey there. It's Dr. Greta. Thanks so much for tuning in today. This is an a short but important episode for all of my golfers out there, but especially some of my newer and developing golfers. Because what I've observed is that the mindset can play such a limiting role for many of us and we've just got to break ourselves of that habit. And I promise you, once we begin to make a simple mindset shift, it's going to jumpstart everything for you. So let's just start here. I want you to think about this, and this isn't going to sound like rocket science, folks, but negativity does. It's no good. Sometimes as humans, we get mired in it. It happens to the best of us. But I want you to remember that when you're out playing or practicing your golf, remember, I don't ever want you to compare your beginning to the middle of someone else's journey. Right? But we often will do that. And that negativity just drags us down. We can think of so many reasons to condemn ourselves and our efforts. We can be out there giving our level best in terms of effort, right? We're not hitting the ball far enough. I'm not catching it clean enough. That was a bad shot, right? But these phrases and thoughts, they won't help us to improve. In fact, this negative, self critical mindset in many ways blinds us from the improvement that we crave, right? It's holding us back. It's blocking us, if you will. So those of you that are familiar with me, maybe you've been coached by me or you've heard me talk, you know that I am pretty darn obsessive about helping players develop the habit of intentionality in. Whatever we're doing. Now, maybe that's for 5 minutes when you're out practicing, or maybe it's 60 minutes when you're out practicing. I need you to give consideration to the idea of giving your all in terms of attention and giving your all in terms of intention, right? The two go hand in hand, but they're two different things. Now, when it comes to working on any aspect of your golf game, that certainly means that we need to come into each practice session with a plan. And so please don't panic when I say that. Don't worry. I'm not suggesting that it has to be this complicated, complex, fancy plan of action, but you do need to have a plan, right? Many of us just have no idea what we're going to do when we decide to practice. And let me be clear. I commend you for getting out and taking the time to getting out to practice. But we'll get to the facility and we're just kind of all over the place. Maybe we walk past and we see someone working with their driver. We see someone else working on flop shots. And because we don't really have a plan, we just go with the flow. We can be more easily influenced than desired. Again, we're kind of like a ship without mooring and we're just kind of drifting all over the place. No, we've got to have an anchor that's appropriate for our boat, right? So when we don't have that anchor, two things happen. One, frankly, it's a waste of your time. Doesn't mean that you won't hit some shots and feel some sometimes it feels just good to hit some balls, right? But in terms of an objective with that practice, you haven't achieved one because you didn't set one. Right. But the second thing is that what happens there is that not having that plan reduces the opportunity for us to see real improvement. And at the end of the day, most of the time when we're trying to practice or we're practicing, it's because we want to see improvement, measurable improvement. So instead of setting ourselves up for mediocrity and hit or miss results, I'm going to invite you to shift that mindset altogether to one of great intention and attention. They sound very similar, but they are two different things. But they go hand in hand. Connecting your intention and your attention will allow for a few significant positive outcomes on that practice. Number one, you will make the most of your practice time. You'll be surprised. No more dilly dallying. You'll be purposeful. You'll be intentional. You'll give great attention and focus. And you'll begin to develop the skill of kind of tuning things out because you have a mission to accomplish, a very specific mission. Second, getting focused on that intention and attention removes time as a negative variable, if you will. And when I say that, what I mean is that, again, because you'll be very focused on a task, a skill set of strategy that you're going to be working on, whether you have 10 minutes or 60 minutes to practice, you will be dialed in. Now, if again, you think about how if you just came, showed up with your bag and you didn't really know what you're going to do, you're probably going to be all over the place right before you kind of maybe dial in on something, if you dial in at all. But with our plan, you're going to come in dialed in. So you're going to make the most of that time because you know what you're doing. You know what the game plan is, right? Thirdly, you will become much more adept at working on specific measurable skills and strategies versus just out there to get better. Now, I've kind of said that before, but it's really important to understand that the secrets, if you want to call them that, to getting better. And seeing measurable improvement in your golf game are not secrets at all. They are more systematic than secretive, and everyone's system might look a little bit different. I know you see lots of things if you're on YouTube and everywhere in the sun, everyone's telling you, hit the ball further, hit the ball further, and some things then it's not to say that a lot of the programs and offerings are not informative, but my question always goes back to is it appropriate for you? The chances are that it's not. So if you are really interested in maximizing your practice, learning what you should practice, and so that your practice time works for you, to help you yield measurable specific progress, I invite you to click on the link in the show notes for the Smart Golfer Practice toolkit. This is an absolutely free resource that I offer to you because practice is so important for us folks, and we want to do it well. And I want you to do it well. I want you to enjoy it. And moreover, I know that when you see results in your practice, no matter your skill level, no matter your level of experience, you will become better at it, more efficient at it. You'll practice more, you'll play more, and that's what it's all about. We want everyone to get out there and love golf more and more and enjoy it more and more. So that's our kind of quick tip today. We want to shift that mindset from just kind of being all over the place and negative about I'm not doing the right things, I don't know what to practice, I'm just not good enough to being very intentional and giving attention and being positive and specific about our practice efforts. Everyone's going to look different there, but know that you are where you're supposed to be at that time, and the best way to move from one space to the next space is through intentional attention to your progress. So that's it, and we'll see you in the next episode. Bye for now. Thanks so much for joining us this week on the Smart Golfer podcast. Make sure you visit our website at Dr. Gretagolf.com, where you can subscribe to the show using your preferred podcast platform so you'll never miss a show. And while you're at it, if you found value in the show, we'd appreciate a rating on that platform. Or if you simply like to tell a friend about the show, that could help us out, too. And if you like this show, you might want to check out more of our learning programs at academy. Dr. Gretagolf.com.