³ÉÈËÂÛ̳

To be nervous your mind has to project into the future. A golfer is only going to be nervous about the first tee shot when they're sat thinking about what may happen. In an exam situation, you're sat there wondering what's going to happen if you fail - what the consequences will be. Your mind's jumped forward.

The mind can go backwards and forwards into the past and into the future. You have to remember that the body can't time travel. Any time you focus on anything in your body the mind is going to be in the present. That's why breathing is so effective. Just sit for a few moments and focus on your breathing. That way you bring yourself back to the here and now.

We're conditioned into thinking that certain sensations in our body are bad. A golfer will be told 'When you feel certain things on the first tee, that's first tee nerves.' An actor is told that 'When you get certain feelings in your body that's stage fright.' We get a feeling in our body, and we feel it's bad.

Carly Simon had to stop singing because she had stage fright. Bruce Springsteen read the description of what Carly Simon had when she got stage fright - palpitations and sweaty palms. He looked at that and said 'Well if I don't get those feelings I can't sing.' He got the same sensations but he labelled them as a good thing rather than a bad thing.

What is nervousness? Nervousness is an increased heart rate. If nervousness is an increased heart rate we can do something about that. There are techniques to bring it down. Instead of calling it nervousness, why not call it energy? If a golfer was on the first tee and thought he had first tee energy, he'd have a different approach than if he thought he had first tee nerves.

If a golfer is on the golf course, it helps if he stays tuned in on what's going on around him. If he can hear birds singing and feel the ground underneath his feet, he's tuned into what's going on in the present moment. That tends to calm the mind down.

We're bombarded at school and at work with information. We're often told that multi-tasking is a great thing, but what this often amounts to is doing lots of things badly. Whatever the situation, remember, take it one hole at a time.