Fearless Golf: Conquering the Mental Game

patient.

    One might well read this section and say, “Well, then that’s it. I’ll just set challenging goals for myself and that will be it.” But that would be to miss the key point. Challenging goals and high expectations are critical to ultimate success in any endeavor, but rather than arbitrarily saying, “I am going to set high goals,” they must always be rooted in the confidence that one can achieve them. And merely knowing that it is important to be confident is not enough to have a significant impact on either improvement or ultimate performance. The key factor in helping golfers improve their performance is to move from knowing that, to knowing
how
to develop confidence and remain confident in a game designed to challenge that confidence at every turn. So that becomes our central question: How can you remain decisive and full of self-confidence in a game designed to challenge that confidence at every turn?
    The answer lies in understanding because contrary to how it may sometimes seem, self-efficacy does not blow in from the north and out toward the south. Once established, self-efficacy is a relatively stable state that can become a deeply rooted habit of mind. When it comes and goes, it does so for relatively clear and understandable reasons, and those reasons can be traced to four very obvious types of experiences. In order to understand these experiences, and thus understand your own sense of self-efficacy, first take a moment to write down something in which you are highly confident. Just as you did in the chapter on mastery and ego goals, take a moment to write down an activity in which you possess a great deal of confidence (it could be driving a car in traffic, being good at your job, giving a great speech, raising fine kids, or playing golf). Next, I’d like you to write down a few reasons explaining
why
you are confident in your ability to do this thing. That’s right, take a moment and think about where your confidence is rooted. Certainly you are confident for specific reasons. What are those reasons?
    Looking at your answers, my guess is that your confidence can probably be traced back to one of four key types of experiences. First, most people are confident because they have experienced former success in that endeavor. Second, it’s possible that other people have often pointed out to you how good you are at these things. They may have praised you openly and frequently. Third, you’ve seen how others do certain things, and you know you do them as well or better than most of those you observe. Fourth, you are aware of how good you feel when you do these things. You may be emotionally charged or even psyched up during times when you do this activity. So your confidence is rooted partly in how good you feel when you do this thing.
    Interestingly, the same reasons apply for activities for which we have little confidence (or for times when our confidence becomes shaky). We lack confidence when we have experienced a good deal of failure or a lack of success in a particular activity. Our confidence can also be shaken by hearing people tell us that we are not good at something. We can persevere for a while, but if enough voices point out our shortcomings we begin to doubt ourselves. When we observe others do easily that which we can do only with great effort or cannot do at all, it’s understandable that we should feel tenuous about our future success in this or similar areas. Finally, if we find that we grow highly tense or overly anxious at the prospect of facing a particular task, we know that our body is telling us something that our mind may not yet understand. We can’t necessarily explain why, but it doesn’t feel good to do this activity.
    Self-efficacy is always rooted in one or some combination of these types of experiences. Specifically and technically speaking, self-efficacy is rooted in one or more of the following four elements:

    1. mastery experiences

    2. vicarious learning

    3. verbal persuasions

    4. physiological states

    Understanding these sources reveals why sometimes a pep talk bolsters our confidence while other times those words fall on deaf ears; why sometimes outperforming an opponent builds confidence while other times we can emerge from even winning feeling less confident; and why sometimes a rapidly beating heart means we are psyched up while other times it means we are psyched out.

    Mastery Experience

    It makes sense that the confidence we have in our