#146 Web TV: How To Improve Your Focus On The Golf Course

How To Improve Your Focus On The Golf Course

Are you having trouble with focus out on the golf course?

Did you say yes?

Would you like to know how you can concentrate, out on the golf course?

Did you say yes?

Focus!

This is a big, big issue that comes up in golf. I have many golfers who discuss this with me, write to me about it, I have conversations on the phone about it, the whole thing.

So, how can we focus more?

Well, I’ll tell you about a conversation had, a conversation with a lady no so long ago and she was telling me that she can’t seem to tune people out. The people she plays with are really chatty, and she struggles with learning to tune them out.

Now, I have other ladies that come and talk to me about hitting the ball so well at the driving range but can’t seem to do it out on the golf course. Being a super star on the driving range but not able to make it happen out on the golf course.

There is a reason. What happens is that when people actually go out and play on the course they expect it to magically happen. I don’t want you to think that I’m saying this to be rude to you, or anything, I’m not. I’m doing this because I want to help you.

The thing that you want to do, and make sure that you do, is to learn to focus.

It’s not your fault, you haven’t learned how to do it!

It’s just that you don’t know how to do it, that’s the problem.

Taking up golf, and I consider golf a precision sport, therefore everything you do in golf, you probably agree, everything that you do in golf you really have to be exact. Some people call me a perfectionist when it comes to skills and so on, well, there is a reason for that. I want to make sure that you technically get everything correct.

Even with the tips I give you and that you see, it’s all about making sure that you are doing things the right way. Simple, yet effective.

You need to make sure that when you are playing out on the golf course you need to know how to focus. I’ll tell you a very simple way to start doing this shortly.

I did have another conversation with a lady, I won’t tell you her name but she will probably pick it up when she hears this story. When she is out playing on the course, she really struggles with her focus. The reason she struggles is because she is thinking about all the different things she has to do and she knows that she can, because she does hit the ball really well, she goes to the driving range and she practices really well and her swing looks great (because I taught her) the swing looks great, but she still struggles out on the course.

I said to her, "what you need to do is to spend five minutes a day working on this specific thing." She said, "Tiff, I don’t have five minutes to do it, I am too impatient, I’m too this, I’m too that and I have to keep moving. If I stop and think about what I have to do my mind is too busy and I think about something else."

This is where the problem is. Golf is a sport in which you have to stay in the moment, you have to be there. I’m sure there have been times when you stand over the ball, getting set to hit a shot and you start to think about something else that you have to do or something happened in the past or something that you have to do tonight or whatever it is, and then suddenly the shot doesn’t work.

What happens?

For that moment in time your concentration, your focus, has disappeared. You thought about something else which means that you weren’t focused on what you need to do right now.

That is the key to golf. The key to golf is not only getting the technical skills right, you have to get the technique right because technique builds confidence. You need to make sure the technique is there so you know what to do, you’re not standing over the ball guessing, going ‘oh my gosh, what have I got to do today, I don’t know, I forget how to swing the golf club’, you need to make sure that technically you know what to do. But, it’s just not that alone, it’s also making sure you know how to focus.

There is another client of mine, for ten years I have been at her about learning how to use her head a lot better. "No, no, no, it’s all physical," she said.

One day I got her to track her scores and do specific things and she went ‘oh my goodness, now I know what you are talking about’. The mission is now to improve the focus.

This is why I want to share it with you. It’s actually really important that you get this focus. I’m not standing here in front of you talking about focus and going ‘oh well you just have to learn to focus, see you later’. There are specific things that you have to do. You have to mentally condition yourself. If you don’t mentally condition yourself off the course, how do you expect to mentally condition yourself on the course so that you can perform?

When you go and play? Too hard!

You can’t expect to go and practice, with no pressure, but when you go and play with pressure, which is out on the course, not pressure from other people, pressure on yourself because you have to make that one shot count. If you are under pressure and you’re not coping with it because you haven’t learned how to focus (that’s out key word for today).

If you haven’t learned how to focus then how do you expect it all to happen? It just doesn’t. That’s reality. I’m here to give you a reality check today.

You know I’m here to help you but we need to start getting our head space right.

I’m going to be doing more of this throughout videos in the future, I’ll make sure that I spend some time just talking to you about how you can improve on your head space. If you don’t improve with your head space then your golf isn’t going to improve either. Your performance out on the golf course is not going to improve either. It’s important to work on your head space. I could keep going for hours, but I won’t.

How do we focus?

I have talked about this in a previous video, about focusing. I have had people come up to me and say, I’ll do it. It doesn’t last for long.

Let’s think about success. Success in golf is the action of small daily disciplines that you do. Small disciplines that you do each day is going to give you the success that you want. If you want to improve your golf then there are some small, specific, daily actions or disciplines that you need to do so you can improve your golf.

From a mental point of view, from a focus point of view, because that’s what we are talking about today, is you need to make sure you are working on this specific thing. I have mentioned it before and I’m going to say it again.

It’s meditation.

You might think it’s a bit woo-woo for you, meditation.

Yes, you need to learn to meditate. I wish I had learnt this in my tennis days. You may know the story, I was a tennis player before and my goal was to be a number one tennis player in the world and it just didn’t happen for me. I had the skills, but I didn’t have the mind space required. I was 19/20, absolutely devastated because I made the decision that I most likely wouldn’t make it, because I didn’t know how to use my head. I expected that I should know, but I didn’t know. I could talk about this forever.

The reason I’m sharing this with you is because if you want to improve you have to learn how to do the skill.
Meditation actually teaches you how to focus. You don’t even need to do it out on the golf course. You might be thinking great, now I’m listening, I don’t have to do it on the golf course, it’s something small that I could do each day and I can improve my focus for playing on the golf course.

Let me say to you, well actually I’m going to ask you a question, can you make a decision of whether you want to improve your golf? It’s up to you to make the decision.

If you decide, yes, this is what I want to do, I do want to improve my golf, I do want to learn how to focus more, then that’s fantastic. If you decided that no you didn’t want to put any more effort in, you have to remember, if you don’t put any more effort in this is the level you will have to stay at, if you said no, I’m not interested I want you to wait, just be open and listen to what I have to say about meditating, because it will really help you focus.

I discovered meditation over twelve months ago, hadn’t done it before, I wish I had for lots of reasons, like sport, from my tennis days. Meditation has made a huge impact on me. I play very little golf at the moment because I spend my time teaching and so on and I’m building another business but I do meditate every day and what I noticed is I am completely zoned in when I am out playing golf, I play awesome golf, because I know how to use my head space.

Even though I haven’t physically practised a lot, because I work so much mentally, this all just happens for me. It’s exciting.

Meditation. How are we going to do it? Very simply. I’ve given a few people two minutes a day, it’s best to start with about two minutes. You need to do it every day, don’t just do it before you go and play golf, it’s not going to help you.

Remember, success is all about the daily disciplines that you are doing. All the little things you do each day is going to create the result that you want.

What you need to do to meditate is to find a quiet space, in your home or you can sit in the car and do it if the house is too noisy or whatever. I always do it really early in the morning, about 4.45 in the morning, I do get up early, and because I have no distractions. I can just focus on doing that.

When you are meditation all you are doing is a breathing technique and why we are doing it this way is to focus on one thing, focus on your breathing and then you are going to be counting, that’s it.

Thoughts run through your mind because they will, that’s normal. What you want to make sure you do is to let those thoughts go and go back into focus on what you are doing with your breathing.

It’s easy to get distracted. That’s what happens on the golf course. It could be somebody that is really annoying you that you are playing with, it could be somebody that is really chatty as well, you like them but they are just really chatty and you are finding them really distracting.

You need to make sure you are learning how to focus. Yes, this is a long video above today but I have been feeling compelled to share this one with you for a long time. I believe that the time is now. We have to make sure you get this message.

Meditation, how do you do it?

Find a quiet place.

When you find your quiet place, close your eyes, on your phone you can set airplane mode and you can’t get phone calls which is great, and then you set your timer.

I’m going to challenge you to actually do it for five minutes. I’m going to push you.

Obviously, I’m not going to be standing over you, watching you, but my challenge to you is to do it for five minutes a day and I want you to do it for thirty-one days straight.

Five minutes a day, thirty-one days straight and then I want you to give me some feedback on how you went.

See if you notice anything when you are out playing on the golf course. If you’re not, that’s showing you that you are not working on the meditation side of things.

• Find a quiet space,
• Set the timer for five minutes,
• Then just close your eyes and breathe in, one, two, three, four, HOLD for 4, one, two, three, four, BREATHE OUT, one, two, three, four, HOLD FOR 4, one, two three, four.
• I want you to do it in your head, I don’t want you to physically say it like you can hear it from me, but I want you to say that in your head because you will find that as you are doing it you may get distracted.
• Other thoughts will come into your mind, I should be doing this, I should be doing that, I should be, I should be, I should be.
• No, you shouldn’t be, you should be sitting where you are and you should be listening to what you are doing because you need to learn how to focus and stay in the moment.
• Really import that you focus and keep breathing until the five minutes is up. I’ll tell you, when you first start you will want to check the phone, you will want to check the time, is the time up yet, all of that, and I’m going to say to you, NO, just close your eyes and keep going. You will be very impatient.

What does golf teach you? Golf teaches you how to be patient.

We need to make sure that you are patient. You have to learn to be patient, you can’t be impatient in golf. Again, I could talk to you about being impatient all the time. I can pick whether a person is impatient or not by their golf swing. How quick they go, how quick they move, how quick they talk, I can tell instantly and my job is always to make sure I slow that person down, simply so that they can play better golf.

This is what I’m here for. I’m here to help you but you have to put some time in. So, what are we going to do?
Set the timer for five minutes, find a nice quiet space, close our eyes and focus purely on breathing, breathe in for four, hold for four, breathe out for four, hold for four. You can do that for five minutes and you are going to do it everyday for 31 days.

Now, if you are up for the challenge of doing that, and testing it (look at it as a test) and see how it works for you, I know how it works for me because I have been doing it for a long time now, over a year, that’s a long time. I did notice a big difference after about a month. I want to see if you notice the difference when you put yourself under the challenge.

If you want to improve your focus, this is how you are going to do it, this is the first step, there are a lot of other things to do, but this is going to be the first step. Focus on your breathing. Staying in the moment so you can teach yourself how to stay in the moment when you are sitting and slowly, over time, you are going to teach yourself how to stay in the moment when you are playing golf.

That’s all I had to share with you today, it’s all about focus today, meditating, making sure you are doing the breathing activity and making sure you are doing it for thirty-one days.

If you really enjoyed today’s video and you sat through the whole thing and listened to me talking to you about focus, thank you, I appreciate it and I would love to hear from you about what you liked best in the video today and also that you are going to take on the 31 Day Challenge and test yourself. See how you go after you have been doing this meditation exercise every day for thirty-one days, I want to see if you notice a difference out on the golf course and I want you to come back and tell me about it.

Have an absolutely awesome day, take care, and remember; Tee it high and Let it fly.