The best tactic for defeating this most wily of adversaries is to "get out of your own way."

You must learn to observe rather than react to every shot you make. Doing so requires you to stop defining your present self-worth and overall skill by your most recent shot. Because let's face it, you're not a bad golfer simply because you miss a putt or skull a chip.

Your Objective Observer
To truly "get out of your own way," you need to step back and try to understand why a particular shot didn't work, instead of judging your overall ability. You should look forward to each opportunity to learn from your mistakes. In other words, make space in your mind for your objective observer.

The key to awakening your objective observer is to discover what went wrong with each bad shot instead of blaming yourself or your abilities. Blaming yourself gives your subconscious mind the wrong message, and compounds your initial error with each successive shot.

Your objective observer will tell you that your last shot failed because you didn't have proper shoulder turn, or that you forgot to shake out your arms and loosen your wrists before chipping.

Eventually, you will be able to train your subconscious mind to trigger a positive response—rather than a negative one—to a bad shot. Jazz musicians do this all the time through improvisation, because to a jazz musician there are no mistakes, only opportunities.

In golf, there are four common emotional reactions to bad shots:

Unfairness
The wind takes your beautiful, high pitched shot straight down into a sand trap, plugging the ball. You may feel like the golf gods have wronged you, and your initial reaction might be to let your emotions get the best of you. But instead of reacting by throwing a club, cursing or worse, try to observe what just happened. Say to yourself "I hit a beautiful shot. End of story. The next time, I'll compensate better for the wind."

Perfection
You begin well enough on the practice range but once you reach the course, you begin to slice each drive. Instead of focusing on how imperfect your swing has become, let your objective observer uncover what's really happening with your swing. More often than not you will find that a simple explanation like "I think my hips turned way ahead of my arms" is the reason behind those errant shots.

Approval
In this type of reaction, you are so focused on what your friends think of you and your game, that you lose your concentration on each shot. If you hit fat, you end up feeling embarrassed, which leaves little or no room for your objective observer to explain away your error by saying something like "Your weight stayed back when it should have been moving forward."

Control
Like most people, you are happy when things go your way. So in preparation for each round of golf you plan a set amount of practice time, for which you always arrive early. However, if something interferes with this routine, your game that day ends up in ruins. But if you listen to your objective observer, you might hear, "Although it's good to practice before a round of golf, your natural swing is unrushed. Trust it today."

In each of these four emotional reactions, when your objective observer is allowed to analyze your mistakes, your subconscious mind will follow and instruct your body how to respond.

Obstacle removed
So the next time you hear a winning golf pro say "I just stepped out of my own way," what you're really hearing them say is that they found a way to be non-reactive. They've trained their subconscious mind with positive suggestions, and learned not to blow up in response to bad shots.

Instead, they self-correct so that they can move on to the next perfect shot.

Once you learn to listen to your objective observer, your real opponent will be your competitors and not the reflection in the mirror. Jennifer Scott, C. Ht. is a Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist who practices in Scottsdale, Arizona. Jennifer is the creator of several Own The Zone^TM hypnosis programs and a regular GOLFONLINE contributor. E-mail Jennifer with questions or comments at jennifer@ownthezonegolf.com.