Meditation as a Means of Sports Performance Improvement (or Sales Improvement, or Life…)
Imagine a golfer who only plays on weekends, yet manages to maintain a pretty low handicap. It happens.
Maybe not to you, and certainly not to me. But it happens. Now imagine this golfer in a member-guest tournament. He’s brought his boss, who is not a great golfer, but he’s…the boss. How do you imagine the low handicap weekend golfer will do - in a tournament, with his boss present? He will want to do especially well, won’t he? Think he will be emotionally attached to how well he does? Of course, he will. Did you guess that he will tighten up and not shoot his best game? That would be my bet, too. But, in this case, we both lose the bet.
How could that be? Luck? Maybe. But this golfer is also a meditator. He knows how to bring himself to a calm, stress-free “place”. He knows how to consciously get in the “zone”, where with quiet inner joy, he placidly and smilingly “watches” himself play golf. He has learned how to be a witness to events, and to be emotionally non-attached to the outcome. His mind stays quiet. His muscles stay relaxed, and his swing is almost always fluid and precise.
Yogi Berra is credited with saying, “You can’t hit the ball and think at the same time.” At first read, that may be thought of as another oxymoronic Yogi-ism. But it contains great insight. Thinking is linear and mechanical - Tab A into Slot B. When we think, we have an ideo-motor response. Muscles tighten in response to the real or imagined event that is about to present itself. Whether that is a stationary golf ball or a baseball bearing down on us at 90+ miles an hour.
We don’t have to think to tie our shoes, walk, drive a car, or perform a host of other tasks that we have so thoroughly learned that they have been turned over to our “automatic” pilot. This is especially apparent to those who have found themselves pulling in their home driveway behind the wheel of their car, and not recalling any interceding event between leaving the office and pulling in the driveway. Who was driving?
How did the driver manage to avoid accidents and obey traffic signals, and not hit anyone (we hope)?
When we have learned the mechanics of a sport, we can, at different levels, stop “thinking” and just let our automatic pilot take over. It is when the thinker gets in the way and tries to take control that we tighten up, tense up emotionally and perform at less than our what-have-become-natural abilities. This tension pops up whenever we become self-conscious. You’ve seen the stilted self-conscious walk and the cemented grin of insincerity that accompanies a power handshake, right?
We are so schooled to “think” that we have been socially coerced into a seriousness that has forgotten the freedom of intuitive consciousness and the childlike joy of being in the flow, in the zone. That was our natural state, but now is reserved for peak moment, peak performance and is revered by athletes who love to tell of the ball becoming bigger and moving in slow motion. Our “think” side of the brain has muscled up and muscled into our identity to the point that we think that thoughts are our only tools for survival or accomplishment, for the most part.
Meditation, on the other hand, can muscle up our “intuitive” side and return us to a balanced flow as a natural state, where BOTH our thinking processes and our intuitive grace become tools for not only survival, but great joy, and a renewed, reborn, spirit of enthusiasm for life. Now, after years of identifying ourselves as only a thinker, there may be a lot of fear and doubt, or at least intellectual resistance to tapping into our intuitive side - or even admitting to the possibility that there may be a whole new world with a whole new perspective “our there“ waiting for us. OK, before we get too cosmic, let’s get back to sports. Learn to meditate, find a meditation teacher, like the golfer, and you may find that not only does your golf score improve, but your entire life scorecard may begin to improve.
Jeff Belyea, PhD Mindgoal Goal Achievement Strategies 727-542-7117 www.mindgoal.com
Meditation as a Means of Sports Improvement (Sales Improvement, Life...) - To learn more about this author, visit Jeff Belyea's Website.
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Jeff Belyea
(Visit Jeff's Website)
Artist, writer and developer of Living At
WOW! Seminars. PhD in communications,
certification in hypnotherapy, personal
and business coach. Award-winning author
of "Taming The Lions of Fear and Doubt."
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