9/23/18 - Plan/Comfort Challenge

Here’s a challenge for your next round of golf ⛳️ ....

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Try to do the following for 9️⃣ holes:

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1️⃣ Create an honest plan for each shot before beginning your routine

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2️⃣ Pull the trigger the moment you experience honest comfort

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What’s an “honest plan”? :

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Something you know you can do in the future based on experience in the past. This is an unemotional decision uncorrupted by your 3 putt on the last hole, or your desire to impress yourself/your opponent.

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What’s “honest comfort”? :

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A feeling of contentment resulting when you are ready to do something simply for the sake of doing it. These are the fleeting moments when we experience a pure version of what we call “now”. In these rare stretches, we are solely interested by this exact moment. In this state of mind, the notions of doubt or fear are incompatible as these feelings are only relevant in a past tense or future tense context.

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People with chipping/putting yips fundamentally have them because their legitimate doubt from the past leads to fear for the future. What if I do it again?

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People who shoot their career best score on the front nine followed by their career worst on the back nine do so fundamentally because legitimate doubt of their ability to ”keep it up” in the future leads to fear in the present. What if it doesn’t happen?

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I know all too well how difficult it can seem to return to a “now” mindset once your flow is interrupted, but this is an illusion. Combat the illusion for 9 holes by:

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1️⃣ Create an honest plan (future idea informed by past experiences)

2️⃣ Wait for honest comfort (Totally present existence, no doubt, no fear)

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I’ll bet you will find that quite often, the PLAN leads to comfort, the COMFORT produces the PLAN.

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If you have trouble feeling HONEST COMFORT. Come take a lesson with me, it will take just a couple minutes to feel for yourself, and will be a liberating experience as well as a weapon you can employ for the rest of your golfing career.

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#golftherapy #claywonnellgolfb#fluidmotionfactor #tourchampionship #fedexcup #foreplaypod #tigerwoods #honestcomfort #honestplan #chipyips  #puttingyips #yips

9/9/18 - PLAY

Everyone wants to shoot lower scores on the golf course but it is important to not put the cart before the horse in this pursuit

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If your goal is to shoot lower scores, I encourage you to try and PLAY golf on every shot:

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PLAN - Create an honest plan for each shot. Be certain it is a plan that brings you honest comfort. Do not pursue a plan attached to any shred of honest doubt.

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LET GO - Like an archer 🏹 must take the leap of faith trusting the bowstring will release itself given the right conditions, golfers must trust their honest plan will yield an honest comfort which allows the plan to be manifested  

♻️Plan Creates Comfort, Comfort Creates Plan♻️ 

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ASSESS - Did the shot reasonably represent the plan? If not, what broke down in the Plan➡️Comfort➡️Plan cycle?

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YES? - Did you experience the freedom of “letting go”?

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Creating a plan is easy as long as you are honest, letting go can be hard. Come see me at The Marsh Lane Golf Center in #carrolltontx if you’d like to experience the freedom of letting go🏌️

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Thanks to @fluid_motion_factor for inspiring this post and bringing freedom back to my golf game.

9/8/18 - The Circus Bear

Alan Watts, a philosopher/entertainer, lectured about a man who had a fight with a mind-reading circus bear 🐻 

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Since the bear could read the man’s thoughts, it stayed one step ahead, dodged all attacks, and never got touched in the fight. 

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The only way the man could have defeated the bear would have been to somehow act without deciding, a sort of unintentional, accidental attack.

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Archers 🏹 face a similar obstacle when trying to release a bowstring without “thinking first to release it”. To be as accurate as possible, an archer must let go of control and trust the arrow will release itself automatically given the proper conditions. 

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If an archer fails to forfeit this control, the anticipation of the act leads to “target panic” and poor accuracy. This is the same reason people are taught to squeeze a gun’s trigger in target shooting instead of pulling it. The shot has to come as a bit of a surprise to be as accurate as possible.

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There is no way to simply decide that you will release the bowstring without thinking first to do so, or decide that you will fire the gun at an unspecified moment as this is what Alan Watts calls, “beating a drum in search of a fugitive”. The fugitive hears you coming... 

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In other words, you cannot decide not to decide, you cannot announce that you will not make an announcement without making an announcement. Your decision is always one step ahead of your action like the fugitive staying ahead of the drum beating police.

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So what can golfers learn from archery and target shooting?

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1. You need to learn skills to be able to be accurate
2. You need an intimate understanding of your equipment to be accurate
3. You need to create the proper conditions to be able to “let go” so the fluidity of the motion is untarnished by a decision for it to be so

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If you’d like to learn how to create these conditions for yourself, let go, and “play” golf to the best of your ability, come see me at The Marsh Lane Golf Center in Carrollton, TX.

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413.497.4653

claywonnell.com