10 Life-Changing Lessons Mental Golf Teaches You—Beyond the Course

n this milestone 200th episode of Think Above Par,  Kathy dives into "10 Ways Golf Impacts Your Life." She shares heartfelt insights on how mastering the mental game of golf doesn't just improve your performance on the course but transforms your daily life. From managing emotions and building self-confidence to creating stronger relationships and even reducing road rage, this episode is packed with wisdom, humor, and inspiration. Tune in to celebrate this special episode and discover why working on your mental game is the gift that keeps on giving—on and off the course.

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Transcript

Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hartwood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of underperforming so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are going to learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Let's get to it.

And welcome back to Think Above Par. I'm again, as always, super happy you are here and listening. So I appreciate you taking the time out of your day, whatever you're doing to plug me in, plug in this podcast. Actually, not plugging me in, but you're plugging in this podcast to listen to what I have to say about the mental part of golf. And this happens to be my 200th episode.

And I'm just going to say it's kind of like nightmares that I have about school, that I missed a class or something and they're going to take my degree away. Or we had to do these special cultural points. I went to Furman University, and at that time we had to do these cultural credits that we had. And I for years had nightmares that I didn't get enough cultural credits and they were going to call me back and take my degree.

I think a little bit of this I have to do with this being my 200th episode, because sometimes I forget to number some. And so I think it's 200. I'm pretty sure it's 200. We're going to say it's 200. If someone went back and had to count each one and they would correct me. But as far as I'm labeling them, this is my 200th episode. It's just amazing to me that I have done 200 podcasts.

I'm going to tell you, when I first started this, the encouragement that I had was to come up with 25 topics before you decide you're going to start a podcast. So I sat down with pen and paper. I came up with 25 topics. And one of the things that I was concerned about was that I was actually going to be able to keep producing topics that you would find value in that you would listen to.

And 200 podcasts later, I get so much information. My brain has evolved and expanded, and I hear things differently and I see things. And my clients give me so much content as well. Whether that's in a coaching call or whether that's in the membership or whether it's even just playing golf with people. I just See different places and different topics that I hadn't thought about before. So I appreciate all my clients.

They often know I'm in a call and I'll sit there and go, oh, that's a podcast idea that I just had. Or in some of the membership calls. And I talk about how this is a podcast that I have coming up and I want to discuss it with them and see what they think and have their input before I actually record it. So I'm really appreciative to all those people who help support me in the topics.

And some people, sometimes you all send me some notes and some messages and some emails with some podcast ideas. So keep them going. I want to go and do another 200 more, I think podcast for you to just help you manage your mind around the game of golf in life. And what I wanted to do on this 200th episode for you, which is getting released the day before Thanksgiving here in the United States.

So I was thinking, you know, maybe not a lot of people will be listening to podcasts about golf the day before Thanksgiving, so you might be listening to this later, which is awesome. But I wanted to discuss or share with you rather 10 things, 10 ways that managing your mind, working on the mental part of golf, learning how to master your golf brain, can actually shift and impact your life in a positive way.

And hopefully this will give you incentive to put in the work. And when I say put in the work, it's just to be more cognizant of what you're doing, more self aware, putting in a little bit more effort, being more intentional, caring, maybe a little bit more knowing that you actually have agency and control over this and that it's not as hard as you think it is, and that if you can see the upside to actually working on the mental part of golf, working on that not only for the benefit of your golf game, but also for your life and how it's going to impact everything.

Then hopefully some of you might be inspired this season, this year, next year to really dive in a little bit deeper, maybe listen to the podcast again, maybe get involved in some of the programs that I offer, get some coaching. I hope that inspires you because the impact that working on the mental part of golf can have on your day to day life is huge. And I see this day in and day out with my clients.

I see it day in and day out with myself. That's why I started this podcast to begin with, is it's one of those things that I struggled with my whole life since I'VE been playing golf. I was born with a golf tee in my mouth. For the most part, that had to hurt, you know, for my mom. But I was, I was born with a golf club in my hand, let's put that way sounds better because I grew up in a golf family and I just lived at a golf course from a very early age just to hang out with my dad.

So golf has been a part of my life since the beginning and it still is. And I know the impact that it has had on me by not being able to manage my mind around a game and how it's affected my results and how I felt and how I felt about myself. And so the shift was really something I looked for for my whole life, not for playing golf.

I would have just changed so much had I known these tools earlier. And so that's why I'm incentivized to share it with you and encourage you to actually put in the work. Okay, so let me share with you 10 ways that your life is positively impacted by working on the mental part of golf. So working on mental golf, you will learn, or at least you'll learn through what I coach you on, what my theory is about it, the way that I teach it, my methodology, if you want to call it.

I don't, I don't think it's a methodology, but it's just the way that I approach the mental part of golf. I think I do it a little bit differently than most mental coaches. I. I'm a little more big picture when it comes to working on this part of your game. The first thing is that you decide what you get to think anywhere on the golf course. I showed you how to think before you hit a golf shot so that it's going to impact your results in a positive way and your emotions in a positive way.

I also help show you how to think after a shot. When you hit a crappy shot, you get to decide learning how that you get to decide whatever the heck you think at any given moment in time. You take that out into your day to day life. That's really going to impact and change your life versus feeling like you're at the effect of a lot of the thoughts that go through our brain and circumstances.

So you are the creator of your thoughts and you get to take that anywhere. The second thing is emotional management. So I teach and encourage people, golfers to process emotions in 90 seconds on the golf course because we don't have a lot of time and that actually is all it takes to process most emotions. Other than grief, maybe shame and some other ones, that it only takes 90 seconds.

And when you learn how to do that on the golf course, because you're practicing it so that you can benefit your next shot, so that you can hit from calm, certain or confident, and you learn how to do that, you can find evidence of ways that you can do that in your day to day life so that you are in control of how you get to feel at any given moment in time.

You don't need to stay pissed off and frustrated and aggravated or irritated or down or depressed or sad. You get to shift to something that's going to serve you better. And you realize that it only takes 90 seconds to shift an emotion. The third one is confidence and actually more about building self confidence. So confidence can deal with your ability to do something, like your ability to play the game of golf, for instance.

And when you learn to separate out your confidence from your self confidence is just something that I teach and I coach people on and I help you build then self confidence you can take anywhere, no matter what state or level your game is, what, no matter what's happening off of the golf course, you get to carry with you self confidence every single day. And it's something that I encourage all of my clients and you and all the listeners to build and work on every single day.

We are not born with self confidence. It's something that we have to be deliberate about. And there's processes to do that. Building your self confidence and separating it out from the confidence you might have and hitting a bunker shot that day, or your putting or your green reading skills. The fourth thing is getting to neutral. And what that means is that if we're in a negative emotion or a negative place about something and we want to feel positive about it, but really we just can't because we might not like the golf course, we might not like the party we have to go to.

We really don't like the person that we have to spend some time with. No matter what happens, we have to pass through neutral. We have to pass through like it's okay. And on the golf course we learn to get to neutral because neutral can serve us way better than being in a negative place. So you learn how to get to neutral on more situations that might be negative in our day to day life when we can make them neutral, our experience shifts so much.

So you learn how to get to neutral on things that in the past might have bugged the crap out of us, or irritated us, or just bummed us out. Neutral is A beautiful place to be. Number five is your relationships with other people can dramatically shift. So in other words, when you show up differently, relationships are just thoughts that we have about people, right? There's Billy over there.

You have thoughts about them, that influences how you feel and that changes and shifts how you show up with Billy on a day to day basis. On the golf course, we have to play with people and different people sometimes every round. And when you learn how to make people neutral, have more grace and less judgment for other people, you learned how to manage your mind around them. Then you get to take that to your day to day life where people won't aggravate you as much, where you get to show up differently.

And when you show up differently, the way they interact with you changes. So as people work on the mental part of their game and they shift it the way that they think not only about their situations and they get to decide what their thoughts are, they get to manage their emotions, they show up differently in their world. And when you show up differently in your world, you change your relationship with other people, especially those closest to you.

You end up getting closer to them. Those relationships can shift in a positive way. And that is a beautiful thing. Number six is just your ability to focus and be present in your day to day life can greatly be impacted because you learn how to focus and be present on the golf course and it really is initiated from an emotion, right? There are certain emotions that we just can't focus and we can't be present.

But on the golf course, it's so important to get back to being concerted and confident. And when we're in that place, we learn to focus and be more present and use the front part of our brain, right? And when you learn how to do that skill on the golf course, then you enjoy those day to day activities and be present with your people. And what you're doing off of the golf course as well.

Number seven is about creating more certainty and uncertainty. Because on the golf course there's so many things that we're not certain about. I mean, we don't control much on the golf course, right? There's, you don't control the weather, you don't control the conditions, the pairing, the course, maybe that you're playing, pace of play, the lie, the bounce, the luck that you have, there's so many things that are out of our control.

And on the golf course, when we have things out of our control or that we're not certain about, that can create a lot of anxiety and a lack of safety for us. And that's why golf can create a lot of fear and anxiety for people, is because there's so many things that we can't control that we're not certain about. But when you learn how to deliberately create certainty on the golf course, being certain about the things that you do know, right, that you do know at that given moment, maybe about that shot or how to play that shot, when you can certainty stack, which is what I teach, you can create a level of safety for yourself.

And when you create a level of safety and control, then your anxiety goes down. So off of the golf course, when you learn how to manage your anxiety, when you get to create more certainty for yourself in those uncertain circumstances, that is basically day to day life. That's really going to change the way that you show up and how you feel. If we could walk around life in a lot of situations and feel like we had some more more control and agency, therefore we had less anxiety because we felt more safe, that's a huge thing for a lot of people.

That's everything is being able to manage our anxiety. Number eight is about managing pressure or dealing with pressure or pivoting out of pressure is really the way that I like to talk about it. And when I coach people who come from all kinds of walks of life, some are very successful in high pressure jobs, trial attorney or a surgeon, for instance, where maybe you and I might think, wow, that's really a lot of pressure to be in those situations.

They will come to me and say, I'm really, really good in this situation. I know how to manage pressure, I know how to deal with pressure. And my point is, and those scenarios and those conversations is we get very familiar with dealing with pressure in our own environment. And a lot of times what happens is we stay small, so to speak. We stay in the things that we are familiar with that keep us safe and certain from the last example I gave you.

And so we can manage pressure. We have evidence of how to do it, we can pivot in our head. We get to function very highly in situations that seem very pressure filled for a lot of other people because we are just really familiar and have a system for doing it. But then take them to a different situation, right, where maybe it's not so pressure filled for somebody else, but for them, they don't know how to manage that pressure.

What golf does is it allows you to realize that pressure comes from thoughts, right? It is an emotion, it is not necessarily a situation. And you get to pivot to something that is More manageable, something that where you can function, where you can still swing freely and think clearly. And when you learn that pressure is just an emotion, it is not a situation, then you get to take it to everything that you do.

Not just your small little world of familiarity where you've gotten really good because of rehearsal, on dealing with pressure, because it's safe there for you. You get to take any situation in life which might be pressure filled, so to speak, and get to pivot out of it so that you can function at a higher level and enjoy that you know, you don't like crumble to the pressure, so to speak, in those situations, whatever they might be in our day to day life.

So managing pressure better, okay, and number nine, which is the one that actually matters to me the most, it is actually what it's all about for managing your mind on your golf, on the golf course. It is what it's all about for you, performing your best in playing to your potential. And I think it's what it is all about in your day to day life. And that is your relationship with yourself shifts.

The language that you say to yourself, your self worth, your self esteem, having your own back, being kind to yourself, not shaming yourself, not shutting yourself, realizing that you are not your golf game, that you are not a number on a scorecard, that you are not a double bogey, you're not a shank, you're not a three putt, you're not a win, you're not a loss, you're none of it.

You're perfect and whole and worthy just as you are, no matter what happens with the game of golf and when your relationship shifts, when you can have your own back, when you can walk off of 18 and say, I'm proud of myself and I'm proud of the way I showed up, even though I didn't score the way that I wanted to, even though I didn't perform the way I wanted to.

When you can have your own back, I promise you your whole life will change. Your golf will change. The way that you show up in your day to day life will change, the way that you feel will change. Everything shifts. And part of the reason why we struggle on the golf course, especially when we're focused so much on our results and our score, is because of what we'll make it mean about ourselves, that we'll beat ourselves up, that we'll tell ourselves that we're not enough, we'll shame ourselves.

And we put so much undue pressure on our golf game because of that. But when you can shift your relationship with yourself, right, which is really what I ultimately work on with people, then you don't put so much pressure on your golf game. It doesn't mean that you don't want the results. It's that you're not making the result contingent on you being able to have a nice conversation about yourself when you're done without beating yourself up.

And that isn't something just for golf. You, you just own that, that you own that everywhere. Right. It's not something that we isolate to one little section of our lives. Right. You get to take that everywhere and that's going to shift everything as you shifting your relationship with yourself into a positive one. Right. Okay. And the 10th one, which is a little slightly tongue in cheek, but I'm going to tell you is something that I get a lot of comments on that people share with me is that I have changed the way that they show up in traffic.

So if you've listened to my podcast, you know I give lots of driving analogies. I had a dad who had road rage. I have people in my family who have road rage. I've witnessed it. I watch it all the time. And it's just the way that my head looks at big picture stuff. I use, I use driving and traffic as an analogy for a lot of mental coaching because it applies to all of us.

We can all relate to sitting in traffic or dealing with crazy people on the road and can relate to those analogies that I share is that if you can take it onto the golf course, you can take it into your day to day life when you're driving your car a lot. And I've had so many people tell me, thank you for helping me be better on the road and not being so aggravated when I'm driving to work or I'm driving to a tournament or I'm stuck in traffic.

So that is one of the benefits, another benefit, my 10th benefit of how the mental part of golf can help you in your day to day life. And so as you head into Thanksgiving, if you're listening to this on Wednesday, I hope you have a beautiful Thanksgiving. If not, I hope you have a beautiful holiday season. Whenever you're listening to this, it doesn't matter. I encourage you to work on the mental part of your game because it isn't going to only impact golf, which might seem trivial to some people.

Like, it's just golf. Like, why does it matter? It matters. It matters because you're learning skills that are going to shift your whole life. And I gave you 10 examples out of probably 30 that I could do or come up with that I think are the most impactful. And I hope when you start seeing evidence of how it really is going to be a benefit to you everywhere, I hope you put in the work not just for your golf game, but for yourself and the people in your life.

So there's my list, 10 ways that mental golf can positively impact your life. All right, my friends, have a beautiful Thanksgiving. If you're listening to this live. And if not, wherever you're going, I hope you drive safely. No real rage. I'll talk to you next week. Bye. And if you're ready to level up or if you feel like you didn't get what you wanted out of your golf game this season or you felt like you underperformed, I'm looking for four to five serious golfers who want to play to their potential and feel proud of the way that they showed up and the results they created on the golf course.

So if that's you and you feel like you're ready, make sure that you look at the show notes for a link to schedule a short 10 minute clarity call so we can see if we're a good fit.