Why Searching for Good Form is a Fool’s Errand

Everyone wants to deliver their best performances more often. However, consistency is not something that can be successfully attained by striving for it.

Paradoxically, the more consistent that you attempt to become the more inconsistent your results are likely to be. You cannot become a better performer by aiming for something (a sequence of outcomes) that exists only in the past (your last result) and the future (your next result).

Analysis of the past provides opportunities for learning, but form is just what the past looks like on a piece of paper. Similarly, a focus on future performances only takes your attention away from the only place that results are created: Now.

The desire for consistency only creates an inner resistance to the reality of your performances. It leads to ‘trying too hard’ because you are not only trying to deal with what is happening, now, in this moment, but you are also attempting to fix the past (your form) at the same time.

You are not consistent. You are not exactly the same person (physically or psychologically) from one day to the next. Realise that. Instead, arrive fresh to each moment. Then being able to adapt from where you are is more valuable than striving for the notion of consistency.

Your experience, your game and your results are all better when you relax into them. If you are in great rhythm do not think about it, just do it. Enjoy it. However, sometimes the momentum of the game goes with you and at others it doesn’t. Playing your best requires working with both.
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You do not know how it is going to end up. Surrender to the unknown. Explore what is possible and work with play/ball/opportunity as it arises. Then, rather than tensing up over the concepts of consistency and form, you have fun finding out what happens.

This is an excerpt from my second book, Perform Beyond Pressure, which is available on Amazon here