Don’t be scared, it ain’t weird – to meditate

by Tim O'Connor March 5, 2025March 7, 2025

Photo: Zoltan Tasi / Unsplash

In my new book, Getting Unstuck: 7 Transformational Practices for Golf Nerds, I argue that the best thing you can do to respond more effectively to your negative and distracting thoughts in your golf—and your life—is to meditate. The following is an edited excerpt:

Most golfers go through a round of golf without a clue what their minds are doing. It’s like we’re in a trance, carried unconsciously this way and that by our thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviours. This is no way to play golf or live your life.

The mistake that many golfers make is a belief that their thinking is their problem. No, it’s their relationship with their thinking.

Here’s what I’m proposing: rather than unwittingly being caught up in your thinking—as, if you’re honest, you normally do—I invite you to witness your mind. Not control, manage or change what your mind does. Just witness.

To transform your relationship with your mind, you must first become aware of its tendencies, content, behaviours, and more. Transformation is impossible without awareness of what’s in our blind spots.

The No. 1 way to improve your relationship with your mind is to practice meditation.

If your first reaction is, “Yeah, right, meditation is woo woo,” I get it. Or it reeks of McMindfulness like the self-help section in a bookstore. Perhaps you gave it a shot during a vacation with a bunch of folks in yoga pants, but figured it wasn’t for you.

As Dan Harris wrote in Ten Percent Happier, meditation has a PR problem. To paraphrase Harris, many golfers associate mediation with something mystical like levitating through some kind of cosmic goo to have tea with Buddha. Or you must renounce worldly things, light incense, and listen to sitar music.

Consider, however, that elite performers of all types meditate, including Rory McIlroy, Wyndham Clark, Luke Donald, Novak Djokovic, Simone Biles, Natasha Hastings, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Carlie Lloyd, Barry Zito, Aaron Rogers, and Serena Williams, as well as performing artists, and high-level business executives.

We’ve all watched athletes sitting alone on TV before a game with their eyes closed. They’re meditating.

Paul Dewland, mental coach to top tour players around the world, insists that all his clients have or begin a meditation practice.

Here’s a rough definition: meditation is the practice of noticing without judgment, struggle or effort to change or control anything.

I have been meditating for about 20 years. I’m with Harris that it’s made me a little less volatile and even lightened me up over the years, but I still screw up and get occasionally messed up. But I believe that meditation has increased my awareness so that I can respond more quickly and skillfully to my mind’s shenanigans.

To me, being aware is one of the most practical and important things I can do in my golf and my life. Awareness is essential to executing any task and for effectively dealing with any situation, whether it’s recovering from a drive out of bounds, driving a car safely, or negotiating a business deal. If you are distracted, caught up in thought and awash in negative emotions, you cannot perform near the peak of your talent, skills, and experiences.

Being unaware is no excuse for anything.

There are many misconceptions about meditation that I believe make some golfers resistant to it.

Many people have told me that they gave up on meditation because they weren’t good at it—that they were “bad” meditators. No matter how much they tried, they still had thoughts. Some say they’re unable to “clear” their minds.

Let’s take that last one on first. If your mind is clear, it means you are dead. Golf is hard enough without you being dead. Your mind is always focused on something. That is natural; that’s what your mind does. Your mind is a thinking machine. It exists to think. If you are thinking, you are alive and healthy.

Secondly, you cannot be a bad meditator. Most people say they cannot stay focused on anything for more than a few seconds. That’s good news! It means you are a human being with a mind, and exceedingly normal.

Meditation is not about controlling your thoughts. No matter how much we might try to stop thinking about something, we cannot control our thoughts. They just keep on coming. If, for, example, you’re worried about screwing up down the stretch of a tournament, that’s normal. However, you can choose how to respond to your thoughts and shift your attention to something that serves you in the moment.

You could, for example, look intently at your surroundings, feel your feet as you walk, listen closely to your fellow competitors, feel the breeze on your face, smell the fresh-cut grass, and so on.

Through mediation, you develop the skill of awareness about what your mind is doing, which allows you to choose a response that serves you.

Rather than being jerked around by your mind and repeating self-sabotaging behaviours, you will develop awareness of what you are thinking and feeling which dictate your behaviours. Rather than be hijacked, you have an opportunity to discern what you consciously want to do.

That alone will make a difference in your golf and in your life.

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