Five Levels of Influence #3 - Are you at Cause or Effect?

Are you at cause for influencing yourself to greater things or are you at the effect of others, the environment and the outside world?

In golf, there are only two things that affect your game. Yes, sorry, just the two things. The first is physics. The golf ball, your clubs, the course are all subject to the laws of physics.

• You might say that the weather changes the way the ball behaves. Yes indeed it can and does, cool air temperatures effect the turbulence of the air and hence the flight of the ball… just physics.
• You might suggest that your swing technique changes the way you strike the ball and hence its direction and distance - yes true - just physics.
• The only part of golf that is not directly about physics is the you part - not your technique, strength, everything physical is, well physics. 

No, the only non-physical part is mental. There are those that will scientifically argue that this too is physics - after all, the mental part is about electrons, neurons etc that obey the laws of physics. Yes this may be true, however, there is an important distinction, you can do nothing about the laws of physics. Not a thing. Rien. Zip. Nada. Naff all. Zero. You can’t change it - you can use it - because the laws of physics don’t change - knowing what physics is at work and how to use that knowledge to increase distance, improve direction and so on - now that’s useful knowledge - see, you now wish that you’d paid more attention in school. The distinction is that the mental part of the game is something that you can change. Yes the neurons and so on that carry the messages and inform the parts of the body to do what they do will do so, because they obey the laws of physics. It is the message that they carry that you can change. Now, since this actually applies to everything in your life it could be a revelatory moment for you in everything.

So, we come back to the basic critical decision point. 

Are you at cause or effect?

• Do you cause your golf ball to fly in a particular direction? Yes, of course you do. 
• Do you allow your playing partner to effect your playing? 
• Do you allow the weather to effect your playing? The answer is that all things going on in your surroundings will effect your playing - because they effect your mental attitude, they effect the message that you send to your muscles.
• Are you a thermometer or a thermostat?
  

How much you allow external events to effect your playing is your choice.

It’s important to preface this section with a reminder that everyone, every single human being has a choice to do something, or not do it. To learn something, or not to. Everything we do in  this life is a choice. Yes, there are many many (far too many) people on this planet who do not have a good choice - or a ‘real’ choice. There are, too many people who’s struggle for life overwhelms their choices in life. The choice to live or die in such circumstances, is however difficult or impossible, still a choice. Please realise that I am not denigrating anyone here, nor am I saying it’s easy simply because I assert that they have a choice. I simply want to ensure that you have a mindset that you can be at choice. Improving the opportunities for choice for the millions of those with little real choice is another matter entirely.
So, if you are at choice, which frequency do you listen, cause or effect?

How you influence others is somewhat obvious, but how you influence yourself is perhaps a little more obscure. We will take the obvious route first and then apply it to self. In the Mind Advantage, we are very strongly focusing on your self-leadership - how you lead yourself to greatness in golf. In our workouts on the Leadership advantage, this section is much bigger and meatier - because leadership is pretty much all about influencing others.