Overcoming Inertia

by Dr. Richard C. Myers

WWW.THINKANDREACHPAR.COM

Our muscles have a mind of their own and will not move unless we make them. All of us have a tendency in ourselves to continue doing what we are doing, and may have to take rather drastic means for shifting our actions toward practice. Like Newton's law of motion, once our muscles are shifted, they would prefer to continue golfing unless acted upon by some outside force. That is what I mean by overcoming inertia. We need to take the initiative to practice.

I had a brother who was hard to get out of bed in the mornings and hard to get to do anything. One morning on the farm feeding the cows, I was working and my brother was sitting on a bale of hay watching me. My Dad came up and said, "why aren't you helping your brother?" My brother replied, "Dad, how do I get started.". My Dad replied, ""Pick up something."

When in college we were instructed on how to overcome inertia in buckling down and studying. We were simply told, "Open the book." That is like everyone who subscribes to my newsletter on the Think and Reach Par website, receives Joe Novak's 8 Steps to Golf absolutely free. I get many emails from readers telling me how good the book is and how much it has helped them, etc. But I would be willing to bet that 90% of the people who receive it never read it!! And probably their handicaps are double digit.

Open the book and read it, plug the video in and watch it. Get your clubs out and practice. Just get started.

I grew up on a farm. I remember as a little boy, in the fall of the year, we would go over to an uncle's and Dad would help him make sugar cane syrup. To extract the juice from the sugar cane, a piece of machinery was used that looked somewhat like a large coffee grinder. A mule was connected to a long lever arm and went around and around in a large circle to move the machinery that extracted the juice. This process went on all day long. 

On occasions when there was no work to be done, it was not unusual for the mule to leave the barn at the usual hour, go to the sugar mill, and begin nudging the lever arm. If the arm was out, he would begin plodding his circular path. There are probably many psychological approaches to this, but the main point is that this mule was overcoming inertia.

My point this week: get out of the chair, get the clubs out of the closet, go into the yard or driving range and practice your putting, swing, or whatever you need to work on. If you don't take the effort to do it, it will not get done.