When it Comes to Executing Gifts, Quit Talking about it and Just Do It!
"Over-thinking may be one reason those who teach often can't do the task as well as they'd like."
REPORTER'S NOTE: The following article really hit home with me. I recall that as I was learning to play the violin my instructor told me that I was thinking too much about my fingering, bow stroke, and notation reading, and that I should just STOP thinking and start playing. Granted, that can be easier said than done, but when it is achieved the difference in performance is significant. I suppose the same concept applies to our spiritual walk and how we approach life's challenges. Sometimes we "think" things to death. By over-analyzing situations we can block the Holy Spirit's access to our mind and spin circles, ultimately going nowhere. This PRNewswire article is a reminder to me to do the same thing in my spiritual life as I do in the world; quit talking about it and just do it! -Teresa Neumann
(Ann Arbor, Michigan)—Hoping to sink a perfect putt? Don't talk about it, just do it. Psychology research shows over-thinking may be one reason those who teach often can't do the task as well as they'd like.
Skilled athletes often maintain that thinking too much about executing a skill disrupts their performance, so University of Michigan psychology researcher Kristin Flegal and Michael Anderson, a psychology professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, tested that intuition.
Researchers asked 80 golfers to learn a unique putt, then to spend several minutes either verbally describing what they'd learned or working on an unrelated task for the same amount of time. Afterwards, they were asked to perform the putt again. The research is detailed in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
After spending only several minutes describing their putting, higher-skilled golfers needed twice as many attempts to sink their putts, compared to equally experienced golfers who did not put their memories into words. In contrast, lower skilled golfers were, if anything, helped by several minutes of verbalizing about what they learned.
"It's so elementary that if you practice something you should get better at it but we found when people had to explain what they just did, they actually got worse," Flegal said. "The problem is a mismatch between the kind of memories that we can verbalize and the more non-verbal kind of memories for skills."
Research being conducted by scientists in Italy measuring gymnastics skills demonstrates similar findings, she said.
Procedural memory controls motor skills and describing what you have done seems to disrupt procedural memories, she said, advising golfers to avoid talking about and over-analyzing their swing in between putts.
This may be especially hard for golf instructors, however, who need to talk about what they do all the time, flipping an old adage on its head: Those who teach, can't do.
