How to Stop Swinging When Not Focused or Ready - Q and A

In this episode of Above Par, we dive into the common challenges golfers face when standing over the ball.

Through real Q&A snippets from the Think About Par Club, we explore issues like dealing with uncertainties, focusing on difficult versus easy shots, and maintaining discipline and awareness.

Learn practical tips on committing to shots and improving mental focus that can translate to better performance on the course and in life. Tune in for valuable insights and strategies to help you play your best game.

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Transcript

0:26

Hi, my golf friends. Welcome back to above par. Super happy you're here. So I have a special podcast episode for you. I'm giving you a sample of some of the Q and a questions that come up in the think about par club. I think they're going to be really relevant to you. That you're gonna be able to relate to them as we talk about what happens over the golf ball, some things that we have a tendency to do, whether we focus a little bit more intently over shots that are more challenging than we do over easy shots, or just standing over the ball and listening to all the chatter in our head and deciding to swing anyway. So I'm going to share some of the questions with you and some of the answers that I had. And our back and forth and our Q and a section of the think above par club. So here we have it. I hope you enjoy. Okay. So what's your question? My question is about hit it anyway, shots. You're over the ball, you're getting ready to take your backswing and you're like, I'm not aimed too far right. The ball looks like it's teed up too high. You have uncertainties that pop up and you just hit it anyway. Does any, do you or other people in the group have tips and tricks for making yourself back off and address the uncertainty? Okay. That's self awareness and discipline. That's it. I mean, it happens so fast. Do you know what I mean? Like you have this thought, you think, that's fine. And then you hit it. Yeah. Listen, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna lie to you. I do it too. Right. There's moments where You feel like you can just override yourself. Like it's okay. I can still make a good swing. And then you get a shit shot and you're like, I can't believe I swung. Okay. So when you have enough, remember there's three stages of awareness. Right. The first stage is it's going to be after the occurrence happens and you'll look back and go, I swung and I had all these uncertain thoughts and I swung and I created this crappy result. Then you're going to be over the ball, which is where you are right now. Yeah. You're over the ball and you're witnessing your brain cry and you'll create a lot of doubt for you. Now, some of it might be valid, some of it might be just fear based, I think both exist, right? So now you're over the ball and you're basically, you're, you are the spectator watching a movie, like you, your consciousness is watching a movie of your brain going through, isn't that the experience you were like going, I'm watching my brain, like sitting back on, look at it and look at all this other stuff. Like, what do I do about it? I just sway. So that's where you are right now. And you're feeling like it happens so quickly, then you want to get ahead of it. And this is where your post round evaluations become super useful. When you go through and say, what, what went well, what didn't go so well, what would I do differently? And you'll go, what didn't go so well was I swung when I had uncertainty and my brain was chattering at me. And what I do differently is I'd step away. And then what would you do? Right? And so I, I would tell you, I would come up with some very solid swing thoughts. I don't want to tell you what to do because I promise you all have the answers inside your brain and what works best for you. But that's what I would suggest. And you explore, you might sit there and say, I'm just going to rub my belly and pat my head and I'll be fine. Okay, great. I mean, if that works for you, whatever, I'm not going to tell you what doesn't work, but I would come up with some solid, Go to thoughts. That's why I have those If you have those download on those power thoughts that I have or power phrases They're just kind of standard thought golf thoughts that you can have over the ball that are great to replace Doubt and certainty so then You go to the last stage where you get ahead of it. Okay. So today i'm going to send an intention That if I'm, this is how we train our brain. We set intentions, right? I'm gonna set an intention that if I find myself having doubt or not being committed, basically is, what's happened is you, you didn't completely commit to the shot, And so when I find that I'm gonna step away until I can have a thought or have a way of blocking out those thoughts. so that I can make a swing and be okay with the result because what happens is that the result might not be great, but you don't want the result to be because I didn't manage my mind over the golf ball. I would much rather your result be because I'm a human and this is part of my errors in my wheelhouse of things that I miss in golf, right? That's golf. Now we can accept that that's like your goal. Like now this is going to be my mission. The other thing I want to tell you, if this is an experience for you, is that The way that we commit to golf shots is the way you commit to anything in your life. And if you are not in the habit of committing to things and having your own back, then you are going to second guess yourself. So I would start with making it a habit to commit to things and keeping your word to yourself. That's how you build a lot of confidence. And that's how you build a lot of certainty. So what would that look like? I've had calls on this and topics on this before that you can probably find in the archives and searchy, but it's as simple as Let's say you, you want to get up and work out at 6 30 AM and you talk yourself out to it out of it every morning, right? You're not keeping your word to yourself. What you're doing is you're proving to yourself that you make a commitment. Don't keep your word. So it's not about creating a commitment. That's easy for you. Like I'm going to drink five glasses of water today, but that's easy. You do that anyway. That's not what I'm saying. It's about building up that commitment. To yourself about things that might be a little bit more challenging, where you're not keeping your word to yourself, where you're not following through, or you're not having your own back. And as you get in the habit of doing that on purpose, setting an intention in your day to day life, that when you stand over a golf ball and say, it's a seven iron, I'm going to hit it the middle of the green. And this is my target. This is my intermediate target. Let's go. Then when you listen to your brain, you can decipher the difference between, is it, a lack of commitment? Or actually, is it me being really self aware that maybe I didn't aim at the right spot? Right? So I've stood over the ball and go, I don't think that's, I think I missed, you know, you picked like, I do, okay, but you don't have to do this. But I picked little pieces of grass. And sometimes they're like close. And you're like, wait, I think I picked the wrong piece of grass when I step back behind the ball. And you're like, that doesn't seem right. And I step back, right? Because I trust myself and know to know my instincts that that feels like I'm aiming too far, right? I don't want to swing if I feel like I'm aiming too far, right. So that would be if it's a club selection, know that you're second guessing, that's. Being committed over the golf shop, like getting done with your caddy process. My caddy job is done. Now it's time for me to be a player. If you're still questioning your caddy job over the golf ball, your brain's going to get really chatty. Okay. Anybody else? Yeah, yeah, go ahead, Becky. Hey, um, yeah, I played an event, uh, this past weekend that, you know, went pretty well, but I've noticed this for a long time, that sometimes when you're in trouble, and you, you're really trying to make a recovery shot, and this happened to me this weekend, I was in a fairway bunker, big lip, 100 yards from the green, and, uh, I'd gotten in there on my drive, So, I just hunkered down and thought about all the things I wanted to do and pictured it and focused and, you know, hit a shot 12 inches from the hole. Now, I can do those shots. I can get out from under trees. I can pull off what I would call really great, miraculous shots. But I don't have that same focus and that same vision I'm like a Seven iron shot to a par three or my other shots on the course. It's like, I can really double down on these trouble shots and pull them off now, but it's the shots, it's your normal golf shots that I don't think I'm focusing enough. I don't know. What would you say? Okay. So there's some validity in that. And this is again, self awareness on paying attention to it, We can have moments of let's just call it urgency that we snap into a little bit deeper, focus and attention, Where your brain lack of intention on this is just a seminar in the middle of the fairway and we get lazy with our thinking, right? So we got to go through the motions without every really putting in any intention and then we end up getting sloppy. So it is about this goes into this nice segue into exactly what I want to talk about today. It's to be interesting to hear what your brain calls it and I can't recall actually just like you're easy just like Simple run of the mill, mid, low, short iron, right? Should be able to do it super easy and kind of stand over it. This is where we end up doing what Jennifer talked about, where we don't back away from the ball because we're not being so intentional, but you have a really challenging shot, you got to hit a knockdown or you got to get out yourself out of trouble. And think about what you are thinking. You're thinking about what I need to do, what club I need to hit, where it needs to go, how high I need to hit it. What the contact looks like, and I'm saying different situations. What is the exact club that I need? Like, and you're visualizing maybe how much lip you have to carry or how much tree you got to go under, whatever it is, right. You're so intentional and present. That's what makes you focus. Cause you're up here. And so the routine. Of thinking about what you have to do over shots, getting in the habit of being a caddy versus a player on every shot is what helps you stay focused. That's what helps you stay from making those mistakes on those easy shots that kind of then tick us off when we like, you mean, how did I disagree with a wedge? Like what was, I mean, I didn't even aim. I was like, I was thinking about what I was going to have for lunch, right? You weren't thinking about what you were going to have for lunch over that shot. In a bunker. And so this is another awareness thing that you can start. Paying attention to and then setting an intention is just retraining your brain, setting an intention that you're going to focus and and think about the shot. Be caddy versus player, whatever works for you over as many shots as possible. Right? And this goes back to Jennifer was the first person who'd had the inverse correlation between calm, certain and confident in her score. The more shots she hit from calm, certain and confident, the lower her score got dramatically. Like, it was a big swing. I think you started out in the low 60s, maybe, with your calm, certain, and confident, and her scores were in the mid 80s, and she got it to in the 90s, and her scores were in the mid 70s. That's huge. so what would we categorize this? It's not that you're not calm. It could be that you're not present. You've got to kind of define that situation. That's where going back through. And every once in a while deciding I'm going to pay attention to how many, times I'm calm, certain or confident over a golf ball, right? And then you might catch those moments where you're a little lackadaisical, right? It's about, you know, going, I'm a person who sometimes I'm a person who doesn't pay attention over eight iron shots. And I'm going to send an intention to pay attention more This is who I am right now. It might be something different later on. Does that make sense? Mm-Hmm. Yeah. Thank you. Where else does that show up in your life? Because that's where you're going to be able to kind of sharpen that up. Does that make sense? Yeah, that's a really good thought is looking for situations in your life where you're not totally focused. Um, I mean, you're going through the motions and you're, well, in golf, you know, on these other shots, I'm, you know, aiming and I'm Thinking about the swing, but not to the extent that I do on these trouble, what I call trouble shots or, you know, yeah, because in your mind, your mind, just like, these are easy. I've done these a million times, right? It's not very challenging, but we, we miss that every little thing matters over a shot. Like Jennifer was referring to, if your aim is off a little bit, or if you just make a lazy swing, because with that comes. A laziness of thinking comes a laziness in your body. And so we can make kind of a lazy swing. We leave it out to the right. And we're like, I didn't even swing at that. Why didn't I swing at that? And so that's where the actions end up, coming into play. Alright there, you have it. My friends, there's a little sample of some of the calls that we have. And the thing about par club. And I'm sure that you can relate to what Jennifer and Becky were talking about, about standing over the ball and not being ready or focusing more on difficult shots. Then easy and. Run in the middle shots. So hopefully you had some nice takeaways. If you want to reach out to me. And connect with me, make sure you get onto my email list@cathyhartwood.com forward slash join. All right. My friends have a beautiful day and I'll talk to you next Wednesday by.