Want to Eliminate Pressure to Play Great? Narrow Your Focus

The first tip: keep the focus squarely on yourself. (Even if you're playing in a team event.) For more ways to take the pressure off, check out this all-new episode.

Feeling pressure to play well on the golf course is a sign of poor focus. Playing with pressure takes the fun out of the game, causes tension, and negatively affects your shotmaking ability.

What kind of situations cause you to feel pressure to perform?

A team event, a golf trip with friends, playing with better golfers, or playing with people you don’t know. In order to play great, you need to have all your attention focused on yourself. Yes, you need to be more self-centered, but in a productive way. In this episode, I teach you how to eliminate the pressure to play great by pointing your focus in one direction.

Here's how this episode plays out...

• [7:28] Eliminating Worry #1: Playing with a slow player in your group - When you choose to speed up your pace to try to make up for someone else's, you guarantee two unfortunate things will happen.
• [8:52] Eliminating Worry #2: Playing well so you don’t let a teammate down - The best way you can be the best teammate is to pretend like you're playing alone.
• [10:13] Eliminating Worry #3: Thinking about what others might be thinking about you - Trying to write other peoples' thoughts for them is silly. There's a better way to invest your focus and energy.
• [11:18] Eliminating Worry #4: Wanting to beat another golfer - Every golfer around the world is playing against the same competitor and it's not a person.
• [12:41] Eliminating Worry #5: Wanting to prove yourself to others - You are more than a golfer and don't need to prove your worth to anyone other than you.

Focus on positioning yourself to be pressure-free by keeping your thoughts, your goals, and your decisions centered on you and only you. It’s not a selfish approach to golf. It’s a focus devoted to self-preservation. You’ll be amazed by how much better you can play when you keep your focus on that one direction.

Hit the play button above to listen, and look for more new episodes of She Talks Birdie coming soon to the Morning Read Podcast Network.