Sebastian is about fifty years old and plays in amateur golf competitions.On some days, he’d do great.On other days he had a terrible score. He was plagued by inconsistency.He asked the author of The Third Ear to coach him with his mental games, and they started by analyzing what was going on.
It turned out that on the days when he had a good score he was thinking about just one shot at a time.He said to the author,’You know, it works when you focus on what’s just in front of you… think about what you’re doing as you do it!’When he was scoring badly, he was using up his energy worrying that he was ‘behind’, or that the other guy would catch up.Worse, he began to talk to himself.

‘Hmmm,I’m four shots down,’ it would begin. It was a quite voice to start with. Then it got stronger. ‘You’re losing.’ A slight palpitation in the heart.Fear, maybe? Then, ‘Here we go again. Another bad streak coming on.’ Tension grew in his shoulders. The voice would get even stronger. ‘Oh, man, this is a really tough shot! How am I ever going to make this one?’ Indecision would set in.There were times when Sebastian didn’t even know which club to pick any more! Soon the voice was at a full pitch. ‘You’ll never make that shot! You’re dead!’ Sebastian would swing and, as anticipated, the ball would begin to curve in the air and go in exactly the wrong direction.He was even further behind.

Researchers have been studying patterns of brain activation in golfers. The research shows quite conclusively that, the better a golfer is, the less brain activity he has in the seconds before he makes his shot. The key difference between pros and amateurs is in the left hemisphere of the brain. This is the place that logic, analysis and verbal thinking happen.Quite clearly, the better a golfer is, the less self-talk he has. How do you think does matter.

Which explains why Sebastian wasn’t hitting the ball where he wanted it to go.Now, instead of getting rid of his self-talk, which could be quite difficult, he decided to say more useful things to himself which just made his game get better.

Through this example, we can see that a negative self-talk will hinder your performance and a positive one will help you get better.Similar to playing golf, different types of self-talk will affect our language-learning in the same way. From my perspectice,not just in the area of sports or language-learning, it has to do with anything you want to do or you are doing.

So, if you want to come to grips with a language, you need to reduce your brain activity and self-talk.If it is difficult for you to do so, I suggest that you should talk something positive to yourself.Which will make your learning easier and happier.