The Golf Psychology of New Year Resolutions

Have you made your New Years resolutions for your golf improvement - using golf psychology, perhaps? Well, even if you haven't, I'm sure that many of you are excited about starting fresh, turning your life around and in some cases doing something about playing better golf. That's fantastic! I know that 2010 is going to be an exciting year. I'm excited already, after completing my new book, The Secrets of Hypnotic Golf, over the holiday period. I've been talking about it for long enough and now its written, formatted and with the publisher, ready for launch late January or early February - Woo-hoo!

Coming back to those New Year's resolutions, have you made your ones yet? No, don't tell me what they are, that's supposed to be unlucky. It's enough that you're clear about what you would like to change in your life and your golf in 2010? You know what you'd like to accomplish and where you want your life to go. That's enough, isn't it?

Well, I've got some bad news and some good news for you. Which would you like first? Okay, let's start with the bad news. The bad news is that New Year's resolutions generally don't work. Recent articles suggest that that over 80% of the resolutions we make fall by the wayside within a few weeks or months? That's not the good news, is it?

New Year's Resolutions traditionally don't work because they are based primarily on willpower and that's a function of our conscious mind. If willpower worked 24 hours a day 365 days a year, then we'd all be the shape we want and we'd be fit, rich and happy. We'd all be great golfers as well. How often have you gone out to play golf determined to concentrate hard on every shot only to suddenly experience a lapse of concentration and hit a disastrous shot? I know I have. How often have those dieters amongst you remembered you're on a diet, but not until after you've eaten something fattening?

The problem is that your conscious mind can only focus on a few things at a time and those are the ones we are thinking about right now. Research tells us that typically a human being can consciously hold between five and nine bits of information - often referred to as seven plus or minus two - in our mind at any one time. That's why long phone numbers can be difficult to remember, even for the short time from looking at them in the phonebook to dialling them. So the chances are that your resolutions will have dropped out of your seven plus or minus two most of the time.

The good news is that your unconscious mind is switched on to everything you know all the time. You don't have to remember to breathe, to regulate your heart-beat, to blink if something flies at you, to drive a car or to ride a bike. That's assuming that you've already learned how to drive a car or ride a bike! And mentally there's no limit to how many things you can do unconsciously at the same time. It's not recommended, but people can drive a car, hold a conversation, smoke a cigarette and ponder their place in the universe all at the same time and if a car pulls out from a side road they'll still avoid it and probably check the rear view mirror as they do it.

So how do you hand my New Year's resolutions over to your unconscious mind? Well that's easy. You use hypnosis programmes, self-hypnosis and NLP to install them in your unconscious mind. That's exactly what happens with golf hypnosis programmes like Your Own Virtual Caddy.