ACCEPTANCE

As you may know, accepting criticism or feedback can be humbling and in some cases can feel judgmental.  However, those who accept suggested corrections will ultimately have the freedom to improve.  It has happened to all of us at some point. You are working hard on your swing or a project and bam!  You get feedback on what you thought was happening but really is not. Your progress is not going as well as you thought, or your coach gave you the feedback that you haven’t mastered the swing change and the movement for correction still needs hours of work.  In the time after the feedback you have the opportunity to accept it for what it is, feedback or corrective criticism.   At this point you have the choice to make the necessary changes or to resist it.  If you accept the feedback, you have the freedom to make changes or corrections without mental or physical stress. However if you fight or resist the feedback you are now fighting the error/s.  You may become defensive and feel judged therefore lose the freedom to move past the feedback.  Instead of resisting the feedback which causes more tension and perhaps frustration, accepting it allows you to move forward with more understanding enabling you to adapt and move closer to mastery or a better understanding.  It is not judgement, it is feedback to freedom.  

As a golfer you can be hard on yourself to a point that acceptance can be a small victory, like pulling off a shot on the course with an improvement in technique.  Maybe you have set an unrealistic attitude towards errors in that you view errors as bad and compromising to improvement.  In reality, errors and quality feedback are what makes improvement possible, it creates the atmosphere for freedom of judgement during rounds or even in practice.  When you are unable to free yourself of judgement it will limit your potential for growth, you must accept errors for what they are and not make them who you are.  Having the attitude that you need to be error free only sets you up for a bigger failure, inhibiting you from reaching your goal of making the high school team, playing college golf or winning the club championship.  

Errors will happen, be kind to yourself, be kind with judgement, be gentle with your ego, learn how to move to acceptance quickly and move on with development!

Enjoy Your Journey!