Page 48 - Golf Champion - SEPTEMBER 2020

[GOLF LESSON]

Bad Thoughts:

Delete or Replace

나쁜 생각 : 삭제 또는 바꾸기

he power of visualization than resetting and re-establishing a sequence that I can only describe as
to improve performance positive routine that is more likely “hit and hope.”
Thas been well-documented to produce a positive outcome. As athletes, or as performers in any
by researchers across all sports, Whenever I spend time with golfers setting, our minds can only attend
yet golfers regularly struggle to talking through this very familiar to so many variables at any single
consistently apply the principles of sequence of events, they often tell moment. Maybe we can be aware
sport psychology in performance me that they don’t know what else of three or four things at the same
settings. Probably the most common to do. They can’t seem to shake their time, but not many more. In athlet-
challenge I see is the tendency of focus on water hazards, penalty ics, we want all of those elements
players to notice negative thoughts areas, or out of bounds stakes, and of attention to be the positive out-
before a shot and yet continue rather than take the time to redirect comes we want to create or the tech-
toward execution of a shot, rather their thoughts, they swing in a niques that we want to employ to
create them. There are many ways
to try to work through negative or
Delete? unwanted thoughts, but two tech-
niques are worth highlighting as
Bad, bad... Replace? you consider how to eliminate the

negative thoughts that are ruining
your game: deleting and replacing.
Backing up just a bit, I recently had
an athlete tell me that he knew that
he was having negative thoughts
before he hit a shot, but he couldn’t
get rid of them. “It would have been
nice to have done differently, but
I didn’t know how,” were his exact
words. Working with this athlete,
we talked about deletion and re-
placement. Deletion is a technique
that many people try to employ, es-
sentially just saying to themselves,
“that thought is gone…I’m not going
to think that anymore.” This tech-
nique is similar to the psychologi-
cal concepts of thought withdraw,
or even thought-blocking, both of
which can be problematic and ex-

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