276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Inner Game of Golf

£9.9£99Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

In 1971, while on sabbatical from a career in higher education, I took a job as tennis professional in Seaside, California. While teaching on the court one day, I realized that many of my instructions were being incorporated in the student’s mind as a kind of “command and control” self-dialogue that was significantly interfering with both learning and performance. When I inquired further, I found there was a lot going on in the mind of my tennis students that was preventing true focus of attention. Slumps don't exist; they're something you create in your mind. Stay in the present, and let each shot, good or bad, stay in the past.

In short, "trying" is essentially compensation for mistrust in ourselves, and generally leads to poor performance. p44 Enjoy things other than a great score. When you walk to the first tee to start your round, it is likely that you are thinking about what kind of score you will shoot at the end of the day. That's okay, but you should also be thinking about what other enjoyment you can get out of the day. Maybe you are playing a course which offers great scenery, or maybe you are playing on a beautiful day with mild temperatures and no wind. Or, perhaps you have scheduled this tee time to spend some time with a friend you don't see very often. Whatever the case, find ways to enjoy your time on the links even if you don't post a good score. This is an important step to take from an attitude perspective. Even when you have a rough day on the scorecard, you can still drive home feeling glad that you took time out to play a round of golf. Not long after, I was asked to help IBM to change its prevailing corporate attitude of “we know it all” to that of a learning and coaching organization. Inner Game methods were then put to use in Apple Computer Company’s Leadership Development program.On what was meant to be a sabbatical from a career in college administration, Gallwey worked as a tennis instructor in Monterey, CA. Initially, he focused his efforts on giving traditional instructions with mixed results. He soon discovered that if he simply invited his students to focus their awareness on their strokes as they were, technique evolved naturally and seemed to self correct. Players using Gallwey’s methods improved far more rapidly than usual, and without self-criticism or trying so hard to “do it right.” By quieting self-interference, they were more able to tap into their natural abilities with greater ease. The primary difficulty lies in our inability to translate any but the simplest verbal command into a bodily action. When asked to do more, we invite self-doubt because the brain cannot consciously control the body with words; that part of the brain that analyzes , conceptualizes and instructs us verbally is incapable of moving a muscle, and has only a limited capacity to communicate to the part of the brain that does control our physical behavior. p60 The Inner Game was born in the context of coaching, yet it is all about learning. The two go hand in hand. The coach facilitates learning. The role and practices of the coach were first established in the world of sports and have been proven indispensable in getting the best performance out of individuals and teams. Naturally, managers who appreciate the high levels of individual and team performance among athletes want to emulate what coaching provides.

The game brings with it the pressure of knowing one has to make every shot count because golf does not allow for many mistakes. And, because golf is a game one plays against herself (as well as others), the inner game becomes intensified, i.e. the ego is challenged and threatened. Many times, this pressure can cause the player to perform poorly, yet it is just this kind of pressure that attracts one to the game in the first place. In 1980, Random House asked me to write The Inner Game of Golf and to, in doing so, describe the learning from the point of view of a student of the game, which I was. Perhaps more than in any other major sport, the golfer is vulnerable to subtle shifts in mindset, which can have drastic impact on one’s performance. About that time Barry Green, then the lead bassist for the Cincinnati Philharmonic Orchestra approached me to collaborate on The Inner Game of Music, another activity in which both the fear of failure and doubt can be anathema to the quality of performance. The "inner game" is based upon certain principles in which an individual uses non-judgmental observations of critical variables, with the purpose of being accurate about these observations. If the observations are accurate, the person's body will adjust and correct automatically to achieve best performance.[5] Gallwey was one of the first to demonstrate a comprehensive method of coaching that could be applied to many situations, and found himself lecturing more often to business leaders in the U.S. than to sports people.[6] An alternative is just to say "da" at all points of the swing, and you can add one at takeaway if you like. The coach is not the problem solver. In sports, I had to learn how to teach less, so that more could be learned. The same holds true for a coach in business.The coach can start with a very broad question, such as "What's happening?" and then narrow the domain of observation. "What are you observing about the customer while you are presenting the benefits of your product/ service?""Did you observe anything in particular from the expression on his face or from his body language?""How did you know when he was receptive to what you were saying or when you were hitting some resistance?""What is your reaction and action when you notice that resistance?" These questions must be asked in a context of non-judgment, or they will provoke defensiveness, not increase awareness. The quality of my teaching and of my students' performance took a major step forward the day I realized the extent of the disrupting effects of overinstruction. p5 The Inner Game of Work, published in 1999, is an inside look at how the Inner Game methods and models have been applied by many individuals, in a wide variety of companies, over the past twenty years. Mostly, it is focused on the attainment of individual excellence. With the turn of the century, the focus of my own interest had turned towards The Inner Game of Teams. The work of overcoming the obstacles faced in people working together effectively is both challenging and fascinating. In the last half of 1999, I helped facilitate over 50 workshops with teams, and joined forces with Dr. Valerio Pascotto to do what I believe is pioneering work in the field of people learning to work effectively together.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment