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The following rules apply both to my golf students as well as life-coaching clients.  Stay with these and I guarantee you will see improvements in your golf and beyond.

1. Believe in yourself! What ever you believe is right.  If you believe you can win, you will.  If you believe you can’t win or hit a certain shot, you won’t.  While the results may occasionally vary in the short run, they will match your beliefs in the long term.  So believe you can win.  Find a golf coach or swing instructor who you trust and believes in you and stick with them.
2. Master the fundamentals. All the greats in any endeavor do many little things well.  Add one mastery after another and don’t skip over them.  Find a skilled set of eyes to help you build the correct fundamentals and monitor you periodically to see that you haven’t strayed.  If the skilled professionals do, the rest of us should follow their example.  And as important as swing fundamentals are, an attitude of gratitude is a fundamental trait that can be acquired at any point in life.
3. Commit to action and start small, but commit to continuous improvement. Climbing a mountain can seem too monumental, but if you take a lot of little steps you eventually find yourself at the summit.  Besides, it is easy to take little, easy steps.  As you add the fundamentals, you will wake up someday and realize you’ve come a long way and are probably pretty skilled, no matter the endeavor!  As Jack Nicklaus told me, it was his confidence in mastering many little things that gave him his edge over his competition – at least he thought so.
4. Build and follow a routine. In golf, this most definitely applies to a pre-shot before every golf shot and it most definitely refers to staying in the present moment. In golf, your psyche and body chemistry magically and automatically sense anything out of the ordinary as unusual and a danger signal.  Muscles tighten and breathing changes; the body produces acid and you begin to feel tense and bad.  When you have developed a consistent routine and do follow it, it’s a message to yourself that everything is going fine and you are in a trusting mode.  When you trust yourself and commit to your routine, you are in great position to hit intended golf shots.
5. Detach from the results. Focusing too much on results builds expectations.  Expectations create pressure.  Pressure destroys good golf.  If you do find yourself suffering from pressure, embrace it for what it is and then ask, “What is there really to be fearful of?”  Follow this with asking yourself, “What’s my target?”  This helps you focus upon the task at hand.  Take aim, trust, execute, but then detach.  Repeat.
6. Lighten up. In other words, retain your sense of humor.  If you take yourself, your game, and life too seriously, you automatically take yourself out of alignment and will miss the opportunities that may be coming your way.  Anger is guaranteed to destroy your round and your progress as a golfer, plus life and everyone someone tends to smile on someone with a sense of humor.
7. Be patient. The path to improvement in golf or life is never a straight line nor are we so important that the Universe gives us what we ask for on our own time schedule.  When you become impatient, you also take yourself out of alignment and you attract unwanted results.
8. Practice forgiveness, which also means to throw out your thoughts of perfection.  Excellence is always preferable to perfection.  Besides, life may throw challenges our way.  While we can’t always control them, we can always control how we respond.  And should others or we trip up; we should be the first and not the last to forgive.  And all forgiveness is self-forgiveness.
9. Enjoy your journey. Golf and life are not destinations, but rather never ending journeys.  As such, you soon discover that you can never fail, but simply get back on track, in alignment so to speak.   Live in the moment by finding things to be grateful for.  Doing this has the added benefit of quieting our mind chatter, which allows the body to naturally perform better.
10. Be authentic. Ask yourself, what would your best or highest self do, or what would your role model do?  Practice love, creativity, abundance, gratitude, integrity, charity, and forgiveness in all you do.  When you sense yourself embracing fear, judgment, scarcity, anger, jealously, etc., congratulate yourself and then adopt a new more loving belief; remembering that you always have the choice to change the underlying belief that created that negativity.  Take joy in who you are.

Bonus Truth:  Be present so as to develop your awareness. The best in any endeavor are those who are most aware of themselves and their surroundings.  They are more sensitive and react more quickly in an effective and appropriate manner.  Some call this “genius,” but keen awareness is really the trait that separates their special qualities.  A quiet, open, appreciative mind and body can intercept many signals that busy, angry, fearful one cannot.  And ultimately the answers you seek all rest within all around you – not in some distant land or with someone else.

Bob Fagan is a California-based coach who accepts coaching clients on a time available basis from the fields of business, athletics including golf, and life in general.  He can be reached at rsf4653@aol.com.  More information about his coaching and products may be found at www.golfshigherplane.com.