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A New Way of Keeping Score: Process Focus versus Outcome Focus
As I explained in an earlier article (Process Focus versus Outcome Focus: A Crucial Distinction in Sports) one of the most powerful ways of improving your performance involves letting go of any concerns about the outcome of any shot, and instead maintaining your focus solely on the process involved in preparing for, and executing, each shot.
Letting go of concerns about the outcome of any shot is difficult for a variety of reasons. After all, how well each shot is executed has an undeniable bearing on our final score. The more shots you have that produce a good outcome, the lower your total score will be. And of course, lower total scores are what every golfer strives to accomplish.
Here, in this article, I want to explain to you how you can utilize this powerful mental strategy each time you are out on the course. We’ll start by allowing ourselves to forget about shot outcomes and scores for a while. We’ll choose instead to focus exclusively on the process of preparing for, and executing, each individual shot. We’ll still maintain a scorecard, but what we’ll mark down on the card is simply whether or not the process involved in each shot was “pure.”
Process-Focus versus Outcome-Focus: A Crucial Distinction in Sports
For most of you involved in golf or other sports, the ultimate goal is to improve how well you perform. You strive to hit more fairways and sink more putts. You try to lower your scoring average and improve your handicap. You want to establish a new all-time best score. You work toward better finishes in your competitions. In any sport, the bottom line is that you are always working toward improving your outcomes.
Anytime I consult with a golfer or other athlete, they’re depending on me to come up with the best mental techniques to help them improve their outcomes. They want to know what mental strategies will lead to better scores and improve their ability to compete.
So, what are some of the best mental strategies to help you improve your outcomes?
It turns out that the answer to this question is quite paradoxical and counter-intuitive. The most powerful mental technique I know to improve your scores is simply letting go of any concerns about the outcome and instead focusing solely on the process of preparing for and executing each shot!
Let me give you an example of what I mean by focusing on the process and letting go of any concerns about the outcome. Suppose I have a rigid steel beam that is one foot wide and fifty feet long. I lay the beam on the ground and challenge you to walk the length of the beam without falling off. This is really a very simple task, and anyone with normal coordination would find that they could easily walk those fifty feet without stepping off the beam. If you were faced with this challenge, I’d bet that you would be very confident in your ability to complete this task. You’d simply focus on the process of placing one foot in front of the other, and you’d trust in your ability to successfully complete the task.
Mental Skills (Or the Lack Thereof) and Recent Sporting Events: Golfer Ben Crane wins the 2010 Farmers Insurance Open
Ben Crane won The Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines in San Diego without even realizing what he had just accomplished. After sinking his final putt on the 72nd hole, his fellow competitor, Ryuji Imada, turned toward Crane and said, “Congratulations.” Crane appeared somewhat surprised and responded by asking Imada, “Did I win? Did I win the tournament?” And indeed, Crane had come out on top, notching his third win on the PGA Tour.
How do you explain a guy who wins a pretty big tournament, yet he doesn’t even know what he has just achieved?
Late in the season last year, Crane had a meeting with his “team,” consisting of his manager, caddie, fitness consultant, and several others, including mental game expert Lanny Bassham. They discussed what had been going well for Crane, but also defined some areas that definitely needed improvement. One of the results of this meeting was the conclusion that instead of focusing on the outcome of a particular shot (or round, or event), Crane would be better off focusing primarily on the mental process involved in each individual shot.
So for the past several months Ben Crane and his team have taken a different perspective on his golf game. What they talk about after any particular round or tournament is not how well he fared, but instead how well he engaged in the mental processes of preparing for and executing each of his shots. Crane and his team believe that if the mental preparation and mental execution of a shot is proper, then the likelihood of a good outcome is increased.
Mental Skills (Or the Lack Thereof) and Recent Sporting Events: John Cook Wins the 2009 Charles Schwab Cup Championship
After shooting four rounds in the 60s, including a final round 69, John Cook won the Charles Schwab Cup Championship by five strokes. In the post-tournament press conference, Cook alluded to some specific mental strategies he used to pull off his second victory in the last three weeks.
One of the strategies he discussed involved not getting too far ahead of himself when he had a big lead in the final round. “It’s not that easy playing with a big lead, I can tell you that. Your mind starts to wander a little bit, and you really have to reign yourself in.” He explained that he and his caddie kept reminding themselves to stay in the moment, and not get distracted by the size of the lead they had. He stated, “We just stay on point, stay on point all day. This is what we need to do.”
He mentioned his loss earlier in the year when he had a one shot lead coming up to the par four 18th hole at the Jeld-Wen Tradition. He hit the fairway off the tee, but his approach shot, which he described as “the worst swing of the week,” ended up in a back right bunker. He was not fully committed to his shot and his club selection, leading to his ball missing the green. He was unable to get up and down for the par, and subsequently lost the tournament to Mike Reid on the first hole of a sudden death playoff.
In referring to the loss at the Tradition, Cook stated, “The event.....was mine and I let it go. I just was so torn up by the mistake I made at the last hole; I said that ain’t gonna happen again.” Rather than hanging his head in defeat, Cook decided he could learn from his mistake. He subsequently convinced himself that he needed to be committed to improving his game, and he also recognized that he needed to be more aggressive during tournaments.
Confidence in Sports (part 2): Maintaining high confidence
In the first article on Confidence in Sports (part 1: How to develop confidence) I discussed the idea that how, and what a person thinks, has a major impact on how well they perform. More importantly, though, I explained the significance of recognizing that you always get to choose how and what you think. I further suggested that making choices about how and what you think, during competition or in performance situations, was essentially no different than making choices from an extensive menu in a high quality restaurant. In a restaurant, you’ll select an item that promises to provide you with a delicious and satisfying experience. And once you recognize that during competition, you also have a wide variety of options to choose from in terms of how and what you think, you’ll begin to make better selections, resulting in a much more satisfying performance in your sport.
The first article discussed how to develop a healthy level of confidence regardless of your level of experience or skill. The current article will highlight proper “thinking choices” can help you to maintain that healthy level of confidence, even during difficult situations in your sport.
One of the major mistakes golfers and other athletes make is allowing the outcome of recent events to determine their level of confidence. Now, there’s nothing wrong with feeling confident if you’ve recently been scoring well, or if the last several holes or shots have been executed particularly well. Indeed, give yourself a lot of reinforcement and praise, and continue to ride that strong sense of confidence. There is nothing detrimental about making this particular “menu (thinking) choice” from all of the different types of thoughts you could possibly select.