Re-found determination
Christopher and I talked with a neuroscientist, Dr. Christian Marquardt, yesterday and he had a lot of interesting things to say about The Plan and how to help learn. First off, he pointed out the obvious fact that I have the mind of a 31-year-old and that is not exactly ideal for learning, putting me at a disadvantage compared with the all-absorbing minds of children. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the task at hand is impossible, it’s just another speed bump in the journey.
On to positives, we talked about overcoming frustrations during practice and the advice he had was that it is imperative to keep an open mind and accept the fact that you will not hit every shot perfect. If you are frustrated, your brain is functioning in an impaired state when it comes to learning. The same goes with negative attitudes.. So, basically, an important part of The Plan and the learning process is to keep a positive attitude and allow myself to mess up! Unfortunately, I’m built to be very self critical and at times a perfectionist, so this is going to be a tough one to truly adapt into my psyche. But, I’ll do it because the success of everything rides on my ability to learn!
From here on out, if I’m in a funk or beating myself up over missing one shot I’m going to step away and check myself. I’m here to learn and can’t let anything impede the process.
I am also scheduled to chat with Dr. Mark Guadagnoli soon. His book, Practice to Learn Play to Win (a free download that I’d recommend to anyone who is a fan of getting better at ANYTHING which you can download for FREE here: http://practicetowin.com/) I’ve spoken with him before, but have a few questions that I hope he can answer. Mostly these ? are about how to set up goals when you practice every day. In his book he talks about how important setting goals is to helping you improve and I can see how they help (Just today I told myself that if I get a new personal record on my 9-hole chipping game I would get to eat ice cream tonight..) but it’s hard to set goals every day when you work on the same thing for hours at a time. I’m sure he can help structure some goals with me, so I look forward to talking with the good Doctor.
Outside of that, a little birdie told me that Portland is due for four days of sunshine starting tomorrow, so I might be AWOL from the blog for a bit and on the practice greens! Here’s to learning!