Why do golfers talk themselves into playing the shots they don’t want to hit? I’m talking here about saying or thinking to yourself something like, “Now, don’t hit it into the water”. If it wasn’t the water, it could have been the bunker, the trees or the wrong side of the green that they were trying to avoid. If it wasn’t one of those, it could have been about not slicing, hooking, topping, shanking or yipping, for all I know.

I worked recently with a client who had a major problem playing the third hole on his home course, a long par 4. When I asked him to describe what he thinks about when he plays that hole, he started by telling me about all the trouble off the tee. He explained about the out of bounds on the left, the ditch and bushes on the right and the awkward slopes in the fairway. When I asked him about how he’d play his approach to the green, if he’d actually managed to get one on the fairway, he told me all about the difficulty of avoiding the bunker just short of the green and all the other ways to drop yet another shot on that hole.

What’s interesting is that later in the session, when he was much more relaxed, I asked him to imagine that I was playing his course for the first time and he was caddying for me. He talked me through the first hole, telling me exactly where to land my tee shots, how that would open up the green for me and where to land my approach shots to get the best run in to the pin position. He continued in much the same way through the second hole and, most interestingly, the third hole, his nemesis hole. He never once mentioned the bunkers, the out of bounds, the ditches and the bushes.

Now, I suspect that I would probably have played quite well with him as my caddy. At least I would have had a chance to play positively, even on the dreaded third hole. In fact, it would be just like an experience I had many years ago, when I was selected to play with a good friend of mine as my partner in a County Foursomes team event a course I had never played before. When I got there, there were no yardage charts available and no distance yardage markers on the course, so my foursomes partner, who had played there several times and knew the course well, suggested that he would have to tell me exactly what to do, when it was my turn to hit our ball. In other words, he acted as my caddy, in just the way my client imagined he was doing.

It helped that my friend knew my game well and we played off similar handicaps. So, on every shot I had to play, my partner would tell me the length and style of shot I needed to play and give me a specific target to aim at – a particular tree, bunker or part of a building. And that was all I had to think about. He never told me about any of the hazards to avoid. As a result, I was the perfect partner, hit the ball where and how he told me. You won’t be surprised to hear that we scored far better than we could have possibly expected.

So what happened to my client, the one with the nemesis hole, I hear you ask? Well, I used hypnosis to help him to play like he was his own virtual caddy, advising and guiding himself on the course. The next time out he parred the third hole.

If you need help overcoming that temptation to say “don’t” to yourself on the golf course, then think about using my golf hypnosis recording “Zone Out your Inner Critic”. It starts by helping you to build a powerful, calm, relaxed and resourceful set of feelings. This prepares you to learn more about your inner critic and the hidden meaning behind its negativity. The session also helps you unconsciously learn more about and strengthen the powers of your much more positive and resourceful inner guardian or champion. Finally the session uses and NLP “visual squash” technique to help your inner guardian overwhelm the inner critic while capturing any positive intention from all your old negativity. I know that sounds odd, but it’s a very effective and rewarding process.

“Zone Out our Inner Critic” is the second hypnosis track in my “Golf in the Playing Zone” audio programme, available to download from the Golf Hypnotist Store.

So what happened? Well after writing my recent article about talking yourself into better golf, I sat down to watch a replay of the television coverage of the World Cup from Mission Hills in China. Now I ‘m always thinking very positively after completing an article, so I was amazed at how quickly I was becoming negative watching the golf and more importantly listening to the negative messages coming from the commentators. Here’s a list of the ones I remember from just 30 minutes of watching and listening.

“He’s got to think about trying not to let his partner down”

“Very few golfers have found winning easy”

“The nap is into him as well as the slope – he has to hit it hard”

“Perhaps he was afraid of thinning it”

“They might have felt a bit intimidated”

“It’s not finished yet”

“It’s only a par, but it’s not terminal”

“He missed one of this length at the last hole”

“There’s a tough driving hole coming up”

“He’ll be disappointed to be much further away from the hole in 2 shots”

“He and his playing partner have it all to do”

“I still wouldn’t like to call it, would you? No.”

“For the third hole in a row he gets just this length of putt”

“He’s just 20 years old, what can you expect?”

“Had that gone in, there might have been a glimmer of hope, but they’re running out of holes”

It makes depressing reading doesn’t it? More worryingly, I wonder how many of those negative suggestions have been taken in by my unconscious while I was watching and listening. I dread to think how depressing and potentially bad for your golf it would be playing with some of of those commentators, if they talk like that when they actually play golf.

I’m not saying that television golf commentators don’t say anything positive. You only have to hear them talking about Tiger Woods to hear them talking positively, even when he’s playing badly. To be fair, some of the commentators are very positive, particularly the one’s who played golf at the very top, like Nick Faldo and Peter Alliss, unless he’s talking about putting!

So, be careful when you watch golf on TV. Enjoy watching the golf, learn from your favourite golfers and consciously filter out the negative comments from the positive commentary.

Self talk really comes into its own when we are internally analysing and evaluating complex choices in our lives. A good example is when you are starting your pre-shot routine and deciding on the type of shot you’re going to play. Have you ever had one voice in your head proposing an ambitious shot with a driver and another one encouraging you to make a more conservative shot with an iron? Don’t worry about it. It’s perfectly normal and unlikely to be a symptom of schizophrenia!

Now, I’ve often written about the concept that whatever we consciously think about our unconscious mind does it’s best to deliver. And self-talk is the most powerful and influential mechanism for conscious thought. So if you talk to yourself about the bunker you’re trying to avoid, rather than the green you should be aiming to hit, your unconscious is likely to put you in the bunker! So it’s important to think and talk to yourself positively about your target and your desired shot – the one you visualised earlier, perhaps.

What you say to yourself after you hit your shot is just as important as what you say when you’re hitting the shot. Internal communication has a really significant impact on your mood, attitude and effectiveness, and also on those around you. Berating yourself angrily is only going to make you feel bad. It also means that you’re likely to relive that same feeling the next time you have a similar shot to play and consequently hit an equally bad shot. It’s important to learn from a bad shot, as long as you do it positively and release it to the past where it can’t hurt you. I really love Nick Faldo’s TV commentary about Tiger Woods "Hitting the Reset Button" after a bad shot during the Tour Championship.

Positive self-talk is even better for you than negative self talk is bad for you. So talk positively to yourself about the shot you’re about to play. One of the best ways to do this is to talk to yourself about the shot you want to make, visualise your target and the shot vividly and think about your visualised shot as you hit the ball. It’s difficult to allow negative self-talk to enter your head when you’re focussing completely on something positive.

The same applies to your post shot routine, especially after you’ve hit a good shot. Relish your good shots, feel really good about them, review them vividly in your mind and tell yourself how good they are. That way, you’ll feel really good the next time you have a similar shot.

Now, I think you’ll agree that positive self-talk is what you’re looking for and the only person you can rely on to say those positive things is you.

I particularly like the concept of sitting in your office or at home rehearsing all the unpleasant things you’re going to say to yourself when you’re out on the golf course. If that sounds utterly ridiculous, then why do so many of us talk to ourselves so badly when we hit a bad shot? If one of our playing partners said the same thing, we’d probable decide then and there not to ever play with them again.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So praise yourself for every good shot you hit and learn from and release any bad shot before you start getting abusive. You’ll enjoy your golf more and play better.

Number 6: ”Trying” to consciously control your swing mechanics

Do you remember how hard it was to tie your shoe laces the first time and how it’s just an automatic process? To see what I mean, write down the step by step instructions for how you tie your shoelaces and then give them to someone else and ask them to follow them to the letter. Even if they succeed, it’ll take them much longer than just using the unconscious program. Now imagine consciously following those instructions in the time it takes to swing a golf club.

The only effective way to swing a golf club is to switch off your conscious mind and all its thoughts about swing mechanics and trust your unconscious mind – you’ve already programmed it to repeat the best shot you’ve ever hit. And the way to make sure you do that is, as before, to get a good hypnotist to install an appropriate post-hypnotic or use self-hypnosis.

Number 7: Criticising your shot and looking for flaws in your swing

Even using hypnosis, you’ll occasionally mishit a shot or be unlucky. However, that’s no cause for criticism and certainly no reason for changing your swing mechanics out on the course. Just learn from the shot and move on as described in my response to the dwelling on your mistakes and bad shots.

Number 8: Comparing yourself to some other golfer

You can learn a lot in golf from watching a good player at his or her best, but the real challenge of golf is you playing against the course. It really doesn’t matter how well or badly your playing partners or opponents are playing. If you play to the best of your ability and lose, then well done you and well done them. That’s one of the many special things I love about golf.

If it still bothers you then install the post-hypnotic suggestion that you’ll treat every shot as if it’s the last one you’ll ever play There’d be no reason to dwell on your past shots and there wouldn’t be any in the future, so you might as well make the most of the one you’re playing now.

Number 9: Thinking about what could go wrong

In your mind this is interpreted in a similar way to telling yourself what NOT to do. Your unconscious mind will have to think about the thing that could go wrong happening and it will do your best to make it happen. If you want to evaluate what could go wrong, that’s fine, before you make up your mind what you do want to happen. Then you can use your post-hypnotic suggestion or self-hypnosis to switch off your unconscious mind and let your unconscious programming get on with hitting your desired shot.

Number 10: Worrying about other people watching you

If you’re using hypnosis and NLP to manage your state and concentration during the round, you will be consciously unaware and untroubled by the actions of others. Even if they are thinking bad or critical thoughts about you, those thoughts are in their heads and not yours. Once you go into your playing trance you will be blissfully unaware of your conscious self-talk.

So are my overall conclusions changing today?

Well, no they aren’t and you’ll notice I’m avoiding naming the “someone” who published the original list and hidden his responses. I know that if you really want to read them, you can probably find them on the web, but I don’t want them on my website.

Now, it won’t surprise you to hear that my suggestions still revolve around the use of a good hypnotist helping you with appropriate post-hypnotic suggestions and tying those suggestions to carefully chosen golf psychology techniques for your specific golfing issues and opportunities.

One of the reasons that I failed to benefit from the Inner Game of Golf and the many other books, DVDs and CDs I purchased over my earlier the years is that none of them installed any way of remembering not to forget to do their techniques when I needed them.  The nearest anyone has ever got to achieving that has been Dr Karl Morris with his Circle Game, but that worked very intermittently for me.

It would be an improvement if I had a caddy every time I played and the caddy had a checklist of all the golf psychology instructions I had to remember. Even then, I would still need something like hypnosis to manage the interference from my conscious mind while I hit the shots. That’s why I developed my “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis programme that you can download free when you sign up for my Golf Hypnotist Ezine.

Number 1: Letting your internal dialogue run wild

Get a good hypnotist to install a post-hypnotic suggestion that you go into a trance as you step into each shot or use self-hypnosis to achieve the same result. Whichever way, you’re allowing your unconscious mind to get on with playing the shot to the best of your technical ability while keeping your chattering conscious mind out of the action. That seems to work for Tiger Woods.

Number 2: Tightening up on your difficult shots

Learn to use hypnosis or an NLP anchoring technique to relax before planning any shot. Then control the inevitable internal dialogue with a post-hypnotic suggestion, as in number 1 above.

Number 3: Worrying about the Yips

This is basically a mental tightening up on a specific difficult shot, so I‘d handle it the same as Number 2.

Number 4: Telling yourself what NOT to do

Don’t go in the bunker, trees, water, etc! Your unconscious mind doesn’t know how to not do something. If I ask you to think of a blue elephant, you unconsciously have to imagine one – you probably just did! If you want to give yourself or anyone else a suggestion, phrase it using positive progressive language. That’s what a good hypnotist will help you with.

Number 5: Dwell on your mistakes and bad shots

The key thing is to learn from your mistakes, bad luck and plain bad shots before releasing them to the past where they can trouble you no more. Once again, you can make sure you do this with the help of post-hypnotic suggestions from a good hypnotist or use self-hypnosis. You may recall from my earlier post about how Tiger handles this despite, or maybe with the help of, his temper tantrums when he has a bad or unlucky shot. Once you release a bad shot like this, you’re free to hit the next one to the best of your ability and as if you had never hit the bad one.

My initial conclusions after the first 5 Mental Mistakes

I know that I have his other 5 Mental mistakes to cover tomorrow, but it won’t surprise you to hear that my suggestions all revolve around the use of a good hypnotist helping you with appropriate post-hypnotic suggestions tied to a number of carefully chosen golf psychology techniques. Without the hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestions, you will probably forget to remember to execute the techniques on every shot.

I’ll be back tomorrow with Part 2 of this article and my conclusion to the 10 mental mistakes.

If a golfer won’t tell you he’s using hypnosis, then what are the signs to look for to know he or she is? Well let’s take Tiger Woods as our first example. I’ve not heard him say that he uses hypnosis or read anything that confirms that he’s admitted it. However, just watch the controlled and methodical series of blinks he makes just before stepping into every shot. If that’s not a hypnotic trigger or anchor, I had better hand back my my Hypnotherapy Diploma and my NLP certificates. It’s clear to me that he’s using that trigger to enter self hypnosis once he’s decided on the shot he’s going to make. The self-hypnosis quiets his conscious self-talk and leave his unconscious golf programming to execute the shot.

Now Tiger must have learned this from Jay Brunza, his mind coach from the age of 13. From what I’ve read, Dr Brunza followed up his Ph.D. in Psychology with a long career as a psychologist with the US Navy including a period as a combat stress psychologist, before working as a sports psychologist. This brief extract from Golf Digest, in December 2002, appears to confirm Tiger’s training included hypnosis

"Woods’ ability to produce peak performance by ‘willing myself into the zone’ is unprecedented. And at age 13, Tiger began mental training with Dr. Jay Brunza, a family friend and psychologist. Among the techniques Brunza used were subliminal tapes and hypnosis. ‘The first time Jay hypnotized Tiger, he had him stick his arm straight out and told him that it couldn’t be moved, ‘Earl [Tiger's father] says. ‘I tried, but I couldn’t pull it down. [Tiger says hypnosis is] ‘inherent in what I do now.’"

Thinking about all this, I just wish a few other top golfers would admit to using hypnosis for golf improvement then I wouldn’t have to keep talking about Tiger Woods.

Come on Phil Mickelson, it’s obvious you’re using self-hypnosis; you couldn’t just keep smiling through adversity like that without hypnosis, now could you. Why not sit down, relax a bit more and tell us all about it. Now!

What’s possibly worse is that many players have similar negative internal dialogue whenever they plan and execute a shot. They recall all the bad shots they’ve ever hit in this situation and focus more on what can go wrong than on what they’re trying to do.

I was surprised to hear Geoff Ogilvy saying that he used to experience negative self talk earlier in his career. In an interview after his recent victory in the World Golf Championship Match Play event, he said that early in his career, he found it almost impossible to suppress any negative feelings he was experiencing. You wouldn’t think that, watching his cool demeanour when playing last week.

After some more research, I found a much older interview where he was talking about how half the Tour talks to themselves badly when they’re out there playing bad. They do it every day and it’s very unconstructive. When asked what he meant, he said

“Yeah, just call yourself useless and what are you doing out here and all sorts of stuff. And I was hopeless. And I’m still not the best out here, but I’m getting a lot better.”

Clearly Geoff has come a long way since then and I’m sure that golf psychology has had a lot to do with it.

With hypnosis and NLP we can do a lot to channel and manage that negative self-talk. One simple approach from NLP is just to give that negative voice in our head a silly or a sexy accent – it would be hard to take the negative self-talk if it came from Donald Duck or a seductive Marilyn Munro. You make up the voice in your head, so it’s yours to do whatever you want with.

Another alternative would be to give that destructive voice a constructive job to do. That’s one of the things I offer clients with my “Your Own Virtual Caddy” golf hypnosis programme. Did I mention that it’s free when you sign up for my Golf Hypnotist ezine? Just enter your name and email address in the form on the right hands side of every page of the Golf Hypnotist website.