Stable Confidence- Part 1 Acceptance
Contrary to popular belief, confidence doesn’t have to be situational or performance outcome based. This blog series will be delving into the book from Dr. Raymond Prior (Golf Beneath The Surface) as it relates to the following 4 habits, and how they can help us develop stable confidence:
Acceptance
Groundedness
Interest Curiosity
Connection to Values
Part 1: Acceptance
Acceptance is likely not what you think it is… It’s not resigning yourself to less, pretending to enjoy unwanted outcomes or trying to have a “short memory”. Rather, you can think of acceptance as an honest, objective awareness of all potential outcomes and explaining them exactly as they are before and after they occur without judgment. This will diminish the perceived risk of bad golf once you buy in.
Take free solo climbing for example… Free soloists understand that plummeting to their death is in the range of potential outcomes, they accept the risk and move forward with it anyway. Whereas for me, the range of potential outcomes would be unacceptable, I’m not ok falling off the side of a mountain lol, so I would choose to avoid that activity.
This is the challenge with golf as it pertains to acquiring confidence. Unlike scaling a mountain rock face without safety gear, the choice of whether or not to accept potential outcomes is not as clear and obvious prior to a round (or shot) on the golf course. Oftentimes, golfers may perceive a set of potential future outcomes, fail to completely and honestly accept them, then feel surprised to find themselves scaling their proverbial rock face with no safety gear... The behavior then is often avoidance-based strategies (I.e. tense, guided swings) and a compromised ability to think clearly with intention and strategically placed attention. The end result - generally lower levels of performance, frustration and a loss in “confidence”.
The first step is to prioritize acceptance. PRIOR to performance (as far out in advance as possible), consider ALL of the potential outcomes and ask yourself if even the worst-case scenario occurs:
Am I going to be OK?
This flies in the face of a lot of pop sport psychology that emphasizes the importance of visualizing playing only your best shots, “positive vs negative thinking” etc.
In a golf context, if the answer to the question is no, then you have two choices:
Avoid performing all together
Raise your acceptance levels until the answer becomes yes
So how can we raise our acceptance levels? It starts by explaining potential outcomes exactly as they are (no more pervasive, permanent or personal) - thus reducing the perceived threat/risk and increasing the likelihood we accept them.
Let’s give some examples of the differences and provide some context
Pessimistic Explanatory Style
“I could hit an embarrassingly bad shot.”
“I could choke under pressure”
“I could lose my game”
Optimistic Explanatory Style
“The impact spot could be higher/lower or more toward heel/toe than intended”
“The clubface at impact could be more right/left or lofted/delofted than intended”
“The club speed at impact could be higher/lower than intended”
Using the above examples, which outcomes appear more threatening, more likely to lead to avoidance-based movements?
Not only does acceptance allow us to play more freely, but it also provides the essential tool for development and growth: Real FEEDBACK. As you can see - using Optimistic Explanatory Style to heighten acceptance levels pre and post-performance takes otherwise subjective opinions and turns them into objective and relevant data we can use as a catalyst for improved learning and performance.
As a side note, it tends to feel good to the brain to supply the brain with factual information it can use in the present moment as opposed to stories about the past or future that may or may not be true. That’s what we do as golfers, tell ourselves stories from our past experiences, most are not true rather our perception of what happened. Because of this, acceptance practices can more easily become a habit.
Thanks to Robbie Fails and Erik Layton for breaking down Dr. Raymond Prior’s book