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The Dark Side of Competition
How competitive are you? Most of us in "the West" have been raised to be competitive and admire competition. Let's look at the dark side: When you compete with someone else you compare yourself to him or them. When you do that you imitate them, ignore who you are or belittle who you are. This is to be expected of growing children, but should it be encouraged? When you compete directly as in boxing you get beat up even when you win. In Akido you consider process more than results. When you play golf you compete with yourself as well as others. Why is the game of golf so fraught, so full of stories of rage? Below is news of an Olympic Rifleman who teaches famous golfers to consider the process of each swing, not the results and to balance the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the self image equally.
When you accept your self image and are consciously aware of subconscious influences, you can relax into the process and, as in Akido, get results. Golfers Take Aim With Help of a Rifleman By DAMON HACK CHARLOTTE, N.C., May 3 — In the past year, several professional golfers have traveled to Flower Mound, Tex., to meet a man trained to shoot a rifle between the beats of his pulse.Lanny Bassham, who won a gold medal in shooting at the 1976 Olympics, is sought for advice. That man, Lanny Bassham, does not play golf. He does not have a degree in sports psychology. But neither of these facts has kept his appointment book from becoming crowded with the names of PGA Tour players. “When I first heard about him, he told me that Fred Funk had been there a month before,” Paul Stankowski said at the Wachovia Championship, which began Thursday with Padraig Harrington taking the first-round lead with a six-under-par 66. “I thought it was just me and Fred. I didn’t tell anybody, but guys started coming up to me to talk about it. There’s no way to keep a lid on it. I’ve tried.” What began as a secret between Bassham and a small number of golfers is growing into louder chatter at PGA Tour events. When the golfer Harrison Frazar met Bassham in Flower Mound on Wednesday, he became the 10th Tour veteran to try Bassham’s system, joining players like Justin Leonard and Ben Crane. Bassham says he offers players the mental approach that helped him win a gold medal in shooting at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal after years of struggling to reach the pinnacle of his sport. While golf and shooting have marked differences, Bassham and his clients see an overlap in which one athlete shoots at a flagstick on a green and the other fires at a tiny 10 ring on a distant target. Some of the emotions and variables, they say, are similar. Golfers don’t have to worry about pulse beats, but it’s still very similar to rifle shooting,' Bassham, 60, said in a telephone interview."There, it’s just you and the golf club; I’ve got a rifle. He has a target; I have a target. He has to consider the wind, which is what we do. I think golf is a lot closer to rifle shooting than it is to football." Bassham is cryptic about the specifics of the system, which he has put into books, DVDs and seminars. But he says part of it focuses on an athlete learning to bring balance to the conscious mind, the subconscious mind and the self image, with no factor being larger or smaller than the others. The program also teaches competitors to focus on the process in competition instead of results.
I include the link above to my EFT ebook because so many golf instructors are now using EFT. I tried it on my husband who plays regularly, free of charge, as a retirement gift. The EFT didn't work the first few times I tried it. Then one day he said he felt guilty playing golf without paying the greens fee. "Aha," I said, and applied EFT to his guilt. Ever since his golf buddies have been amazed at his much improved game. May you bend into all competition. Evy Evelyn Cole, MA, MFA Click here to view a short fascinating video about EFT:  
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