THE MENTAL GAME

Understand Your Junior’s Attitude to Empower Their Game

006-JGMar17_MentalGameBy Sam and Linda Goldfarb

Do you understand the personality of your junior golfer enough to empower his or her game? If you’re a junior reading this, perhaps you’ll want to pass this along to your parents after you’re through because this understanding is a key element to better communication and better golf.

The most popular series we teach as parent coaches is Understanding Your Family’s Personalities. In this series, we utilize two widely known designations of the four basic personality types:

• Dominant/Powerful: Loves Control, Avoids Rest, Needs Appreciation
• Influential/Popular: Loves Fun, Avoids Routines, Needs Attention
• Steady/Peaceful: Loves Quiet, Avoids Extra Work, Needs Peace
• Conscientious/Perfect: Loves Order, Avoids Trivial Pursuits, Needs Space

Do you recognize your golfer and yourself in the types above? As a junior, whom do you recognize in these traits? How are you different or similar? The behavioral styles and personality types we use are based on the DISC and Personalities teaching models, where Linda holds advanced certification. So let’s dig a little deeper.

Each of us functions within a dominant and secondary personality type based on our nature (what we were born with) and our nurture (what life has taught us). There are strengths and weaknesses in every one of them, and no one personality is better or worse than another – they’re just different.

Becoming familiar with these personality types can improve communication and interaction between the parent and the junior golfer, while reducing stress in the home. Basically, attitudes will change when there is an understanding, which will help everyone to get along much better. And who doesn’t want to have a happier home, right?

HERE ARE THREE WAYS YOU CAN IMPROVE EVERYONE’S ATTITUDE IN YOUR HOME:

1. Consider Your Own Personality.
Mom and Dad, once you learn why you do and say the things you do, then you’re more likely to be patient and understanding of your child’s attitude. Based on the short descriptions above, are you Powerful, Popular, Peaceful or Perfect?

2. Discover Your Child’s Personality.
To better understand your child, recognize that he or she may be different from you, and that you don’t need to fix your child. Based on the brief descriptions featured earlier, where does your junior fit on the personality scale?

3. Take Personality-Based Action.
It’s important to use, on a consistent daily basis, what you learn about the personalities. You may need to use different words, phrases and tones to effectively communicate with all of your family members, based on each individual’s dominant personality type.

As parents, we carry the responsibility to understand our child, not vice versa. Once you accept your junior golfer as he or she is, then you can lead them on a journey to higher success in life and in the game of golf. Just recognizing the differences gives you a leg up on experiencing a happier home as well.

We’ll see you on the first tee with a great attitude!

Sam and Linda Goldfarb specialize in improving family dynamics via personality-based learning. They are the founders of ParentingJuniorGolfers.com and ParentingAwesomeKids.com, based out of San Antonio, Texas.