Karl Morris Golf Brain- The Comfort Trap

0 0 GolfCentralDaily April 19, 2011 Edit this post

Have you ever fallen foul of what I call the phenomena of ‘the turn’. By the turn, I mean what often happens to us as we cross from one nin...

Have you ever fallen foul of what I call the phenomena of ‘the turn’. By the turn, I mean what often happens to us as we cross from one nine to another in a medal round. Let’s say you play off 10 handicap, how many times have you played great golf on the front nine, let’s say you have only dropped ONE of your ten shots after nine holes. You make ‘the turn’ and then somehow, someway, you manage to find a way of dropping ALL of your ten shots in the remaining nine and perhaps a few more for good measure?! The converse is also probably quite familiar whereby you play the front nine like you have never held a golf club in your life but, then as you cross over from one nine to the next, some alien being swoops down to inhabit your body and you play the back nine in level par!! How is that? It just doesn’t make any real sense because, as we know, your golf swing can’t change that much. What is going on?
It doesn’t make much sense on the surface but if we dig a bit d

eeper we find some interesting thoughts emerging. Basically, as human beings, our brains are wired in part for ‘familiarity’, it goes back to the days when we roamed around in caves and each and every day was a success if you survived that single day. To know things around you were familiar and could be trusted meant your chances of survival increased. A part of us is definitely wired to explore and seek out new experience BUT in a lot of people, the need for familiarity is probably the strongest pull. We can see this in many things we all do in everyday life. One good example is what I call the Korma Phenomenon! We go into an Indian Restaurant and we tell people we just love Indian food, we get hold of the menu, have a look at the 380 different options on that menu - and then what happens?

The Chicken Korma phenomena takes over! We have all those options but our brain just HAS to go for what is FAMILIAR and SAFE.
Not unlike the feeling we get when we are one over after nine holes playing off ten. It feels unfamiliar, it feels uncomfortable and though this makes no sense whatsoever to the logical mind, the only way to get rid of those uncomfortable feelings is to throw all of those shots away and get back into our oh so safe COMFORT ZONE.
What you can do to break through your own COMFORT ZONE
It is almost as if we have to trick our own mind occasionally to help us break through these self imposed limitations. Just as Roger Bannister did with the Four Minute Mile, we need to look at things differently to be able to shake off the mental shackles of familiarity. As we looked at earlier, it is amazing how much the phenomenon of the ‘turn’ affects what we do on a golf course. When you think about it, we have been conditioned to BELIEVE golf is made up of two sets of nine holes. The problem with that is, if you start badly over the first few holes, then you have at least another six to go before you get the chance to metaphorically ‘start again’. This doesn’t make sense. Why wait for nine holes to pass? For a number of years now, the players I have worked with do not ‘believe’ golf is made up of two sets of nine holes. They have reconditioned their brain to look at the game differently just as Bannister did. What the players I work with now do on every round of golf is to play a game called ‘Super 6’. The game is simple. You go out with two cards. The card you are obviously marking in your medal or tournament and the ‘Super 6’ card. The rule of super 6 is that golf is made up of SIX sets of three holes and the goal is to score as low as possible on each set of 6. You can imagine the good news if you start badly, you only have a couple of holes to go before you ‘start again’. It has been amazing with this game as I, at first, was very sceptical as to how much it would make a difference but the results have been amazing. It seems by looking at the game DIFFERENTLY, it allows the mind the freedom to break out of the patterns of familiarity which have existed for so long. It is a fresh challenge with none of the previous baggage being brought to the table.
The other benefit of ‘Super 6’ is that after a few rounds you REALLY start to see where you regularly drop shots. Most golfers say they want to be consistent yet, in the main, they usually are. It may be consistently BAD but they are consistent. It is incredible what patterns you see emerging with Super 6 that you would probably never have been able to detect otherwise. The big key is that once you KNOW your own pattern you can DO something about it.