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The Psychology of a Confident Golf Swing
 by: Adam Eason

Before focusing on the subject of developing confidence with ones golf swing I want you all to think about this notion; you cannot just "Think" yourself a wonderful golf swing. Otherwise, we would all just think about pots of gold arriving in our front rooms and we'd all be rich. However, the pots of gold do not arrive just by thinking about them, likewise, our golf swing does not transform into that of Tiger Woods just by thought alone. Something needs to be done to get confident about that golf swing. So, this is the first notion that I want you to think about before I talk about building a powerful level of confidence in your golf swing.

When anyone is developing a new confident golf swing, there needs to be an element of action that is taken to alter and update the golf swing properly and effectively. Something new needs to be done enough times for the unconscious mind to learn it.

The early success philosophers and gurus like Stephen Covey and Napoleon Hill recognised that in order for a new behaviour to happen unconsciously and automatically, it needs to be done for 21 consecutive days. So then the new behaviour is learned thoroughly by the unconscious mind and your confidence in your golf swing can begin to happen on auto-pilot. So, any confidence with your golf swing needs some conscious effort and repeated application for your new confident golf swing to happen unconsciously.

Now, when you have a new way of doing things, the other, old, unwanted way of doing things doesn't just wither away instantly. It remains in the bank. If you were confined to a wheelchair, the muscles in your legs would begin to experience atrophy, the same way that when certain parts of your brain are not used, they experience atrophy; this is why it is difficult for us learn languages when we are much older and school kids find it a bit easier; that part of our brain has not been used for a long time.

The old golf swing needs significant time to experience atrophy. Imagine that here and now as you read this, your unconscious mind has carved out a distinct way of you swinging your golf club and this way is well defined by repitition from the past. Every time you step up to perform your golf swing, your unconscious mind carries on down that well trodden pathway that you have always gone down; your golf swing is the same. It is the only way that it knows and is the easiest route to take.

When you create an alternative, confident new golf swing, you are carving out a new pathway that needs to be trodden down and paved well several times, so that your unconscious knows it is there and knows that it can take this route in certain circumstances, events and situations.

Ok. So then with repeatedly taking the new pathway, the old pathway can begin to overgrow and have its own atrophy. However, we all know how easy it is to unearth an old pathway and drift back to our old golf swing; if we allow ourselves to go back along that way, it can begin to get carved out again.

These notions can form the foundation of any programme of change. However we are focussing on your golf swing here today and how to develop enhanced confidence with your golf swing.

When I first became involved with the world of hypnosis, NLP and personal development, I read a wonderful book by a man called Dr Maxwell Maltz entitled "Psycho-cybernetics" that formed the basis of many modern ideas as to how we understand personalities. Dr Maltz was a plastic surgeon and he found that if he changed the way people looked, often it changed their personality too. When people looked different, they also felt different. Often people that had lacked confidence, were transformed into more confident, outgoing people who lived life with more zest.

What perplexed Dr Maltz is that some of clients did not seem to get happier. Some, whose appearance had changed a lot, didn't seem to change their feelings. They still felt lacking in confidence.

So what Dr Maltz concluded was that cosmetic surgery would not benefit the client if they had a poor image of themselves. His solution was to create a visualisation technique that helped them to change their inner self-image. He had some wonderful results. So when the clients changed the way they felt about themselves, they became happier and more fulfilled and their confidence grew. You know that when you feel great about your golf swing, your golf swing is better and you are more competent with your golf swing. The technique is simple, here it is;

Firstly, imagine your golf swing as you would ideally like your golf swing to be. Think about how you would look if you were as happy and confident as you wanted to be with your golf swing. How do you walk? What do you wear? What expressions are on your face? How do you move? Take all the time necessary for this, to really get an idea of how you are when you are confident with your golf swing.

Secondly, when you know what you will look like, make a film clip inside your mind, in your imagination of yourself being happy, confident and deeply self-assured with your golf swing.

Thirdly, imagine yourself stepping into that film, imagine seeing through those eyes, hearing through those ears, and feel those confident feelings, think to yourself; how do I know the confident feelings? Where in my body are they? Enjoy feeling and being exactly how you want to be.

Lastly for this exercise, imagine that when you get up tomorrow you awaken as that ideal you, feeling this good and imagine your golf swing going as you want it to and be confident about your golf swing.

Remember what I said at the beginning, you must use this technique over and over in order to get the most from it and really make yourself a confident golf swing. Look out for part two of this article of getting confident with your golf swing.