How To Build Confidence: For Golfers

Knowing how to build confidence is an ability many golfers lack, and it shows through in your game.

Believing in yourself is a big part of pushing your game to the next level.

If you doubt you can improve, then you're exactly right.

What you expect from your golf game is exactly what you'll get in the long run.

On the plus side, the myth that confidence is built-in and can't be learned is exactly that – a myth. You can learn how to gain confidence in exactly the same way you can learn to putt or drive.

Chunk It Down

Chunking it down is an idea often applied to time management, but it's useful for your golf game as well. It involves breaking down a big task into smaller parts. That way, as you achieve each small, easy goal, you gain a natural confidence boost to conquer the other goals.

If on the other hand you attempt to tackle a big, difficult goal from the start, you're more likely to fail and give up in frustration.

So rather than focusing on a big goal like being a certain number of shots under par for the course, try getting onto the green in two on the next Par 3.

Have big goals as well, but make sure they're made up of lots of easy to swallow small chunks.

The Confidence Snowball

When you start chunking down your goals, you'll notice something interesting: momentum starts to build.

You'll find that achieving each successive goal becomes easier.

You can then raise the bar to make things harder and keep pushing yourself.

Confidence grows in a snowball. The more you succeed (even if it's only a small success at first) the more confidence you gain in your abilities.

That extra confidence leads to greater focus and a better game overall, which means you hit more targets and achieve more goals.

This is what they call in the business a "winning streak" – it's real, and it's not about luck so much as it's about confidence and believing in yourself and your ability to win.

Internal Frame of Reference

Here's a concept that can have a big impact on your golf game: stop caring what other people think. If you constantly check your skills against external standards, stop doing it and measure your progress only asking your own past performance.

On top of that, you are the only judge of how your skills are progressing – you set your own goals and determine whether or not you're reaching them or moving towards them.

How To Build Confidence

The key here is that you give yourself the power to determine success, and permission to enjoy small victories. This is important, because every victory produces motivation.

You can see how this ties into chunking it down and creating momentum and the snowball of confidence.

You can set your criteria for success as low as possible to get the ball rolling – your first goal might even be showing up to the driving range to practice.

This is how to build confidence in your golf game.

Related Articles

• Dealing With Frustration During Your Golf Game
• How Negative Self Talk Ruins Your Game Of Golf
• Five Easy Golf Swing Tips For Your Inner Game

Share your thoughts with us!