How to use Visualisation and Affirmation (AKA self-talk) to massively improve your golf.
Mental imagery or visualisation โthe kind that involves imagining a successful process and outcomeโis a tool that has been used by entrepreneurs and successful business executives including billionaires.
ย Itโs also been used by professional athletes to boost their strength, confidence, and to produce successful outcomes. Research has shown that surgeons, and musicians have also used it to focus and to improve their performance.
If you ever watched a gymnast before they perform their event, or better yet a freestyle skier or snowboarder at the x games, you will have seen them mentally rehearsing their moves of their event and even incorporate small body movements and gestures that reflect it as they go through the moves in their head.
But can the weekend warrior, the every so often, or even the regular golfer use visualisation and affirmations to improve their golf.
Absolutely yes. The science is in and it clearly demonstrates that anyone engaged in all manner of activities that they want to improve can use these techniques to dramatically impact the outcome.
โScience is clear. Affirmations work to bring about sometimes dramatic change in our lives. But unless an affirmation is crafted right it wonโt become a part of you and drive the desired change.โ ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย ย Aymeric Guillot, Ph.D
The type and structure of the visualisation, and the words and images used to construct an affirmation are very important. They need to be structured just right so that your brain takes you seriously and then your body will follow.
A word of warning though. They can be just as powerful in a negative context also. I think a many of us unconsciously use negative visualisation and self-talk daily as a result of culture and society. There is a permeating atmosphere of fear-based thoughts and maybe even a sense of hopelessness.
Have no fear though, these can be overcome by the power of visualisation and self-talk.
Of course, I am relating it specifically to golf as itโs my passion. But what you will learn here you can apply to any area of your life and see amazing improvement.
The self-talk of an affirmation and the associated visualisation are used in the process of performance improvement.
An affirmation is a short, precise repeated statement that is designed to create a non-conscious or subconscious conflict – known as cognitive dissonance.
This conflict then causes a shift in the mind and the mind-body connection that in turn, creates permanent, lasting change in a thought, habit, behaviour and /or action. The idea being to positively alter a deep seated wrong or unhelpful belief or habit.
But, for an affirmation and visualisation to get any traction at all and make lasting change it must be assimilated. It must become real, normal and habitual to you. It must become a part of you.
For an affirmation to be assimilated it must be carefully and precisely crafted so that your brain, your conscious, your sub-conscious and your super-conscious all get on board and see it as real and desirable.
These will then combine to drive you toward what you are affirming and seeing in your mindโs eye, and in ways that you are often not even aware of.
Non-conscious responses – thoughts, feelings behaviours and their subsequent actions โ are controlled/ influenced by a system in your brain called the Reticular Activating System (RAS).
The cool thing about your RAS is that it canโt tell the difference between something real or current and something vividly imagined. Note the word โvividlyโ. It is very important in visualisation and absorbing an affirmation i.e. making it your own.
Note too that thoughts, feelings behaviours and their subsequent actions are often automated and are triggered by a particular environment.
In fact, research suggests that some 94% of our behaviours and responses are automated, and are triggered by the environment that we are in at any given moment. Itโs the brainโs way of reducing the volume of things it has to process. It likes habits and doesnโt distinguish between good ones or bad ones.
If the golf course has become a habitual place of failure, frustration and/or disappointment then it is very difficult to change and get better just by will power alone, as that environment triggers that automatic behaviour. It has become a limiting belief. Will power is only designed for short term use and doesnโt last.
It may be why many golfers can be great at the range and show no improvement on the course โ different environments in which the brain runs a different automatic program in.
Affirmation Creation
So how do you create an affirmation and use it so that it produces the change you desire? The answer lies in a better understanding of what an affirmation is. Knowing this will help create a powerful affirmation and it enhances the assimilation of it into your unconscious so that it becomes a normal automatic behaviour, word, thought or action.
So, when you get out on the golf course you wonโt have to think too hard about what you should do, how your body should feel, the position of it for each shot, how each shot will look and feel.
Because at a deep brain level (in your gut) you are convinced that the golf course is a place of success, a place of great satisfaction and achievement.
For an affirmation to be successful it has to be assimilated, as previously mentioned. To be successfully assimilated an affirmation has to be a short precise statement that is first person, present tense, experiential imagery. A mouthful? Yes, but letโs break it down and look at each part in more detail.
First person
First personโ is probably pretty obvious. It means that an affirmation is an โIโ or โmeโ statement. It may sound to some a little selfish or perhaps a bit egocentric, but itโs really important as it gets the attention of your brain immediately because itโs all about you – the RASโs favourite subject.
The RAS doesnโt respond well to generalities and whimsy. No part of your thinking brain actually does.
First-person makes the statement target specific and the RAS likes that too. โIโ makes the brain take it as an instruction or command directed toward or about you.
First person
First personโ is probably pretty obvious. It means that an affirmation is an โIโ or โmeโ statement. It may sound to some a little selfish or perhaps a bit egocentric, but itโs really important as it gets the attention of your brain immediately because itโs all about you – the RASโs favourite subject.
The RAS doesnโt respond well to generalities and whimsy. No part of your thinking brain actually does.
First-person makes the statement target specific and the RAS likes that too. โIโ makes the brain take it as an instruction or command directed toward or about you.
Present Tense
A simple example of present-tense is โI have an excellent memoryโ. This affirmation may well be completely removed from the truth at this moment.
But by reading and saying this affirmation in the correct manner you create a conflict, called Cognitive Dissonance, between the reality you are currently experiencing and what your RAS is focused on, i.e. the desired future change you desire.
This will stimulate the RAS to go into action. It will evaluate the conflict and gravitate toward what it perceives as the more powerful reality.
It is so influential that it can even cause you to develop behaviours that drive you toward the stronger image/reality. Sometimes it seems like you just stumble across what you want and it appears to be accidental or just good fortune.
Itโs that powerful.
A deeper example of how the RAS will โrewardโ you by gravitating to the stronger reality is your response after you have bought something you really like. A new car is a good example. Iโm sure this is an experience you can relate to.
You spend hours searching for the car you want. Dreaming about it. You have planned to purchase it, thinking about it lots; visualising yourself driving it.
Finally, you make the purchase and when you start driving it around it seems that all of a sudden you see the same make, same model, same colour and even similar registration plates all over the place.
It appears that lots of other people have purchased a car the same as yours all about the same time you did.
What has actually happened is that you have been so focused on that car, thinking about it so frequently that your RAS rewards you by stimulating your conscious to be on the alert for anything that appears to be the same thing everywhere you go. It wants to give you what you want.
Those vehicles were always there. You werenโt just โlookingโ for or โnoticingโ them. Your brain has to deal with so much information in any given moment that it has a filtering and ranking system, only bringing to conscious thought what it believes you need. Thatโs the RAS in action too.
You may have begun to notice that car everywhere even before you made the purchase.
Once you set your sights on it or maybe got brochures, cut out ads and pictures from classifieds and car magazines or downloaded images from the internet, the RAS went into action, supplied what it believes you ardently desire and created or stimulated an action or behaviour that lined up with your desire making it real.
Thatโs the power of the RAS. It can focus your mind, enhance your abilities and stimulate actions and behaviours that bring to pass the โobject of your affectionโ.
What you meditate on continually and occupies your words and thoughts constantly will come to pass.
In my example above, my RAS was intent on producing enjoyment for me by providing what was the โobject of my affectionโ at that time.
I made no conscious effort to develop this or bring it to pass. It was completely spontaneous. Thatโs what the RAS is designed for. Imagine what you can do if you harness that power deliberately.
Experiential Imagery
โExperientialโ in this context simply means that an affirmation must be crafted based on your own experience/s. It must be your history, your own life and not someone elseโs
Itโs a very important part of the assimilation process to produce any lasting change.
The words that form your affirmation must be language that you commonly use i.e. part of your normal, everyday vocabulary. Thatโs what your brain is used to hearing, both in your thoughts and your speech.
As we progress through life we are conditioned by our experiences and interactions by innumerable events.
This develops layers of mental filters. Everything you experience โhear, think, feel or see is sifted, analysed, and weighted according to the filters that your experience and belief have made.
Itโs what makes us individuals and why two or more people can react so differently to the same event. DNA also influences this to a degree.
DNA both influences the outcomes of what life and experience exposes us to, as well as being influenced by those experiences and the environments in which they occur.
This is true of words too. Over years of interaction in your life you have formed a vocabulary in which each word has a particular meaning to you. It may or may not conform to dictionary standard.
Itโs important that you are aware that we all attach our own thoughts, feelings, emotions, experience, understanding and images to each word.ย And the same is true for everything we go through and the thoughts that you think.
Your Brain is Listening
Yes, your brain listens closely to what you say and makes a note of whether it lines up with your deep-seated beliefs and what you are currently saying or doing.
Choose your words wisely.
So, words that have meaning to you have a greater stimulating impact on your RAS/ brain than any from an outside source.
The RAS knows your words and the meanings that you have attached to them. So, it will respond far more vigorously to your words.
Thatโs why itโs best to construct your own affirmation rather than trying to use a pre-prepared affirmation; one that someone else has written for you.
Another person cannot effectively write a powerful, evocative, action-stimulating affirmation for you. It wonโt be assimilated nearly as efficiently and will fail to produce your desired outcome.
Donโt even use someone elseโs as a guide to write your own.
Part two of this article on Visualisation and Affirmation will be published next week. Come back soon.
If you are on our email list – if not subscribe byย contacting us using the subject ‘subscribe’ on our contacts page– or following our Facebook page you will be notifiesd when it is published.