Success Is A Mind Game: How To Improve Consistency And Results In Golf And Business

What people are saying about this book:

Every now and again a book comes across my desk which amazes me. This book is such a book.

In the book you will find links to video clips of Steve himself talking through various aspects of the book. So you will not find it difficult to become fully absorbed in this experience. The book is full of exercises, and suggestions for further reading.

Ann Andrews, MD, The Corporate Toolbox

Steve enabled me to immediately improve my focus and enjoyment on the course which also improved my game and results. Even more impressive in the week since then I have already been able to reduce my stress away from the course and seen benefits in other areas too. I wish I’d had this when I was still playing professional rugby.

Tim Stimpson ex-England Rugby Union full back

Just wanted to let you know that I read your book last week and it clearly had a profound affect on me! I played golf on Sunday and had the best round I have had in years and my husband also said that my tennis on Monday night is the best he has seen me play for a very long time.

Kelly Richardson, Dir, The Personal PA.

I have read your book Success Is a Mind Game and have to say that the content was truly fantastic. I have employed your techniques with great effect both to myself and people I talk to on a regular basis. Understanding the concept has allowed me to improve my bussiness dealings with people and as an aside has improved my Squash game. I wish you every success with the book and will recommend it to everyone I know.

Colin Sinclair, Managing Director Vamp-it.net

The utility of the understanding that the author explains in this book transcends both golf and business. Anyone can benefit from it in every realm of their lives. Don't think about it. Go for it! The only thing you have to lose is your worry and anxiety.

Ruth Steinholtz, Former General Counsel, Borealis AG

Click the following link for several video testimonials:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Yorkiebloke58?feature=mhum#p/u/0/_qEKP58Sw-k

Success is A Mind Game:

How to improve consistency and results

in golf and business

Steve Sharpley Msc.

Published by Sharpley Publishing

Copyright Steve Sharpley 2010

The rights of Steve Sharpley to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Design and Patents act 1988

Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook my not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return toSmashworks.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

This book is available in print in the UK at major book retailers

Contents

List of Figures

Preface

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part One

Chapter 1: Mind Matters

Chapter 2: Silence is Golden

Chapter 3: The Secret Power Creating Our Experience

Chapter 4: The Three Principles

Chapter 5: Using The Body As A Compass

Chapter 6: Working With What Really Is

Part two

Chapter 7: Learning To Learn

Chapter 8: Learning Excellence For Optimum Results

Chapter 9: Theory In Action

Chapter 10: Practice, Practice, Practice

References

Suggested Further Reading

Testimonials

About the author

See an intro and what people say about this approach on YouTube. CLICK ON link below:

CLICK HERE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyYbMVscL24

Alternatively search YouTube for:

Steve Sharpley, Success Is A Mind Game

List of Figures:

Figure 1: Outside-In Life View

Figure 2: The Inside – Out Life View

Figure 3: The Flow of Thought

Figure 4: The Nature of Thought and States of Mind

Figure 5 State of Mind & Perception

Figure 6: Life ‘As Is’ Vs. M.S.U.

Figure 7: Key Elements of Learning

Figure 8: Basic Learning Process Cycle

Figure 9: Optimum Learning Cycle

List of informational video links:

Intro and Testimonials for Success Is a Mind Game

Breathing Exercise

Effective Learning

Optimum Learning Cycle and State of Mind

Juggling for Learning Styles

Noble Media TV Interview With The Author

Preface

‘Very little is needed to make a happy life,

it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.’

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus (AD 121 - AD 180)

I could say that the origins of what I am going to write about started in my adolescent sport days. I didn’t play at professional level but I did play many sports locally to a high level and also represented York at U16 football and Yorkshire at U19 cricket. I say this not to boast but because it was in my late teens when I first experienced the effects of pushing myself too hard to perform at the highest level I was able. The result was I got overly stressed and stopped enjoying both games. I found the inconsistency of my performance frustrating – a feeling which I was also to experience a few years later when I started playing golf.

However, as I hope you too will come to understand and develop for yourself, more recently I have discovered a simple way of understanding how our minds work and that understanding has helped me perform consistently and sustainably at my peak. I have discovered that through learning this, we can develop the necessary awareness, skills and focus to be able to perform consistently to our best without getting stressed in challenging circumstances or pressure situations – on and off the golf course.

My more recent personal journey which has culminated in writing this book began on 3rd October 2000 to be precise.

At 11 am that day - a year into a new job – I called my financial adviser to talk about mortgages as I was ready to join the property market again.

At 3 pm, I called him back to say there had been a change of plan: I had just been made redundant. My post as a full-time consultant with a global leadership and change consultancy had been my perfect job and one I’d worked towards for seven years. I loved the leadership development and large-scale culture shift work the company specialised in and was learning something new almost every day. I also really admired and appreciated the company culture, my colleagues were fun and supportive and I was earning double my previous salary.

After receiving the news, I had some time alone in my office which gave me the opportunity to reflect on the situation and the 53 weeks I had had within the cocoon of this wonderful ‘family’. Even the way the Managing Director and Finance Director handled giving me the news reflected the company’s way of working. They were very concerned for me and the formal letter of termination I received read more like a very positive reference letter.

Whilst the redundancy was the last thing I could have wished for and I knew I would be very unlikely to find another company like this one, I didn’t worry too much about the redundancy itself. Instead my thoughts seemed to be focused on gratitude for the fact that after one year and one week with the company, I was better off in almost every way: personally, professionally and financially. This gratitude can be seen from an email I sent to colleagues at the time:

‘The last year has been a real privilege for me, and one for which I'll be forever grateful. I have been blessed with many coaches during that time and leave a better person for it. To be sure I'll be putting many of the company’s principles to work over these coming days and weeks. The experience has been a great role model, one of an environment which supports an employee to keep growing, for however long they may be on board, so that they are able to leave a better and more marketable person. I have been touched by many and for that I say thank you, I am truly grateful’.

None of this is too remarkable you might be thinking. This was also my view until a few months later when I realized that, despite having not yet found a permanent job, the normally expected feeling of doom from redundancy had still not set in. From what I knew of other people who had gone through this experience, it is generally difficult at best and at worst often traumatic. Despite various other setbacks in the following months, I remained remarkably resilient.

What, I wondered, had enabled me to be almost impervious to these setbacks and disappointments? As I pondered this, it became clear it had to do with the way I was thinking about these potentially upsetting situations. I had found a state of mind that allowed me to swiftly accept the situation. I hadn’t dwelled on what I’d lost and instead had focused on creative ways of moving forward. It’s not that I’d had to force myself to be positive or look on the bright side, I was just not dwelling on the negative, insecure thoughts that came up. These had, on previous occasions, almost given me an anxiety attack when I was worrying about not having any work on the horizon.

About this time I wrote in my journal ‘…it is four and a half months since being made redundant and I’m still not singing the blues. I have recognized that a shift in my way of thinking has made my experience of redundancy and life easier than expected’. So what had changed in how I was thinking, I wondered?

I then realized that a simple understanding I’d been exposed to at my old company about how our minds work and the link between that, our subsequent behavior and its results had rubbed off on me. I had also read a book called Slowing Down to the Speed of Life based in part on the same approach whilst being delayed for a whole day in an airport after my scheduled flight had been cancelled. I remember reading this book and marveling at how calm and unstressed I felt when all around me people were going berserk. I’d learned that what makes a situation stressful is the thinking that surrounds it and the thoughts we pay attention to.

Following this, aside from my professional work and studies in facilitating change, growth and personal development, I sought to learn everything I could about this approach: I took courses, read books, conducted my own research, talked to practitioners in the field and attended talks and workshops.

Through this I came to understand how my thoughts (often emerging because of past experiences and subsequent insecurities and fears) often took me away from fully experiencing the present moment. I also discovered that the way most of us learn to think leads us to being at the mercy of almost every thought that comes into our heads.

However, as I came to realize, by understanding the process of thought, we can become more the masters of our thoughts and liberated from their control. When there is no longer an uncontrollable whirlwind of thinking going on in our heads, more of our creativity, common sense and ability to perform to our full potential surfaces, which generally results in better outcomes in our lives.

This approach may sound similar to other mainstream psychological approaches, which I studied and worked with as part of my MSc in Change (such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) , Gestalt and Neuro Linguisitic Programming (NLP) in that our thoughts influence our emotions and behavior and hence the results that follow.

However, in contrast to these approaches which focus on changing the specific content of our ineffective or possibly ‘dysfunctional’ thinking, the approach in this book addresses the process of thought i.e. how we use our thinking and the state of mind our thoughts produce. It explains how the process of thought shapes our perception of the world at any particular moment in time and then in turn leads to our behavior and subsequent outcomes.

Another significant way in which this approach is different is that it does not require people to reveal the specifics of what they are thinking or potentially upset about. We merely explore how our minds and our process of thought interact with each other to create our experience of the world. This makes it a lot ‘safer’ as a development process particularly for those people who would be uncomfortable exposing their ‘issues’ in public. It therefore negates the need for unhelpful resistance that some might experience to many therapeutic interventions.

As we grow up, we are taught at school how to use