Now one of the first things I learned in golf psychology was that "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" to quote Robert Anton Wilson in his famous book about how the mind works, Prometheus Rising. In hypnosis terms this means that whatever we consciously think about we unconsciously make happen. In simple terms, if we consciously think about an ice-cream we unconsciously decide we want one and instinctively begin to taste one. If you’re driving on a motorway and someone draws your conscious attention to something way off to the right, you may suddenly notice yourself unconsciously steering in that direction.

Have you ever noticed how if you tell someone to not do something accidentally, that they automatically seem to do it anyway? This is especially true with children, so if you say to a child, "don’t spill your milk", then don’t be surprised if they to do just that. Contrary to what some believe, children don’t do this out of spite, it’s just what you made them consciously think about.

So what’s all this got to do with the fear of hitting a bad shot then Andrew? Well, you have to consciously think the bunker you don’t want to go in to fear going in it. The same goes for your fear of hitting a shank or yipping a putt. But, I hear you say, I make a point of thinking to myself "don’t hit it in the bunker" rather than just thinking about the bunker. Well, it makes no difference to the outcome, because you have to think of a thing in order to not do it. If I say don’t think of a blue elephant, you have to imagine a blue elephant to know what I’m talking about. The same goes for thinking of not hitting the ball into the bunker. If that’s in your head when you hit the ball, then you’ll unconsciously do your best to it there.

I’ve hear Paul McKenna tell a good story about this. He had a top golfer, one who’d already won major championships, come to him for help. The golfer explained that he was consistently hitting shots into bunkers and not just any bunkers. These were the bunkers he specifically wanted to avoid and he wasn’t just rolling into them, his ball was landing right in the middle of them. Paul watched him play a few holes then gave him a simple verbal instruction to follow for the next few holes. Amazingly, the champion golfer started hitting almost every shot just where he wanted to. So what did Paul say to him? He told him to decide on where he wanted to land the ball on each shot and then focus on not hitting the ball there. He was now consciously thinking about his target, not the bunkers.

So next time you’re out playing golf and you start saying to yourself "don’t go in that bunker", "don’t shank this shot" or something similar. Then compensate for your fear by stopping and rethinking your target taking into account whatever you’d like to avoid. Now focus your conscious mind on that new target before handing over control to your unconscious golf mind to hit the shot. For a more positive slant on all this, have a look at my earlier blog article entitled Focus your golf mind on your target not the hazard for better golf scores.

Nowhere is this more true than with putting, the game within the game of golf. Putting is the great equalizer in golf and we all have the opportunity for success, regardless of age, sex, build, health and level of fitness. Putting also accounts for approximately a third to a half of our total score. The lower your handicap, the larger the proportion of your score will be putts.

Golfers typically take as many as thirteen other clubs with them when playing golf, and yet it’s rare to see anyone take more than one putter. In addition, most of those other clubs are pretty similar to everyone else’s. My 3-wood is unlikely to be substantially different from your one in terms of length, loft, size, shape or weight and the same is true for every other club in the bag – apart from the putter. How many times have you played in a fourball and every player has had a similar style of putter, let alone the same model. Do you often come across mallet-headed drivers, centre-shafted woods, broomstick sand wedges or long-irons with two-thumb grips?

You’re also likely to see much greater diversity in how people stand, grip and swing their putters than you ever see with the rest of the clubs. That’s probably why Dave Pelz, one of the leading short game experts, can take 387 pages in his Putting Bible to explain the complexities of the "flat stick."

So it should be no surprise that there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to putting psychology – any good work here needs to be interactive and iterative. To demonstrate what I mean, here’s my reply to a single-figure handicap golfer who wrote in to tell me about how his putting Yips was driving him away from golf after more than 20 years of enjoyment.

I know what you mean about having the Yips. I remember having putting problems like that back in my younger days when I was playing off a handicap of 2. I still can’t believe that for over 25 years as a category 1 player, I averaged around 35 putts per round. I can even remember going round in 1 over par with 38 putts! Thankfully, that was before I got into golf psychology and things have improved quite a lot for me in that area.

So what can I suggest to help you overcome the yips? Well, it would help to know a bit more about how they started for you and what you’ve tried in your quest to get rid of them. Working face to face or even on the phone, I could soon develop an approach to help you. Now, in the absence of that information, here are a few ideas to consider:

1. Putt while looking at the hole or your target spot, rather than looking at the ball. The separation of the conscious task of looking for the result and the unconscious task of swinging the putter certainly helped me when I used the technique.
2. Relax yourself in a comfortable location and recall some good putts from your past or imagine what they would have been like. Just imagine you were hitting those putts again. It may help to do this after listening to my golf hypnosis recording. You don’t have to listen to the full 25 minutes, just listen for about 10 minutes and then do some putting visualisation in your mind. When you are physically practicing your putting or out playing, imagine the putt you are about to hit and "see" the ball rolling along your chosen line and falling into the hole. Then just step into the shot and let it roll.
3. When you hole a putt, replay it in your mind both at the time and later when you review your practice session or round. If you miss a putt, just imagine that you holed it and replay the imagined successful putt in your mind.

Another, possibly even weirder, approach is to use a technique called EFT. Some people say it’s like a version of acupuncture, except you tap the meridian points with your finger rather than uYsing needles! For me it works like hypnosis, in that you consciously have to focus on the tapping sequence while you unconsciously think about the problem you want to correct – the Yips.

I’ve already documented the process in a series of four articles I posted on my blog back in March. The process requires you to use a "Setup Statement" that’s explained in Part 3. I would suggest that you start out using a simple setup statement such as "Even though I have this putting problem, I completely and utterly accept myself." Now I know this sounds a bit daft, even though it works wonders!

The four articles on EFT for Better Golf are:

• Part 1 – So what is EFT
• Part 2 – Let’s Get Tapping
• Part 3 – Tapping it all together
• Part 4 – Tapping for Golf Success

So, there are a few suggestions to be going on with. If you would like me to give you some more specific suggestions, then email me some more background information or give me a call.

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.