Make Your Sport Performance Soar

Dear Friend,

       Do you know who the first professional golfer was to hit the 9 million dollar mark?

       My guesses would have been Arnold Palmer or possibly Jack Nicklaus.

       It was Tom Kite.

       Tom has had a remarkable 19 PGA wins, 7 Senior PGA wins and 1 major, the 1992 US Open. Tom also shot 62 four times while playing on tour. Tom’s consistency and his great putting game have been his biggest strengths.

       How has Tom Kite been able to continually play winning golf throughout his career?

       Kite is a big fan of a basic principle of mental toughness: optimism.

       He says, “You have to think effectively. Seeing the negative side of what happens on the golf course is not effective thinking.”

How To Stay Positive in Sport

       There are two steps to learning the art of optimism.

       The first is understanding that your thoughts and beliefs have a profound impact on your decisions.

       Psychological studies on self-talk (the idea that what we say to ourselves matters) over the past 25 years has shown that we don’t do things based on what happens to us.

       We do things based on what we THINK will happen to us.

       We don’t go to work because we get paid…we go to work because we THINK we’ll get paid.

       You don’t make a mistake in sport because you just made one. You make a mistake because you just made one and you THINK you will mess up again. This is no small distinction.

       The second step to optimism is to genuinely understand it.

       Optimism doesn’t mean that telling yourself you’re performing well when you aren’t…or telling yourself you’re confident and cheerful when you aren’t. It means telling yourself that the negative events you are going through are temporary.

       If you miss a shot, you think, “Now my nerves are settled so I can really shoot with accuracy.”

       If your opponent scores, you think, “I can use what I just learned about reading my opponent on the next play.”

       This is the essence of positive thinking: making sure you view negative events as a natural, yet TEMPORARY phenomenon during your game.

       It worked for Tom Kite. Why not you?

I'll talk to you again soon.

Your friend,
Lisa B.