When we look at how powerful our unconscious minds are it begs the question why golf instruction today is directed purely at the conscious mind. This may go a long way to explain why the average handicap has not improved in over 100 years.
Try this little experiment:
- Write down on a piece of paper “I am amazing”
- Crumple up the piece of paper into a ball
- Choose a target, like a waste paper bin, and throw the paper ball into it.
Congratulations! you have just completed a series of tasks requiring complex physical movements and yet I gave no instructions on how to do the tasks nor did I give a description on how to move your arms, your shoulders, your hips or any other part of your anatomy when making the throw. Nevertheless, I am sure the piece of paper landed very near the bin or even inside it.
It was possible for you to achieve the desired result by simply using your instincts, coordination, sense of feel and rhythm and some common sense. All are skills that you have learned and developed as a child and are all innate and natural to you. Just like walking, running, skipping or kicking a ball. You did not need top think about how you did what you did, you simply did it. You acted instinctively, unconsciously.
To explain it in layman´s terms, imagine a ship with a captain and crew on board. The conscious mind plays the role of the captain. He gives the orders to the crew but he could never manage the ship on his own. He could never prepare all the food, do the cleaning himself and steer the ship at the same time. The unconscious mind plays the role of the crew on the ship – taking the orders from the captain and basically running all the many, different daily tasks on the ship.
Here are some facts about our Conscious and Unconscious minds:
How talented you are:
- You have ten billion neurons in you brain each capable of making connections totalling 1 followed by 28 noughts.
- Total number of combinations or permutations possible is, 1 followed by 10.5 million kilometres of noughts.
- Each individual brain cell is capable of contacting or embracing 10,000 or more proximate brain cells in an instant.
How do you know how to do these things:
You just do! Because with a little bit of experimenting, by being creative, making mistakes, growing, taking risks, breaking rules and having fun, your unconscious mind processes all the necessary information you need in order to learn how to carry out any of these tasks.
As Albert Einstein once said, “Learning comes from experience, everything else is just information”.
So if everything you do is an experiment then surely the more experiments you make the more you will understand and the more you will discover, right? So why are we not taught to experiment or make mistakes in golf when we are starting out? Why is our conscious mind filled up with lots of mechanical information on how to play golf when it is the unconscious mind that is actually the one that does all the learning? Why are golfers immediately shown how to hold the club, for example. Or to watch the ball. Or to take the club back this way or that way?
So is it possible you could just do golf? The same way you just do kicking a ball or running?
I believe it is possible and that the way golf is taught is not the way we learn skills and it should not be the way you learn to play golf. In the next series of posts I will attempt to give you my perspective on how to learn to play golf based on my experience of how not to teach someone.
Please feel free to leave a comment below and I will reply to you as soon as I can.