The Real Lesson of PGA HOPE
The Most Important Lesson of PGA HOPE
Introduction:
A blog post by Dr David R. Hamilton, September 27,2024, titled The Power of Acceptance: It’s Not About Giving Up (DrDavidHamilton.com) recently caught my eye. Reading it really helped me not have a melt down after I pulled that tee shot OB in a vain effort to not push it right. Then another thought rose up which hit home with much more importance; Hamilton wrote:
Understanding Acceptance
What it means: Acceptance is about acknowledging reality as it is, without resisting or denying it. It’s about saying, “This is what is happening right now.”
What it doesn’t mean: Acceptance doesn’t necessarily mean you approve of the situation or that you don’t want things to change. It simply means you see things as they are happening now without letting your emotions distort your perception.
Fall of 2024 a local country club hosted an event for PGA HOPE graduates, that event taught me a lot and lesson is the theme of this essay. The skill level of vets playing that day ranged from low handicappers to new golfers. The club put on a fantastic event which included a very delicious luncheon. During the lunch three vets spoke to the crowd. One was an fighter pilot whom I flew with years ago; the others were a Marine aviator and Army soldier from Phoenix. The soldier told a story about a friend from who couldn’t get into a HOPE class in Phoenix; shortly there-after his friend ended his life in a suicidal episode. The soldier’s story was very emotional as he spoke about driving from Phoenix to Tucson every week to do his six HOPE sessions. His detail about how he is coping with yet more life trauma, and how he felt golf helped him was inspirational. It also made me wonder what were really teaching.
Emotions are a big learning stimuli for the human brain. They trigger chemical reactions during experiences that become rather permanent memories while we sleep; the process can actually take two days. For example, a coiled snake along our path can create fear in an instant, and we can change direction to get out of its way. That fear response can stay with us all day or be accepted. During sleep our brain stores the experience as just that (an accepted experience), or, depending how long we stressed about the fear, the most terrifying event of our lives. The next time we see a snake we may simply change our path or have a complete mental meltdown, and run off into the desert. It is not hard to imagine the trauma our veterans faced in the past, but rest assured they did. Some can accept and some hold it in. Dr. Matthew Walker (sleep researcher, UC Berkeley) documented how PTSD robs us of REM and Slow Wave Sleep; without which our body cannot properly recover. Those sleep cycles also happen to be when real learning takes place.
A PGA HOPE session consists of any number of golf specific repetitions that are required to enhance neuroplasticity/learning during sleep. As we keep sleeping on reps we continually improve the skills. BUT! There’s another thing that happens during golf specific repetition: failure. Failure is another fine learning tool that doesn’t get much good press. For every successful golf shot there are numerous failures; frustration stemming from failure actually improves learning. Failure also increases stress (remember the snake), but to make it a positive learning tool requires one more ingredient: acceptance. I feel the most important learned new skill during HOPE training is acceptance. We all see ourselves improving on the golf course through skill development, but the the real treasure is acceptance. If the soldiers friend from Phoenix had a chance to learn acceptance…who knows? That’s why I feel PGA HOPE is the most important thing we do.
Questions, Comments, Ideas