A Therapeutic Metaphor For Golf Improvement - Not

Alan's an enthusiast at everything he does - from work to golf to family. The priority sequence changes, but the enthusiasm's consistent across all three. He's also as honest and true to his friends as the day is long.
So let's focus on golf. Well Alan's a hard-working golfer, practicing or playing most days, somehow. He has a good swing, is excellent around the greens and he's an instinctively superb putter. He's good at visualisation as well and practices stepping into the shoes of his golfing heroes. He often practices on his own with two balls - one played in his mind by Tiger Woods and the other by Jack Nicklaus. He also works hard on his physical fitness, with long cross-country walks and almost daily workouts in the pool - whatever the weather.
Alan's problem in golf is that he consistently scores much worse than he should due to unforced errors - accidents you could say. The main causes of these accidents are his desire to over complicate the shot he needs to play and his resultant lapses of concentration. Instead of hitting a normal shot that he can regularly execute consistently well, he suddenly decides to try something more complicated, on impulse, and doesn't think the shot through. You won't be surprised to hear that these shots are normally disastrous and expensive!
My solution was to prepare a therapeutic metaphor; a complex story or set of stories. My object here is to keep his conscious mind occupied with the complexity of the story, while his unconscious mind finds the literal meaning hidden in the central story. That allows the unconscious mind to find its own way for him to overcome the problem.
So what metaphor to use? Well, Alan's an enthusiastic football supporter as well as a keen golfer, so a football metaphor should work. Now some of the story's based on people we both knew of, to add credibility to the story, but for the most part I made it up.
We sat down in a quiet corner of the golf club and at the appropriate moment when he was relaxed in conversation,cheap prada shoes, I told him my semi-fictional story of how I used to play golf with Dexter Adams, a former Captain of England at football in the 1950's, even though he was an amateur and played for Hendon FC. Oddly and in real life,prada sneakers, Dexter had a footballer friend called Billy Wright, who I also used to play golf with, but he wasn't the famous one who used to play for England and later married one of the Beverley Sisters - the famous singers from the 50s!
I explained to Alan that Dexter 'told' me once about a really talented footballer called Laurie - he didn't of course, but it helped with the story. Laurie played a really good game of football, "much better than I did" Dexter 'told' me. He had all the skills and the knack of being in the right place at the right time. But Laurie was failing to fulfil his promise. If he was faced with an open goal, he would try to hammer the ball into the far top corner rather than just roll it safely in. If he could head a cross easily past the goalkeeper, he would try an overhead scissor kick. Of course he often missed,oakley replica sunglasses, but when he scored in his own sensational way, he forgot about all the misses. Sadly, Dexter 'told' me, the selectors didn't. They knew he was a talent worthy of selection, but they couldn't afford for him to waste what might be Hendon FC's only opportunity to score in a tight match.
I later found out that the character I'd called Laurie was a real person from my past that I'd forgotten about. He had worked as a toolmaker at a big machine tool company in the Hendon area. I'd been telling the story to my father and he recognized Laurie as a man who worked in the company he ran. He checked out Laurie's past and it turned out that I'd met Laurie back in the 60s when I worked there before going up to University at Imperial College.
The crowds loved Laurie too, when he was on target,cheap oakley, but they began to boo him loudly when he wasn't. Finally, Dexter 'told' me, Hendon dropped him after he reacted badly to adverse comments from the manager. Fortunately for him, Laurie had a good friend outside the team who helped him to realise that what he loved most was playing for a winning team - much more important to him than scoring the occasional outrageous goal. Without the need to look for sensational opportunity, he found his concentration improved and with it his consistency.
Laurie's new found success in reserve games quickly persuaded the manager to bring him back into the club team and the national manager started to notice how easy Laurie made the art of goal scoring. The national manager called him up for the England team and he rapidly became the regular winner that he always wanted for club and country.
I continued to tell Alan about how Laurie continued to try out his more sensational goal scoring techniques, but not in the course of a game. He tried them on the practice ground for his own pleasure and for the amusement of his friends - "you never know when they might come in handy and they keep me sharp", he might have said. But he knew that his real satisfaction came from winning.
Alan listened to the story with great interest and went off to play golf. A few weeks later, I heard from Alan. He told me that he'd started winning more and playing much more consistently. He even told me that he'd got over some of his eccentric play. He'd never described it that way before, but he didn't remember my telling him the story either.
The first-second combination allows for easy maneuvering and nice "zippy" moves on the streets. If you're expecting the slouched-over, "lone, unloved and apathetic biker" riding position that many cruisers offer, you're going to be disappointed. The best position on this bike is a standard straight up and down, nearly cop-like. It's comfortable,coach outlet store online, gives you tons of visibility - you're eye-to-eye with drivers in all but the tallest SUVs. Friends that see me on the road say that I look better on this bike than the others that I've ridden - time to have a chat with the wife and see if she likes white or black.The controls have a nice "retro" look, but they are most definitely modern. Italian bike owners will be familiar with this layout. The clutch is butter smooth, allows for a lot of feathering and never gives a hint of any wooden or binary grabbiness. The instruments all have a slightly retro character, and this is also attractive, down to the speedometer that reads about 10% optimistic.
Looks like Guzzi had some left over parts from my old one, as they read almost identically. Brakes took a little getting used to. I'm more of a "front braker" person, so I usually apply the fronts and then ease the back brake in for a settling effect. Turns out that the Guzzi Linked brakes work well for this, although I adjusted my technique slightly to just use the front brake lever to peel off speed, and the rear lever to get down to business. For those of you unfamiliar, the linked brakes on equipped Moto Guzzi bikes operate the left front disc in conjunction with the rear disc. The front brake lever operates only the front right Brembo.The combination is both effective and safe. Hard to high-side a bike with linked brakes when used correctly, since you can modulate the speed of both wheels with the rear lever.