With the tournament season now officially underway, I thought we could spend a little time on "performance skills," aka the mental game. It's one thing to stand in the box accompanied by our friends and the usual trash talk. It becomes something else when the score-keeper shows up and announces the shooting order. Why is that?
The pressure we feel in a tournament is no different than the pressure that occurs from having to perform in front of an audience, a class, our peers, an Instructor, mentor or actually anyone whose opinion of us matters. For some, the stress can be overwhelming, typically paralyzing the performance.
Jack Nicklaus spoke of his earliest experience in professional golf. Standing on the first tee in front of an audience, he looked down at his pants cuffs and noticed they were shaking. He thought, obviously the wind had picked up. He then noticed the leaves on the trees were utterly motionless. After which he sliced his ball over the trees into the adjacent parking lot. Competition pressure isn't the least bit prejudiced, it's an equal opportunity troublemaker.
There are multiple reasons for all this and workable resolutions which I'd like to explore in this and upcoming Tips. To begin, it's easy to point to a large audience or the event in front of ourselves and say "there's what's distracting me." The truth is, performance stress, regardless of the activity, is self-created, self-induced. While the pressure does begin when these external factors and circumstances confront us, the stress is actually something we create internally, on our own. The audience at home watching the singer, golfer, tennis player perform on television does not feel the pressure the performer is experiencing. While the spectators are likely cheering their favorite in the shoot-off and wanting her to win, no one in the audience is feeling anywhere near the weight of pressure each competitor is carrying. That level or intensity of pressure will depend on each competitor's ability to first recognize, then cope with their internal, self-generated tension.They key here is to remember that the difficulty we feel to perform and the event itself, while tied together, are separate. Once we remember that they are separate, and that it is we who create our own level of anxiety and nervousness, we come to the realization that we might actually have a say in how much pressure we must deal with. If it's becoming a heavy burden in the shooting box, it's because we've made it so. Let's remember too, if we're creating it, and we are, we can learn to manage it, maybe even turn it to our advantage?
I wish you the best in your upcoming matches. Until next time, be safe and never underestimate what you are truly capable of.
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