The other day I wrote a blog post about how I played dumb golf. (You can read it here if you like.) I hit into some underbrush and ended up with an unplayable lie. If that wasn’t bad enough one of my golf partners and I got “into it” a bit over the right rule to handle the situation. She was right. I was wrong—I need to brush up on the rules of golf. But that’s not why I’m writing this post. You see, after playing the hole, my game went straight downhill for the next couple of holes. I let the disagreement over the rules get under my skin and it showed in my lousy play.

Fortunately, one of the readers of golfgurls.com has come to my rescue with a trick I can use the next time I start playing dumb golf. Her name is Angela Howard, a PGA Golf Psychology Coach with Mind Over Golf. Angela was kind enough to send me a description of one technique she uses to refocus and I share it with you here.

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Refocusing

When you lose focus on the golf course for any reason the most important thing is to refocus as quickly as possible, most definitely before your game is detrimentally affected. These are 4 ways which can be successfully used to refocus when necessary.
1. Anchoring.
2. EFT tapping.
3. Walking Changes of State.
4. Stepping into.

Now it would take up a lot of space to describe each of the above in detail and some of you may already be familiar with NLP and EFT and need no explanation from me.

For those of you are new to this I will describe ‘Walking changes of state’ as this is the easiest to explain and particularly appropriate for the golf course.

• First you walk 10 steps in your unfocussed state and notice where you are looking, how you are walking, what your arms are doing and what you are thinking.
• Second you imagine that up ahead about 20 steps away is someone you have not seen for a while who always brings a smile to your face, really use your imagination and see them smiling and waving to you.
• Now take 20 steps noticing where you are looking, how you are walking, what your arms are doing and what you are thinking.

If you have really used the power of your imagination you will have ‘reset’ your focus and be able to continue with your game unaffected by what has disturbed you and maybe looking forward to giving that person a phone call when you get home to see how they are doing.

If you would like to know more about Anchoring, EFT and Stepping Into, then please email me at: angela@angelahoward.karoo.co.uk and visit our website: www.mindovergolf.co.uk

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I will try this refocusing technique the next time I start to “lose it” on the course and will let you know how it goes. Do you have a trick you use to help you stay focused when your golf game isn’t going well? Feel free to leave a comment.