Tara Solongo on the importance of maintaining emotional intelligence during your golf round
Emotional intelligence is one of today’s trendy topics as mental health is prioritized more than ever. One of the key concepts of mental wellness is recognizing and improving your emotional intelligence skills. On the golf course, we go through a whole range of emotions without even noticing them. Our brain does its best to cope with bad shots, whether blaming others and giving you credit or telling you to quit and go home. Most of the time, we are not in control of our emotions. We simply just follow them. That’s the main reason why we don’t play as consistently as we wish. There are ways to improve our emotional intelligence skills and utilize them at the golf course.
Emotional intelligence (emotional quotient or EQ) is the ability to understand and manage your own and others’ emotions. In his groundbreaking 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Coleman preferred the term self-awareness in the sense of ongoing attention to one’s internal states. This is the first step to emotional intelligence. We simply learn to pay attention to our emotions as they arise and recognize them correctly. For instance, you may have different types of emotions towards bad shots on the golf course. Sometimes you may feel anger – other times you may feel regret and self-blame. Emotional self-awareness can be improved through various meditation techniques.
Business impact of maintaining emotional intelligence during your golf round by self-regulating your emotions.
Self-regulating Your Emotions
The second step is managing or self-regulating your emotions. Although this step takes persistent effort initially, the more you practice it, the easier it gets. Let’s say you are self-aware of your emotions and recognize them, now it is time to choose your reaction to them. You caught yourself feeling angry and envious on the course after multiple bogeys. You want to change from this disruptive energy of anger that’s boiling inside you. All you need in this situation is to make a conscious effort to pause yourself. Simply take a few deep breaths and allow yourself a 20-second pause so that your emotions get out of the way of your thoughts. Now you have a clearer mind to think and resume yourself.
Motivation to Yourself
The last step is motivation to yourself. The only way to interrupt negative emotions is to stop them and change their course toward positive and stable directions. Our motivation comes from self-empathy, goals, strengths and inner beliefs. With a clear mind from the previous pause, we motivate ourselves and build our inner strengths by reminding ourselves how much we enjoy golf. We think of our best shots from the past and the fun we get out of the game. In addition, if you have regular affirmations that you use to motivate yourself, say your affirmations to yourself a few times with genuine excited belief. After that, assure yourself that you are ready for the next shot. At this point, you have recognized your disruptive emotions, regulated them by choosing positive reactions and motivated and prepared yourself for the rest of the round.
Tara Solongo is a lawyer and a mental wellness coach. She is a founder of Agnista Mental Wellness – a coaching agency for executives, athletes and high performers.
