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One Under Par
Volume 9, Number 5.

A Newsletter from KeyGolf...... October, 2008


Who Cares?!?!

Among the conditions that form a persistent distraction for us, the foremost of those is easy to identify. Clear and simple, it is the preponderance of mental game coaches and commentators who ignore fundamental issues and principles found to be critical to any quest for excellence in the game. Most simply lose track of the goal as they become more engrossed in shaping clever answers to questions not understood. That has led to many books and articles essentially saying the same incomplete things, just in many different ways, hoping for some kind of "original" presentation that will appear unique enough to attract players.

From where we sit, the noticeable exclusion of fundamental principles, no matter the reason, reduces the content value of what is available concerning the mental game to about "3" on a scale of one-to-ten, with one being lowest.

We have spent more than 30 years trying hard to avoid nasty sounding challenges aimed at those whose information is reasonable (as far as it goes), but touted as some sort of immaculate conception of truth in the mental game. Apparently, however, our self-imposed reticence has left faulty information unchallenged, remaining intact, and still at the head of the class. It is hard, if not impossible, to alter a perception that has been entrenched for a lifetime, not to mention about something as "precious" as golf is to those who play it. And it is not as if people were merely protecting a sacred cow. It's just that the old, unfinished business has been so thoroughly ingrained in the typical golfer's mind that there is no available space for anything new, especially if it upsets the image of the old.

In fairness, we admit that it is a reliable human pattern, well documented, to "keep on seeing things the way we always saw them, keep on hearing things the way we always heard them, and to keep on doing things the way we always did them." It feels safer, and we don't have to use any energy to make adjustments as long as we follow that path. The path of least resistance is always "easier" to do, just not necessarily successful. It's comfortable to do it that way - fits like an old pair of shoes. It may be a good thing to make a change where it is understood and given commitment, but it can feel threatening to make a change that smacks of unfamiliarity, mystery, lacks mass acceptance, or appears to be untested for relevance and understanding.

On the second day after writing what you see above this line, serendipity struck. Paul Smith, whose screen name is "iseekgolfguru," and who oversees the golf instruction category of the largest and most respected golf forum in Australia and Asia (iseekgolf.com), sent me a reference to an article that could have replaced the first three paragraphs above in this piece. He was just here to visit for three days and forgot to leave it with us, since it was given to him by another colleague in Ireland and he had not read it yet. An excerpt follows from that piece of work from the English mental game coach, Karl Morris.

"Because I do strongly believe when you understand how your internal machinery works, you will have the opportunity to create some of the changes you truly desire in your life.  Most of the programmes you have heard before, are full of things you have to do, like setting goals, or saying affirmations or any other number of secrets. The one way as to why this programme is very different, is we are not going to set a strict agenda of what you have to do, but give you an understanding of what is STOPPING you getting in the way of your hopes and dreams. Think of your brain as being like a satellite navigation system in your car.  You can punch in your destination (your goals), you can have a great piece of machinery to take you there (your body) but one thing that you absolutely have to avoid and work your way around on your journey are ROADBLOCKS, you need to know in advance where the trouble is and how to get around it, because if you don’t, the fantastic car and the magical sat nav system will only leave you feeling the frustration of being STUCK."

We also just received the following, last evening, from Andrew Neil, who was introduced to the automatic process and clear keys back in 2005. He sent us an extract from the book, "Frogs into Princes," by Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who have formidable rank among authoritative NLP researchers and developers. 

"One woman had a phobia of heights. Our office was on the third story, which was kind of convenient. So I asked her to go over and look out the window and describe to me what happened. The first time she went over, she just choked. I told her that wasn't an adequate description. I had to know how she got to the point of choking and being very upset. By asking a lot of questions, I discovered that what happened is that she would make a constructed picture of herself falling out, have the feeling of falling, and then feel nauseous. She did that very quickly, and the picture was outside of consciousness. So I asked her to walk over to the window while she sang the National Anthem inside her head. Now that sounds kind of silly, except that she walked over to the window and she didn't have the phobic response! None whatsoever. She'd had the phobia for years and years and years.

A man who was a Cree Indian medicine man, a shaman, came to a workshop and we were discussing different mechanisms that worked cross-culturally as far as inducing change in a rapid and effective way. If a person has a headache, an old semi-gestalt thing to do is to sit them in a chair, have them look at an empty chair, have them intensify the feeling of the pain, and have the intensified pain they are feeling develop into a cloud of smoke in the other chair. Slowly the smoke forms itself into an image of someone they have unfinished business with, and then you do whatever you do. And it works; the headache goes away,

The counterpart for this-shaman was that he always carries a blank piece of paper. Whenever anybody comes to him and says "I have a headache, will you assist me?" he says "Yes, of course, but before I begin I want you to spend five minutes studying this piece of paper in absolute detail, because it contains something of great interest for you." The thing in common about those two interventions is that they both involve switching representational systems. You break up the process by which the person is having the experience they don't want to have, by having their attention riveted in some other representational system than the one in which they are presently receiving messages of pain. The result is absolutely identical in both cases. By studying the blank piece of paper intently, or by intensifying the feeling and making it change into a picture in the chair, you are doing the same thing. You are switching representational systems, and that is a really profound intervention for any presenting problem. Anything that changes the pattern or sequence of events a person goes through internally—in responding to either internal or external stimuli—will make the response that they are stuck in no longer possible."

The encouraging message for us in these two quotes is the hint of forward motion, making one more step in the right direction. They may still not quite settle on how the condition of "switching representational systems" and avoiding being "stuck" are realized in action (executed), but they have reached out in that direction. 

What Karl Morris points to deserves notice. However, even when he offers a challenge to "do something," what is missing is the most essential part of how to get it done. He writes in his introduction:

"It looks different because some of the information you are going to encounter, you will have experienced before, but a good portion I am certain you will not have seen 
or heard ANYWHERE.  Also, for the information you have already heard, would you agree there is a big difference between what we know and what we actually DO!!"

Yes, indeed, though we do need to know "how" it is done, and the "anywhere" in his message says either that he has not seen or heard what we have said for the past 25 years, or that, if he has been exposed to our program, he did not understand its basis and essential, critical nature without which an automatic process cannot actually exist….   And more:  

If we go back to the analogy of the sat nav and consider how the machinery actually works; the whole sat nav system is dependent on one piece of information.   Not the location, not the route, not the motorway, but the one thing we need to start the whole process, is a real clear and accurate PRESENT LOCATION.  We cannot even start the engine and move unless we know EXACTLY where we are now.  The sat nav just will not work unless it knows its CURRENT POSITION, then and only then, can it begin to calculate how to create a route to the required destination.   In just the same way for you to begin your journey, to where you want to go, you know you have to have an honest and clear look at where you are right now."

There is no doubt, though more folks would miss that point than would get it without a firm affirmation that, in golf, knowing your location begins with having your own personal profile and the confirmation of genetic style that accompanies it. That, of course, begs the question: "Why doesn't everyone have one or get one? And that would be a very good question, needing a couple of insightful responses. Number one is that most people don't know the resource is available, and number two, even if they find someone to do profiling, it is 95-99% apt to be cast in terms of "personality," (which is a legitimate form, but not for golf), rather than uncovering the more effective frame of reference that goes with behavior style with genetic roots. In fact, for all the time we have been profiling players, we have regularly researched profiling, thanks to the Internet, and have not been able to find anyone else even mentioning style, let alone profiling for it. 

Until and unless players have and use that resource, they will not be able to " begin to calculate how to create a route to the required destination."  At best, under those circumstances that destination will not be available in its most complete and effective manner. As long as that body of knowledge remains cloaked and cloistered, the architecture of the game will go on with a stump for one of its legs.

In the vernacular of many, "That's not a threat, just a promise." This is not about "keeping the faith," but finding a more substantial context for that faith, so that keeping it will not be the handmaiden of disappointment.

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