Let's dig a bit deeper into Zone Sign #1... Calm.
Starting with the psychology of Calm.
Trust is THE most powerful positive psychological component of getting in the Zone when you are hitting golf shots..
When you Trust your skills and your training… you are giving yourself the best chance to perform at the highest level of your trained skills.
Calm and Trust go hand in hand.
The only way to access Calm while performing... is to Trust that you can accomplish your goal.
If you feel the need to think about the specifics of what you want to do… you are essentially telling yourself that you do not Trust you can successfully execute the shot.
Intuitively… hopefully you understand negative emotions of any kind will completely undermine Trust and disturb Calm.
Surprisingly… even positive emotions can disturb your level of Calm and undermine your level of Trust.
This is because ALL emotions raise the frequency of your brain waves which takes you away from the state of Calm.
I am not saying positive emotions are not helpful at times… but your level of Calm is always directly influenced by your ability to minimize all thoughts and emotions.
Too much positive emotion/excitement and Calm becomes inaccessible.
It can be helpful to find your personal "tipping point" where positive emotions begin to negatively affect your ability to stay calm. Essentially where getting too excited interferes with your Calm and your focus.
The key to remember is... the higher your level of Trust the easier it is to access Calm.
The more Calm you feel immediately before you hit the shot... the closer you are to being in the Zone.
I highly recommend to all my clients that they spend some range time specifically directed toward accessing Calm before each shot.
There are a number of physical tools you can use to help with this:
Breathing Exercises
Tension Release Exercises
Heart Rate Lowering Exercises
Are just a few of the most effective.
It can also help to pay attention to your level of Calm during your day to day activities.
Recognizing your level of Calm and learning your personal Calm "reset buttons" away from the course... can definitely be transferred to the course over time.
Make sure to check back for my next post diving even deeper into Calm!
