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Writer's pictureJosh Nichols

How to Dig Out of a Slump


How to Dig Out of a Slump


I believe that a slump starts really small. You hit a shot that was a little bit off. But you decide to label it with emotion. That shot was bad, terrible, happened again, I do this every time, etc etc. Basically, in your mind it was a "bad" shot. This flags the shot, and general situation, as a thing to be watched out for. Your brain files it away as “be careful when things feel like this again.”


So you're in a similar situation again. You have the same kind of shot you hit before, the one you labeled as bad, so when your brain goes into its mental filing cabinet to search for how to handle this situation it retrieves BAD. It sees its notes that say “WATCH OUT, SOMETHING MIGHT BE GOING ON HERE”. So now there's not just a shot that was bad, now there's some fear surrounding this type of shot and any situation that’s similar.


And because your brain is designed to protect you and keep you comfortable, there's now a NEED to avoid the threat this situation poses. Your brain is on the lookout for what could happen here. This comes out in a sentence like "I need to hit this one better this time".


You NEED to hit the shot better because to your brain, encountering that same negative emotion again might as well be life or death. And because you NEED to hit the shot better, this makes a mistake just a little bit more unacceptable. So now you've got an already difficult shot that you’ve hit poorly in the past that your brain is desperately guarding against potential bad outcomes.


You usually don't hit a great shot when this is where your mind is. Chances are you hit the next one poorly too. So the emotions of that next bad shot are going to be stronger. Now you have two "BAD" shots in your mental filing cabinet. The emotions are building and the brain has all but fully solidified its notion that this is an undesirable situation.


The next time you have that same shot it becomes absolutely dire that you hit a good one. You've created a scenario where a mistake is totally unacceptable. To your brain, this shot HAS to be good or else we die. Deep down you're afraid of what yet another bad shot would do to your score, would mean about your game, your practice, you as a person. These are the types of uncomfortable emotions that your brain is trying to protect you from.


The farther you go down this road the more and more you NEED to hit a good shot.

Which means mistakes are more and more unacceptable. You're getting more and more constricted over this type of shot.


You're probably already in slump territory for this kind of shot. Maybe it’s your putting. Missing those 6 footers started getting to you and a month later they became an area of your game you’ve been struggling with for a while.


But it doesn't stop there. To make matters worse, this snowball grows faster the farther it goes, because this mentality spreads throughout your game. You begin to put extra pressure on other parts of your game to make up for the weak part. You feel like you've got to hit it to tap in length on long lag putts and chipping and approach shots.


You now need to do everything JUST RIGHT. This fear of mistakes everywhere causes extra constriction where there used to be freedom. Before you know it you're in a full on slump thru the bag.

What was just one shot that didn't go where you wanted…

became a shot that had an emotional label on it…

which gave your brain a reason to fear it…

which made any future bad shots unacceptable.

This could happen in a matter of months, weeks, or even days. It doesn't take long for your brain to learn to fear a situation.


If you're reading to this you've either been in a slump before, are in one now, or you will be at some point in the future. It's incredibly normal to be in a slump, because it's incredibly normal to react emotionally and let your emotions lead to fear of it happening again. I did this heavily during high school, college, and the handful of years after college.


So how did I work my way out of these slumps? How can you?

I was only able to work my way out of slumps, or prevent bad shots from festering into future slumps, when I started working on my acceptance. Yes, like pretty much everything in golf psychology, it starts with acceptance. If we go back to the conception of the slump, it was a non-acceptance of a mistake. You hit a shot, and you labeled it with judgment. Remember, acceptance is seeing things as they are, not as you wish them to be. When you hit that first bad shot, instead of seeing it as it was (a shot that went to where it ended up), you saw it as a BAD shot. This is what led to teaching your brain that shots like that are worth being afraid of, and therefore protective with an overactive mind that's focused on the past or the future.


So the core of the issue is mistakes being unacceptable. So in order for you to untangle that slump you have to go in the opposite direction of that non-acceptance.


Mistakes have to be more acceptable to you. When mistakes are more acceptable, you’re less afraid to make them. Your brain can start to learn that a mistake isn’t life or death. It's just another shot.


A great avenue that can help you be more accepting is practice. When you know you've been working hard on your game, and you know you're going to get back to work on your game, the shots you hit are less life and death. They’re more just data points that can inform you on what you need to work on. When you only PLAY golf, there can be a tendency for your game to hinge on every shot. Every shot means you're good or you're not good. Naturally this leads to a lot of emotional, judgmental reactions.


But when you have a healthy balance of play and practice, you're able to keep a good perspective on what each shot means. Each shot has a start and an end, and it’s not much more than that. You could make that same mistake that would normally be the genesis of a slump, but this time you can see the shot as just a shot, and not much more. And the shots that currently give you the heebie jeebies could have the pressure relieved a little. This is definitely not a magic pill. It will start slow, but over time you'll gain momentum.


If you're working on your game and you're working on your acceptance in the moment, what was a "BAD" shot will become a "meh" shot and then just "a shot that went there". So now you're more focused on improving your game and being present on shots rather than NEEDING to hit it good to feel ok. Getting out of a slump actually becomes possible from here.

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