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Do you learn more from positive experiences or negative?

As the old Zen saying goes, "there are no lessons from victory but 1,000 lessons from defeat".
 
Positive, strongly so. My wife is a teacher, and she says: "What you concentrate on, grows." I want to enforce what is good, I don't want to emphasis, repeat or concentrate on my bad.
 
JuKu said:
Positive, strongly so. My wife is a teacher, and she says: "What you concentrate on, grows." I want to enforce what is good, I don't want to emphasis, repeat or concentrate on my bad.
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Are you able to repeat a good swing easier than correct a poor swing? Isn't not wanting a repeat a bad swing a form of learning?
 
I'd say it's equal for me. Good rounds give me positive re-enforcement of the areas I've been working on. Build confidence, yet still identify things I can improve on. Poor rounds remind me that same thing just in a more painful way. However when I'm playing poorly it gives my mental side a workout, identifies scrambling abilities, and tests my patience. I try to learn each time out.
 
i think you have to learn from both to grow as a player to know what you do wrong and work on it and also work on what you're doing right when you're playing well..... i personally if i had to pick on would prob learn more from my better rounds cause i can pick apart what i did well and try to do it the next time im out.
 
I learn in my bad rounds that I'm not as good as I think I am and I need to work harder.
 
More from bad than good I would think, but that is not to say I don't learn from both. Leaning is a process though and there was a poker quote that just came to mind "Most players will never improve because they can not bear self knowledge."

You need to admit to what is wrong before you can begin the process of improvement.
 
From a ball striking perspective? Positive - I make sure to try to capture the feel on days where I'm hitting the ball well, and think back to that the next time I go out. But, like Freddie said earlier, the bad rounds are also good to learn from, assuming you can match swing issues with what what kind of ball flight you're seeing. That said, I can't always do that - if I only could livestream all of my rounds to Freddie or something...

From a course management/strategy perspective? Definitely negative. Nothing helps me realize what shots to make than seeing what the wrong choices leave me with.
 
I think the difficulty in learning from a negative experience in golf is that we often don't know what the problem really is and start trying to make adjustments that aren't really relevant to the issue at hand, which often just makes it worse.

On the flipside, positive results can be misleading too. A great example of that is a flippy/timing based swing. The chances of making good contact are so slim when you're doing that, but there are always going to be days where the timing is just right. You leave thinking you've got it all figured out, but in reality you just beat the odds for a day and the next one probably won't be the same.

I'm not really sure Freddie. I think I'd lean towards negatives helping me more, with the caveat that I have somebody (instructor) telling me what was actually going on. Then, the positives from doing things correctly with his guidance.
 
I tend to learn more from BAD SHOTS, but I learned younger that I fatigue late in rounds pretty badly. Mostly due to being over weight and needing to fix that.

A negative round? I may not learn too much from, but I may shut down a bit if the wheels come off entirely. When a round goes REAL bad, I just start trying to work on fundimentals. As odd as this sounds, I'm very much a recovery golfer. I enjoy the trying to get out of a bad spot.
 
Do I learn more from positive or negative experiences? Yes.

There are multiple factors that weigh in on whether or not that day in particular provides me learning experiences. By and large, my mistakes are what generates the learning experience (e.g., when my instructor points out a swing flaw) but implementing the fix - and seeing the resultant great ball flight - is also very rewarding.
 
You learn from both and it's important what you take from each side. I prefer to dwell on the positive. Visualize the good stuff in your mind and you can pull from that experience.
 
I think most people learn from both experiances, but making a swing change takes so much repetition to become ingrained and habit that we continue to make mistakes over and over. Guess thats part of the reason a swing coach helps so much. He puts us in practice mode that leads to memorizing the swing.
 
I think I learn from both as has been stated. Because we don't get to play year round here, I'd say I learn more from positives - as I know what works and what doesn't.
 
Other than learning through the years how to help myself by making better choices the only thing I learn from my best rounds is that I have to make good consistent strikes in order for them to be my best rounds. Its just that simple.
 
Bad because if things aren't going well I will more likely try to change what is wrong. Something my be bad but if I am still going okay I am usually less apt to adjust.
 
I think negative experiences are what shape us the most, more in life than maybe in golf. I could get real philosophical in here about some things, but I will leave it with that I firmly believe negative experiences, hardship etc and how you respond to that adversity is what shapes a person the most.

When it comes to golf, I think it's a two edged sword, I think negative rounds can teach you where you deficiencies are and what needs to be worked on while positive rounds can reinforce and shed light on the path that hard work can lead to. Generally speaking though, a good round motivates me less, in general, then a bad round. But that doesn't mean I quit working just because I have strong together a few rounds.
 
I find it easier to repeat something than change something, but it depends on the shot. I also break things down into 3 categories: hitting the shot I want and having the ball end up where i wanted it, not hitting the shot I want and ending in a bad spot, and hitting the shot I want and ending up in a bad spot. I learn the least from hitting poorly and ending up in a poor spot because there is usually something missing from the feed back such as how the ball would have behaved on the green (chip or putt) or other info.

I think i learn best from hitting what i wanted to and not quite getting the results i thought I would because it makes me stop and rethink the shot, how hard/soft, where the ball is in my stance, alignment, etc. This will help me if I get into the same circumstance later in the round.
 
Negitive experiances make me work hard to make it a positive one so after a bad round i practice more
 
Tadashi70 said:
Are you able to repeat a good swing easier than correct a poor swing?
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Yes, very much. "Correcting a poor swing" implies that always or even most of the time, I would know what the issue is. If that would be true, I would be a professional!
Isn't not wanting a repeat a bad swing a form of learning?
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No, that is just a desire to get better. Learning, imo, is doing something you know is right and paying attention. Or, at the very least, identifying the bad and paying attention to not to reapeat it.
 
I always learn more from a negative experience than a positive experience. In the positive, things are going well and you're enjoying the ride. You're not focused on what is going right. On the negative, I'm hyper-focused to try and figure out what needs work and what I don't want to do again.

I liken it to business. I have had a few great bosses and many more bad bosses. While the experience is painful going through it, I always feel I learn far more under the bad bosses, because I'm focused on what they are doing wrong to make things miserable to ensure I don't make those same mistakes when I'm the boss. With the great bosses, you're enjoying the cooperation and workflow and don't notice the little things they are doing to keep things on track and building a positive team environment.
 
I always coach my girls that, "you learn from failing." And it's true. When you do something well you rarely think, "how did I do that?" You just rear back and do it again. It's when you fail that gives you that minute of pause and you think about what went wrong. Unless you're insane. In which case repeating the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result..... I think all golfers as people are made from the sum of their mistakes. If each of us were to look back at decisions we've made most of us would find that we wish we would have handled something differently. But it's that failure or negative experience that taught us not to out ourselves in that situation. And for that reason, unless my daughter is going to cause herself serious injury I'll tell her not to do something,ex play with a door, she'll stop until I turn my back and then I hear a scream because she pinched her finger. First thing I ask her after I make sure she's OK is, "What did you just learn? "

We'll see if Mike learned at all over the past two years or if this was just an instance where he found a bit of magic for 4 days.


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Judging from my game lately I don't learn at at. Honestly, it's a little of both tho.
 
I really don't know. My negative experiences, on the course, are getting old and I am very familiar with them. My opinion is they shouldn't be happening because I know what's wrong. Fixing it consistently is the problem. My positive experiences reassure me that when I do thing right, good things happen.
 
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