Golf Flow

decade now. Coming out of college, he had no real sense of how good he was capable of becoming. But as he stayed out on tour longer, Matt kept breaking through more performance thresholds. One of them came at the Memorial when, over the course of the weekend, he made something like 20 birdies in 36 holes. Although he had sprinkled in some bogeys, Matt thought that it was cool to learn that he could make that many birdies. As such, he expanded his personal threshold and no longer experienced any resistance to making tons of birdies.
    Many people who don’t live in a competitive realm as I do think that exceedingly high achievers break through their limitations in moments of divine inspiration. Nothing could be further from the truth. Breaking through limitations is generally the result of the consistent application of better processes that are often ordinary, common, or mundane.

Recognize your self-imposed limitations, and then adjust your mind-set and behavior to overcome them. Although Brandt Snebecker played well as a junior golfer, he has truly come into his own as a pro.

    Jeff Robinson/Icon SMI
    In a landmark article titled “The Mundanity of Excellence,” Daniel Chambliss (1989) makes a compelling argument that the difference between the elite and everyone else is not that the elite make quantitative changes in their work but that they make qualitative changes that alter the character or nature of the thing itself.
    In explaining the difference between club swimmers and Olympic champion swimmers, he says,
Instead, they do things differently. Their strokes are different, their attitudes are different, their groups of friends are different; their parents treat the sport differently, the swimmers prepare differently for their races, and they enter different kinds of meets and events. (Chambliss 1989, 73)
    Chambliss concludes,
Excellence is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitualized, compounded together, added up over time (Chambliss 1989, 85).
    This approach can be successful in any area of life. For example, a golfer I work with wanted to lose 20 pounds (9 kg) during the off-season. We didn’t attack the weight loss in one massive action. Instead, we changed one small thing. Each morning when he awoke, rather than put his feet into his slippers, he put them into his sneakers. That’s all I asked him to do: Each day when he woke up, make his first move be to put his feet into sneakers (which lead to the gym) rather than slippers (which lead to the breakfast nook). Then, each morning he walked down the hall to his in-house gym and got in a morning workout. By applying this rather mundane behavior regularly, the weight melted off, and he went on to have a terrific season the next year.

Improving Your Skills
    French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin once wrote, “It is our duty as human beings to proceed as though the limits of our capabilities do not exist.” Note that this quote relates directly to flow, because flow represents a state of mind in which we actualize our potential and move beyond our perceived limitations.
    Although beliefs are not something that we can touch or feel, mountains of research in psychology show that beliefs have a measureable and direct influence on human attainment. Because beliefs powerfully determine how we interpret experiences, when we act in a manner that is inconsistent with our beliefs, they cause us to self-sabotages our skills.
    To break through your performance barriers, begin by auditing your belief system with an eye toward identifying any self-limiting beliefs that you have about your capabilities in golf. Ask yourself directly whether you are placing self-imposed restrictions on yourself.
    Next, adopt the type of limitless growth mind-set that I have put forth in this book. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt and assume that the William James quotation presented earlier in this chapter applies to you and that you are living within a restricted realm of your potential.
    Finally, although a shift in perspective and beliefs is an important first step toward high achievement, breaking through your limitations also requires that you change your behavior.
    Although implementing changes in behavior is a long-term process, you can get started immediately. Follow these steps:
Identify the behaviors that relate to your golf game. Specifically, identify the manner in which you practice your