Always Grind Golf

I did this journaling exercise daily and it transformed my self-image I call it the 3&1 Exercise The prompt is: - 3 good things I did yesterday - 1 thing I want to improve - Specifically how I want to improve it Back in the peak of my game, I was doing this every day for months on end (example in the pic below 📸) What I believed it helped me do was outweigh my negativity bias of myself I tend to have a very low self-image. This is something I've had to work on addressing for years and years This journaling exercise didn't magically solve it, but it at least showed me evidence on a daily basis that I was doing good things and putting in quality effort A major cause of depression is overgeneralizing your past as negative So if you can break apart your past and realize that some things were negative, but not EVERYTHING was negative, you allow yourself to see things more as they are This "3&1 exercise" as I call it gives me intentional time to make the past less general and give my negatively biased mind evidence of good things This life-changing idea was given to me by my instructor @rlprecisiongolf who I can't thank enough for the impact he's had on me over the years, both golf game-wise, and career-wise

Every round of golf and practice session is training your brain in some way, even if you’re not trying to When you’re at the practice facility, and you give yourself only good lies, and you pick only easy to hit clubs, and you pick comfortable putts... You’re training the need for comfort So when you’re in a pressure situation, between clubs, to a difficult hole location… you won’t be as ready Or you're in a tournament and you don't like the way you feel and your swing is off and you haven't made a putt since the third hole... you won't be as ready Yes, you’ll always be a little more uncomfortable under the gun when there’s real consequences to your shots But the least you could do is train your ability to handle discomfort Practicing isn’t just about building physical, technical skills It’s as much about grooving the neural pathways of being used to some kind of discomfort This principle is at the heart of the concept of deliberate practice Making your practice (and your rounds of golf) more - uncomfortable - boring - challenging - comfort zone-stretching These will help you translate your skills to the course when it’s inevitably less comfortable If you want to hear more about comfort zones and other ways to look at your mental game in a more evidence-based way, you’re going to want to hear my conversations with Raymond Prior @bts_mindset Open your podcast app, search for Raymond Prior, and listen to anything you see, especially the ones where he’s on The Mental Golf Show 😜 Here’s a link to a re-release of our very first conversation in the tweet below 👇👇👇