Deepa Shankar
ThreeFish Consulting
“Papa is on a vacation”..that was the good wife joking with the kids. I had been guilty of golfing the second time that week : )
I started playing golf earlier this year. Like all beginners, I was hungry for tips or secrets to get better at it quickly. This would mean listening intently to my fellow players at the golf course. Each shot would get dissected and analyzed and then some more friendly and good intentioned tips would follow. Funnily enough, all this advice, was not improving the game much! It felt as if I was going around in circles. It was then that I chanced upon this the book by at a book store– ‘The Inner Game of Golf’.
The book helped me overcome my self-doubt, tension, fear of failure and anxiety by resolving this mental interference. It does not share any secrets or short cuts to success. And, it certainly is not a book about how to play golf; instead, this is a book about how to learn golf; and the lessons can be applied to any sport.
It does not talk about golfing techniques and strategy (something that I was so caught up with initially!!). Instead it talks of tackling the psychological aspects of the game. This is so true of the leaders that I have coached over the years. They are usually very good at what they do. However at times, it’s their self-limiting beliefs that need to be converted to self-enabling beliefs for them to achieve what they want to.
Thanks to the book, over the last 6 months, I have explored a varied ‘Learning Approach’ while getting coached at the range and playing at the course. At the course, a few bad shots may have caused stress making me ‘Cautious’ of taking risks. But ultimately it is the ‘Hedonism’ and the thrill of playing that keeps me going, in my attempt to be a better player than I was a day before!
