Disc Golf Exercises & Fitness Training |S2E5

It happens all the time. You go out to the course and start off strong, birdying 3-4-5 holes on the front 9 and feeling great about it. Then you turn to your buddy and say one of the following:

Then what happens? You make it reality. You turn around and do exactly what you have said – bogeying  enough holes on the back nine to even out your score to match your expectations of yourself. Why does this alway seem to happen?

Let me put it simply: You can never win against the limiting beliefs you hold to be true. No matter who you are, a brand new player on the course or Paul McBeth – you have a self-image within your mind that is so ingrained in your beliefs and it can either take you into endless heights or hold you back unnecessarily. If you have mentally placed a glass ceiling on your score, rest assure your attitude, focus, and body will follow the instructions you continually give to it via your self-image.

We all step on our favorite courses knowing what we normally shoot. Some players use this as a benchmark to improve. Other players allow it to be the score that defines them – i.e. no matter how well they play on the front half, they will make it up on the back.

Now there are two different ways we mentally encode our limitations. First, internally – This is the mode of the pessimist, the player that believes no matter what they do some universal power will destroy it anyway. Then, there is the player or person who allows other people to define their self-image. This person believes and internalizes the vision other people have of them. Both ultimately involve your mind (your brain) accepting a limiting ideas as fact and therefore making them irrefutable.

Let me give you a personal real world example – 20 years ago when I was in grade school, I knew what was an acceptable report card to bring home to my parents to escape punishment. I knew that I was always to have all A’s and B’s, and I was allowed 1 C if I had an extra A to bring it back up. Guess what every report card I brought home looked like? Thats right 2 A’s, 3 B’s, and 1 C – every grading period. Coincidence? Years later in college – the only expectation I had was to do my best. There was a reason I was an all A college student and somewhat of a slacker high school student. I let someone else set my limitations and I lived up to them.

The message here is that every single one of us has a self-image and every single one of us has limits we believe exist. But what I want you to do is examine your limitations and what is holding you back on the disc golf course and in life. It can take a long time to let go of long held beliefs but the brain was designed to do it. You CAN change your mind about you. Think of your potential if you made the determination to blow past glass ceilings and strive to give your all you have to your passions. Think collectively about a nation or a world that would commit to not believing that our past failures or events do not anchor our futures. Think about it!

And thats another tool for your Disc Golf Bag.