As human beings, we can choose to be at cause and in charge of a very large number of factors within our brains that affect the way we behave in any given context.

Let me take you through an simplified example of how our brain processes external events, then you can identify what must be happening inside your own mind.

You intend to play a game of golf this morning. You arise, look out of the window and see grey skies and a little rain falling.

What happens now depends on your previous experience right?

The external event is visual – you see the clouds and rain. It is auditory – you hear the rain hitting the ground, roof and so on. When you step outside, it is kinaesthetic, you will feel the water hitting you, the air will smell fresh(er), you may even taste the rain. You will feel the cooler air. You know that it is raining.

Obvious right? Sure? Ok then, how do you know it is raining? That’s right. You’ve experienced it before. You have processed the data ‘sensed’ from the external environment, passed these experiences through your brain which has tallied the sensory experiences with a similar event in the past (or a combination of events) and applied a word or phrase which adequately describes the external event for you.

You will also realise that different people will react differently to this exact same external event and use different words or phrases to describe the situation. If you are in the UK it’s possible that a phrase such as “miserable weather”, “drizzle”, “slight rain”, “downpour” would be used. it is also likely that your tine of voice would be suggestive of dissatisfaction, or unhappiness, or resignation or something similar. If, on the other hand, you were a golf course manager whose course desperately needed water, you’d likely use different words and express a tone of relief, happiness, pleasure. Same event, different behaviours manifest… because the context has changed.

Let’s dig a little deeper. When we experience an external event through our senses, the incoming data stream that hits our eyes, ears, skin, nostrils, tongue registers in the millions of bits of data. All of this data is coming to us and our brains restrict the amount of data that is processed – typically a human being processes between 5 and 9 chunks of data at once – averaging 7 chunks of data and around 300-500 kbits of data (?? check numbers) We have filtered the incoming data stream and reduced the volume of data requiring processing. We ignore all the other data. Unconsciously we have chosen which data to process. So how do we filter?

Some of the data that we accept for processing is not important to us. Based on our previous experiences, we delete that data which we consider is not relevant. (Husbands, ask your wife about this – you do it all the time. Wives, you’re right, it appears that husbands don’t listen, that’s because they think it is not relevant – it is done unconsciously).

Some of the data that we have chosen to process, does not quite fit with our preferred experiences and we distort it to our preferences. That is, we bias our fresh data with past experiences.

Some of the data we process is recognised as a momentary event – you might say that we don’t really have sufficient data to be certain about this reality, so we generalise – again based on our previous experiences.

All of this non-deleted, distorted generalised dat is processed through our own language, memories, decisions, values and beliefs, attitudes and our very personal way of deleting, distorting and generalising.

This process then provides us with our very own, unique internal representation of the external event.

It is based on this internal representation that is influenced by and influences out internal state (the way we feel) which in turn triggers changes in our physiology and the behaviour we exhibit.

Wow! And that all happens in nano-seconds!

So what’s wrong with that? Absolutely nothing. Our brains are phenomenal organs and more powerful than any computer is or can ever be.

The important point here is to understand that we filter, in our own unique way, the external events occurring around us all the time. No two individuals will see exactly the same external event (they even experience it form different places in time and place), and even if they were in exactly the same spot – they would have a different internal representation of the same event. Each individuals changes in physiology will be different (maybe very subtle, but different nonetheless) and no two individuals will behave in exactly the same way as a result.

The good news is that you can leverage some control over your own filters. The even better news is that, we can learn how the great players, the great leaders, those people that you most admire, filter similar external events.

The truly great news is that you can apply some, or all of the same filters into your processing.

You may not be able to physically swing like Tiger, or Nick, or Jack, or Seve – but you can think like them. You can process data in a way that is very similar to them. Want to?

Many successful players are motivated by their own dissatisfaction with their performance. It can be a very powerful motivator. You would expect someone who is thus motivated to improve their game to be similarly motivated in other aspects of their life.

Do you see a golf course as a series of obstacles to be avoided, or do you see the fairways and greens as the thing to hit. There are a few people who actually aim for the obstacles because they excel at the tricky shots – something discussed in the session on character and nature.

For most people, the self-directed anger resulting from dissatisfaction is not a positive state to be in. If you condemn yourself for playing poorly and use self-talk phrase such as “I should have…”, or yelling (at yourself or outwardly) your self-disgust such as “useless idiot” and perhaps more colourful phrasing – you are doomed to repeat it. Not only will you repeat the ‘error’, you are physically hurting yourself – self-condemnation causes self-directed anger causes stress causes physical distress causes physical sickness and, for many, heart failure. It’s a little as if your heart decides that’s it’s had enough of your inward abuse and is desperately trying to communicate your need to stop doing it. If you’ve had a heart attack or stroke you’ve probably completely reassessed how you live your life – and sought more tranquility, less stressful behaviours – in some cases avoiding the major contributors to your previously high stress levels – work and/or golf.

Some people don’t realise that this is what they are like. The way you drive your car is often a good indicator of your style. How angry do you get when someone cuts in to the queue in front of you? When you pull up to the red traffic light, do you swerve over to the other lane to be at the front of the queue? When motoring along are you more concerned about getting somewhere quickly, or more concerned with the traffic around you?

Back to golf. When you stand at the tee, what do you focus your attention on? Your target? Avoiding the trees/bunkers/water/rough? I hope the former by now if you’ve been with me all this time. What you focus on is what you’ll get.

Motivation is  a multi-faceted phenomenon. In large part, motivation is about the satisfaction of values held. It is the result of using particular personal resources towards a specific goal that satisfies a value or value held by that individual. Connecting any of these three in any order, resources, values and outcome creates the feeling of motivation. In smaller part, though often the critical component, is encouragement to achieve a goal.

It is worth spending some time here on what we mean by encouragement. The word has ‘courage’ at it’s root. Thus, to encourage is to develop, enhance or build courage. Courage, you’ll remember, is not the absence of fear but the continuation to do something of which you are fearful. It follows therefore, that if we ‘encourage’ ourselves – we are building the strength to overcome our fears and commit to an action. Encouragement itself, is often mistaken for motivation – or exchanged for it. In order to get someone to accomplish something – they will need to be motivated and/or encouraged to do so. it is possible to get someone – or even yourself – to do something which does not satisfy a value – but such actions are not repeated if no personal value is realised.

For example, many beginner golfers give up playing after being encouraged (usually by a relative or close friend) to take up the game. They continue to ‘try’ to play until they find that they do not realise something of value for themselves. Yes, there are people who don’t like or enjoy golf. Shocking but true. Encouragement is good, but it is not a substitute for genuine motivation.

There are some fundamental needs that we as human beings find motivational. There’s plenty of books and papers on the subject for the interested individual and I don’t intend to argue every combination here. However, there are some generally accepted ‘big’ motivators that the academics agree on – even if they want to put different labels to each term and put them in a different order.

Here, we consider some important background on how human beings process. This is not meant to be a detailed cognitive psychology course nor, to be honest, too much on the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) perspective – there’s plenty of material in books and online for those of you particularly interested in the detail. I just want to extract some of the fundamentals here to help understand why GAINMORE works at all.
 
So let’s start with a simple example:
Don’t think of a pink tree.
 
Obviously, you are trying to not think of a pink tree, and in order to not think about it, you have to think about it!
 
Simply put, the unconscious mind cannot process negatives – the unconscious (or sub-conscious if you prefer), follows commands. There is no evaluation, judgment, it does not rationalise, considier, review, weigh-up or assess right or wrong – it is filtered (the potential complexity of your own filters we’ll come back to – that is the job of the conscious mind). Yet the conscious mind relies on the unconscious to process the command before any evaluation can take place. Make sense?
 
Thus, to not think about a pink tree, your unconscious mind has to process the command to not think about a pink tree!
 
Let’s consider a golfing analogy again: For example, as you address the ball on the tee, you might tell yourself to NOT hit the trees? ?Don?t hit the trees, I will not hit the trees etc etc?. What are you telling yourself?
That?s right? hit the trees!
The UNConscious command is to not HIT THE TREES! And the Unconscious is very very very good at following commands! It will arrange to achieve through your muscles, body etc, whatever is necessary, to follow your command.
It?s a little like your conscious mind is the Royal Sergeant Major, and the unconscious is your platoon of squaddies! They follow your orders! It doesn?t matter how daft the order is, how harmful. The Unconscious mind follows orders. Fortunately, when the orders threaten the unconscious (e.g it?s continued existence), there are some safety mechanisms in place.
 
What has this to do with motivation then?
Essentially, our motivation direction leans either TOWARDS the value we want to satisfy, or it is AWAY-FROM a value we do not wish to satisfy.
 
Some people are fairly balanced in their motivation direction and, hopefully, you are able to use both. Most of you, I suspect, drive a car: When you drive a car you want to get somewhere – you intend to move TOWARDS your destination. Some people will get in their car, drive as quickly as possible to get to their destination in the shortest possible time. Others, want to get to their destination but are hesitant and very careful, slowly driving as safely as possible and forever concerned about NOT being in an accident. The latter are demonstrating ‘AWAY-FROM’ behaviour, the former ‘TOWARDS’.
 
Consider an alternative example, Many people have a desire to become wealthy (or financially independent or ‘better off’), others are driven away-from being poor (or in debt, or dependent).
 
The problem with AWAY FROM motivation is that issue with the unconscious mind being unable to process negatives. I do not want to be poor. I do not want to slice this tee shot. I do not want to be in a car accident. See the problem now?