BCS Championship Game (Golf Goals)

I wanted to post a quick article on the college football National Championship Game from last night that occurred between the Texas Longhorns and the Alabama Crimson Tide. I know many of you were pulling for one team or the other or really could care less depending on where you live. That’s not the important point I observed last night.

At the end of the game after Alabama won, the interview with head coach Nick Saban was the most interesting for me. For all watching and paying attention Coach Saban said “we had a goal at the beginning of the year, and to achieve that goal we just needed to focus on the process on how to achieve that goal.” It was great for me to hear that and was just a simple reminder to those that any person that is successful in business, sports, or any endeavor understands this simple, yet often overlooked, fundamental to success. That is setting goals and laying a process goal on how to achieve those goals.

The road to success that each of you will encounter this year in golf will ultimately come down to this fact that you had a goal and a clear concise game plan on how to achieve that goal.

If you have not set your goals this year please do so now and get started on your road to improvement. I would also like my readers to submit questions that they would like me elaborate on and write articles about. My being involved with the blog daily is for one purpose…to help you and answer your questions. Looking forward to reading your questions and be sure to read tomorrows article about the proper position of the right arm. Best of luck to all.

CJ

Process Vs Outcome (Golf Goals)

In my last article I laid out a game plan for goal setting this upcoming year. As a quick refresher I stated that for an idea to become a goal it must fit into the Acronym of S-M-A-R-T. Please refer to my last article posted on January 4th to refresh you and understand what each letter stands for. In this article however, I want to continue on with goals and take my students one step farther. I am pleased with all the comments and goals I have received from you guys and would like to express my great pleasure in helping each of you this upcoming year.

An important area of goal setting is to understand Process versus Outcome Goals. Most people’s goals deal directly with OUTCOME. In other words, setting a goal of reducing ones handicap from a ten to a 5 is definitely an outcome goal. Other examples of outcome goals would be winning the club championship or breaking 80 for the first time. These are all great goals and are definitely specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and have a time frame associated with this goal. The only problem with outcome goals is that you have no control over them. By this I mean that if a student goes to their club championship and breaks 80 for the first time and loses the tournament that does not mean he has failed in his progress of improving or in goal setting. That is a tremendous feat for someone to shoot in the seventies or 80 or even 90’s for the first time. The issue with outcome goals is that you have no influence on the rest of the field in tournaments. If I took you to the first tee and told you to play and to break 80 for the first time this would be extremely difficult. In order to achieve your goal of breaking 80 you must focus on the process of breaking 80. Hole one my goal is to hit the fairway. From the fairway I want to hit the green and then from there make the putt or two putt. It is this process of individual shots that makes up the whole. Obviously, we will miss greens and from there we plan on chipping it close to the hole and making our par.

An easy way to illustrate this point is to imagine a map. I live in Dallas, Texas. If I want to travel to Austin, Texas (which is south on Interstate 35) it wouldn’t make much sense for me to drive north. We must have a process or road map to achieve our outcome goals.

The easiest way for you to achieve your outcome goals is to break the game down into four components and list three areas of improvement that you want to achieve this year, and finally how do you plan to achieve them. An example is shown below:

Full Swing

1. Watch Full Swing Secrets video and understand my ball flight to help me fix my swing.

2. Work 30 minutes a day, twice a week on the range and work on improving my release to stop the slice.

3. Keep CJ posted on my improvement and ask questions if any problems arise.

Short Game

1. Keep Stats about my short game, and see what exactly is good and bad about my short game. Is it basic chips, bunkers, pitching?

2. Once I have determined my weakness, I realize that short game is a big weakness in my Game. I am going to spend 2 minutes on my short game for every minute I spend working on my swing.

3. Watch CJ’s Short Game DVD and apply those principals to my game.

Mental

1. Honestly assess my mental game and determine my weakness. I will ask my friends their honest opinion and see if it’s different than mine. I realize that sometimes I may be blind to my weakness’s and do not want to admit to them.

2. I will read Jeff Troesch’s mental e-book and apply his methods to improving my mental outlook.

Physical Fitness

1. I will watch the off-season DVD and take the self-tests to see if any physical weaknesses or limitations could be causing the problems in my swing.

2. Any fail of tests I will personally work on while at home or in my office. I understand that these fixes to basic weaknesses are easy to identify and fix and my not doing so could be costing my game greatly.

Setting Goals is an important and necessary form to improving ones golf game and or life. Once you have set the goals that you want to achieve (where) it is now necessary to take this one step further and put a plan of action to achieving my goals.

I also want my students to take this one step farther and to make this list and post it on your bathroom mirror. Every morning and every night you will be forced to look at your goals and it will make it so much easier to achieve your goals this upcoming year.

***Extremely Important*** for those married guys posting your goals on your mirror. Under Mental strategies make sure you have a goal of treating your wife more lovingly, tenderly, and sweetly than every before. (She will see this and won’t care that you have a piece of paper hanging from your mirror.) Trust me…I’m not stupid.

Good luck!

New Year’s Resolution

Ahhh it’s that time again. With the beginning of the New Year I want to help us all set some goals for the upcoming year and understand how to achieve our goals this year. I want us all to understand that in order to achieve our goals we must enact a clear, cut plan on how to achieve those goals. We must understand that most people fail with their resolutions because they do not set clear, concise goals, or have a plan of action to follow through on their goals.

One of the most common goals I hear from students is to get better. I want everyone to understand that this is not a goal. In order for an idea to become a goal it must fit into the acronym

S

M

A

R

T

S- The s in smart stands for specific. A goal must be specific. Setting a goal of getting better or improving my putting is not specific. If a student is trying to improve it is best to have a USGA handicap. This is the easiest way to set a specific goal. For example, a person with a 10 handicap can specifically set a goal of improving to a 5 handicap this year.

M- The m in smart stands for measurable. Once again improving is not specific, nor is it measurable. With a handicap system it is very easy to measure the amount of improvement in ones golf game.

A- the a stands for attainable. Make sure you set goals that are attainable. No one likes to fail and therefore setting a realistic goal is important for your confidence as well as improvement. Set little goals along the way and reward yourself for achieving those goals. If you want to lower your handicap from a 10 to a 5 set a two -month goal to drop one stroke off of your handicap. If you achieve that smaller attainable goal reward yourself with a new wedge or something that has meaning to you. As you continue to meet those smaller goals a person’s long-term goal to drop five strokes off of your handicap this year becomes easier.

R- The r stands for relevant in smart. Having a relevant goal really becomes useful with process goals, but achieving goals that are relevant towards your overall improvement is important. Mainly I see students that tell me their short game needs to be improved to drop strokes off of their game, but I see them spending most of their practice time on the range working on swing. Is practicing full swing relevant towards improving their short game and thus lowering their scores?

T- The T stands for time frame. A lot of my junior golfers tell me their goal is to play on the PGA Tour. Although that is a great dream, there is no time frame to that goal and therefore it becomes a dream. Once a person commits to enter PGA Tour Q-school and has committed their money this is now a goal and not just a dream. Although there are such things as long-term goals I want my students to focus on the next year for a long-term goal. I would also like to have my students set short-term goals of 6 months or less. When breaking up goals into smaller, attainable goals the overall process of improving seems easier.

There was a swimmer that set a goal of making the Olympics in four years. He knew that in order for him to win the Gold medal he needed to cut 4 seconds off of his current time. Four seconds sounds like a lot of time especially in swimming, but broken down over four years it seems more realistic. 4 seconds in 4 years. That’s only 1 second a year. 1 second a year broken down into 12 months is less than a tenth of a second per month. A tenth of a second broken down into 30 days is something I don’t know, but it’s extremely small. At the end of the day this swimmer’s goal really broke down into improving about a thousandth of a second each time he practiced. That’s less than a blink of an eye. This swimmer achieved his goal and won the Olympic gold medal four years later.

Goals when broken down into small attainable steps seem easier and add up to greatness. Most new years resolutions fail because they are not specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, or have a time frame. Set goals, not ideas and really see your golf game improve. I now want my readers to set some goals for their golf game for this upcoming year. Set outcome goals that you want achieve and my next article will be about process goals, or how to achieve your outcome goals.

Please continue to post your comments on the blog and please post some of your outcome goals for me to look at and review. I may even choose some of your goals and include them in my next article and write specific steps to help you improve your game this year. Please include some general information about your game currently including current handicap, strengths, weaknesses, etc. Good luck and I am excited to see the improvement this year in each of your golf games.

Happy Thanksgiving

Today I am most thankful for my health and family. The older I get the more illness I start to notice and I am thankful to be healthy and well. I have known of several people lately that have been diagnosed with Cancer and other life changing illnesses. It is scary to me to think that your live can change forever in one day.

I am also very thankful to God for my family. I have a wonderful wife and a beautiful 4 year old daughter! I have another girl on the way January 16th! I am so thankful to God for all of this, I can’t imagine life without them:)

I am looking forward to hearing from everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Tim