GOLF MENTAL GAME TRAINING TIPS BY DR. RICK SESSINGHAUS
The Importance of Understanding Why You Failed
Today, I’m gonna share something that’s a little bit personal to be honest with you. It’s why I have failed in my life. And so often, as you know, being a peak performance coach and trainer, I’m focusing a lot on high level, elite performance, right? All the good stuff. And yet, sometimes I shied away from talking about failure. And so I want to share with you why I have failed in my life.
One particular time was when I played college golf and then transitioned into professional golf and yeah, I’m young, 22, 23 and yet, that only lasted a couple of years. So I didn’t get the results I wanted, which was to be on the PGA tour. So I failed. Now, I’m not shy about using that word anymore because a lot of people have such a negative connotation to it but failure has been my biggest reason for not succeeding in the future. What do I mean by that?
Well, as now I evaluate why I failed, why I did not get the result, it has helped me understand what skill sets do I need to improve, what mindset principles do I need to develop. So now as I take on new challenges and new goals, I am more prepared. So as I shifted into professional golf, here is why I failed.
First off, I really wasn’t clear on why I wanted to be a professional golfer. It sounded cool, right? Oh, a lot of money, travel all over the place, play this awesome game. But it really wasn’t, believe it or not, a compelling enough reason for me to put the work in. Did I enjoy it? Yeah, I enjoyed golf but I wasn’t as passionate as I am now about other things. And so I understood I was really only giving it half a chance because it really wasn’t important to me enough. So my why-statement, why am I doing it, wasn’t empowering enough.
Next thing, I honestly didn’t understand the work ethic involved to be a professional golfer and I didn’t understand the inner workings of the effective golf mental game. Yeah, I practiced for three hours, go play nine holes, you know, go to the gym a little bit and that sounds like a lot but to be in elite at anything requires a work ethic, day in and day out, doing the things that other people are not doing. And so my work ethic was 60%.
It needed to be 100% and I look back and go, “Wow, those people were really practicing, oh guess what? They are the ones on the PGA tour. Note to self, work ethics are really important.”
Next thing is I had limiting beliefs about my golf mental game and I didn’t believe I was good enough. So that constantly went in my head, “I’m not good enough, oh wow, there is so much better.” And that, unfortunately, those beliefs, led to behaviors, led to doubt on the golf course and it certainly affected my performance and my results.
The other area which actually was one of the major ones is that I didn’t understand sacrifice and what I mean by that is in order to put all your attention on that one goal means you have to sacrifice other things.
Now I know that seems to make sense here but when we’re in the heat of it, I thought I could have a family and do these other things and unfortunately, that wasn’t true because to be the best at something, you do have to sacrifice time and resources that you would put toward other things. I didn’t understand that sacrifice so thus, I was only halfway in.
How Failure Can Help You Improve and Succeed in the Future
And so when I look at those things, I can now evaluate why something back then was so important for me to achieve and what I failed at is that I don’t want those same patterns developing for future goals so I’ve learned a tremendous amount from my failures. I now am doing things that I love to do because my why statement and my purpose is so crystal clear.
I understand the sacrifices that I have to make right now is to be able to get to that next level, I may not get to go, play as much golf or spend as much time with my friends. But I understand that going in. My belief systems have improved, I’m doing the things necessary to get my confidence up. And I’m able to understand that it’s a lot of hard work but I enjoy the work.
So as I look to perform for success, I want you to actually now look at your failures as the way to learn to go from failure to success. Because every day, we are working on our golf mental game skills, so let’s perform for success.
