It's hard to change where you're going when you don't know what's driving you there
Our unconscious strategies get us what we want. Until they don't
In my last blog—an excerpt from my book, Getting Unstuck: 7 Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds—I wrote that the mental strategies that everyone uses throughout their lives eventually stop working. That’s when we feel stuck.
This newsletter elaborates on what I mean by strategies by drawing on my own experience and the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung.
After a few decades of aspiring to be a scratch golfer, the best that I got to was about a nine handicap, which was, in the grand scheme of golf, pretty good, but I was nowhere near able to shoot par golf.
It made zero sense to me.
As a golf writer and then a consultant, I spoke to some of the best players in the world and their coaches. I was friends with professional golf instructors. I co-wrote and edited two golf instruction books. I devoured highly technical books on the golf swing, watched videos, used training devices, took lessons from people such as Sean Foley and Ben Kern, practised, and tracked my rounds.
I worked hard to stand the right way, swing the right way, think the right thoughts, eat the right foods, stretch the right muscles, and on and on.
But guys at my club with big bellies, fire-and-fall-back swings, and goofy putting strokes would often beat me.
This strategy of working hard to do things the right way had worked in many other areas of my life, but not in golf. What the hell?
With the help of Foley and mental game coach Paul Dewland, I took a deep dive into the “mental game” and psychology while also doing intense personal work as part of the ManKind Project (MKP).
It finally dawned on me that this unconscious drive to always do things the right way was compulsive, like an addiction. And in always striving to doing everything right, I was tense, exceedingly self-conscious, and highly self-critical.
When I began to examine my “do-the-right-thing” belief system, I found another deeper message: Don’t make a mistake.
Why is that so important?
Because if you make a mistake, bad things will happen.
What kinds of bad things?
You won’t be safe. You will be in trouble. You will feel pain and shame.
You will die.
Really? By hitting a bunch of bad golf shots, I would die?
That’s ridiculous. Completely irrational.
From the perspective of an adult, it makes zero sense.
But from the perspective of a child, it means survival.
Children are completely dependent on the all-powerful big people, notably their parents. If a child does something and Mommy or Daddy get angry, he can’t rationalize that his parents are the imperfect victims of their own wounded upbringing.
The child figures he’s the reason that his parents are yelling, making scary faces and slamming doors.
To survive, children instinctually develop patterns that they believe will keep them safe and free from pain, physical or mental. According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung these patterns become our unconscious strategies, and that which is unconscious will eventually cause inward suffering or depression, which many people describe as feeling stuck.
Unwittingly, we carry these strategies into adulthood. Why? Because they work. These strategies keep us out of trouble, give us a sense of control, and they appear to get us what we want.
Until they don’t.
My father Dennis was a loving man, but he didn’t do chaos well. With five kids and a big dog, our house was chaotic. He wasn’t abusive, but his anger scared me.
With the help of some coaches and MKP leaders, I determined that, as the oldest, the best way to keep myself and my siblings safe was to be good at all costs. Always do the right thing.
Doing the right thing seemed to pay off: I became a journalist who interviewed David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and PGA Tour stars, wrote books, won awards, hosted radio shows and wrote a column for national paper.
Despite a degree of achievement in my life, I was extremely self-conscious, tense, always doubtful of my abilities, and rarely relaxed, which showed up big time in golf, which is remarkably revealing of our personality. You can fake it in many other parts of life, but golf leaves you naked.
I realized that as a golfer I was a paralysis-by-analysis basket case. I had a pretty good swing, I knew the game, and I certainly knew the mechanics of the golf swing. But I didn’t know that I was very good at getting in my own way.
Rather than try so hard to play golf correctly, I did something radical—I decided to have fun. I know. Way radical. Crazy. Rather than think about my swing; I would just feel it and even … enjoy it.
The difference was dramatic. From June to August of 2013, my handicap dropped from 9 to 6. It was a pace of improvement that I’d never enjoyed. In three months, I went from usually shooting in the low-to-mid 80s to regularly scoring in the high 70s.
Becoming conscious of my previously unconscious strategy was massive. It was an example of how “awareness is curative.”
Of course, the do-it-right strategy didn’t disappear. I fall back into my old patterns regularly. This will continue until I do die.
But, as with all inner work, bringing what was unconscious into consciousness is what frees us from our past, and brings us closer to discovering what we’re truly capable of.
Along with Getting Unstuck, I’m also the author of The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story, and co-host of the Swing Thoughts podcast.
If you’re interested in golf coaching—including on the mental part of your game—please send an email to tim@oconnorgolf.ca. I invite you to check out www.oconnorgolf.ca.
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Really, really good stuff Tim. This really hit home. Thank You!
thx for the good word Tim.