Why Your Golf Results Aren't Happening Fast Enough

In this episode Kathy dives into a topic every golfer (and human) can relate to: the frustration of not seeing results as quickly as we’d like. Whether it’s on the course or in life, we’ve all been tempted to quit when the payoff doesn’t match the effort. Kathy breaks down why this happens, how our brains play tricks on us, and what we can do to shift our mindset for better outcomes.

Learn how to:

• Identify the mental roadblocks that hold you back.
• Detach your self-worth from your performance.
• Replace impatience and shame with curiosity and acceptance.
• Use powerful questions to reframe your journey.
• Stop arguing with reality and embrace the process.

By the end, you’ll understand why you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be and how to grow from here.

Key Moments:

• [00:01] Introduction: Why quitting feels easier than pushing through.
• [05:30] The two types of quitting: The big quit vs. the little quit.
• [10:15] Why effort doesn’t always equal results in golf.
• [15:40] The shame spiral: How we attach self-worth to results.
• [20:00] Reframing expectations: How fast should progress happen?
• [25:10] The ultimate question: How do you think you’ll feel when you “get there”?
• [30:00] The secret to faster results: Feeling fulfilled right now.

Resources Mentioned:

• Think Above Par Membership: Join weekly calls and live coaching sessions with Kathy. Learn more here!
• Kathy Hart Wood website

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.

Hi, my golf friends. Welcome back to Think Above Par. I hope we're having a beautiful day. Thank you for being here and listening today. I wanted to share with you an excerpt from one of my calls with the Think About Par membership, where we get together every week and we talk about different topics and people get coached. And I thought that you would really enjoy this topic about quitting and not seeing our results fast enough, so I wanted to share it with you here today.

So without further ado, here's my excerpt from one of our calls in the Think Above Par membership. So I want to talk about quitting. Two things about quitting. There's. There's big quits, like, I'm done with golf, and then there's little quits on the golf course where we're just like, I don't want to play anymore. I'm done, right? I'm done. And the next thing you know what happens is we play so much better, right?

When that usually happens because we're putting so much pressure on ourselves to score. And when we throw in the earth, wave the white flag, right, we give up. I usually blend two of them together, and I'm not really on point, but hopefully you'll get the gist of it. So throw in the towel and wave the white flag. When we do that, we end up taking all that pressure off of ourselves and we play better.

That's so much evidence for you all to know that your golf game was there the whole time. The thing that got in your way was yourself, the pressure, your thoughts, whatever, however you were showing up, that for sure, I want you to. I want you to really take record of those times when you quit on the golf course. You quit on yourself on the golf course, and then you play better.

It's just so much evidence that your game has gone nowhere. Okay? And you're the one, mentally, that was getting in your own way. Okay? So why do we want to quit? Because quitting feels crappy, right? Quitting isn't a great feeling. Nobody likes to quit. It's because we are trying to avoid feeling. We have two choices, and we make a choice of Two, like, crappy things. I'm either going to quit or I'm going to keep trying, and I'm going to fail, and then I'm going to shame myself.

Which one do I want to do? This is where we decide. If I keep grinding out and I keep trying and I don't keep creating, I don't get to create the results at the end of the round, I'm going to feel really, really bad because I'm going to shame myself. So I'd rather quit because I. If I quit, I can make so many excuses. I can give myself a pass.

I'll pull a hammy somewhere out here and I will be okay with myself because the other side is just too painful to bear. So I want you to really ask yourself and be very conscious when you decide to quit. Because what we do is we train our brain to quit, to escape emotions. And if you do that on the golf course, you will do that off the golf course, right?

You will have a difficult situation that will come up and you're like, I don't like how this is going to feel or how this is going to play out, or if I keep going, I might end up shaming myself and we'll quit, right? So you don't want to create the habit of quitting on yourself and quitting on the golf course. So that goes into what the topic was that I discussed with my client was she wanted to quit.

She wasn't sure that she wanted to play golf next season because of how golf was making her feel because her results weren't happening fast enough. Okay, can anybody relate to this where you've putting in the time and you're putting in the effort, right? And you're like, everybody's nodding now and you're just not seeing the results. They're not showing up on the golf course. And that doesn't feel very good.

Because what's the emotion when you're thinking, I'm putting in all this work and I'm not seeing the results? And I promise you, you all nodded on this screen. This is a huge topic. You have had those moments where there's not a direct correlation between the amount of effort you put in and the amount of results that you're seeing. And there's a lot of shame in that, right? We feel like we're not enough.

Anytime you can twist anything and pull it down into not being enough, I'm not good enough. I don't hit it far enough. People are shoot lower than me, which basically means I don't Score low enough, I'm not talented enough. Anywhere where you're making yourself not enough, that's tremendous amount of shame. So it doesn't feel very good. So if you find that you're going through these moments where your results aren't happening fast enough for you, right?

That means I'm not enough, and that's shame. Okay, so we're gonna ask a couple questions. The first question I'd want you to ask yourself is how fast should it happen? If you're saying it's not fast enough, you in your mind have an idea of how fast it should happen, right? There's the should word in there. So how fast should you be seeing the results? I want you to know it's just totally subjective, right?

You just make it up. There's no science behind how fast you should be getting from one place to the next place. I want you to think back of all the skills that you own, whether it's a computer skill, whether it's, you had a job and you had to learn how to do certain things, whether it was cooking and learning how to cook. It doesn't matter what it is.

We all have skills. Whether it's a craft or you're doing something around the house, or it's work related, computer related, tech related, doesn't matter. There was a space between when you started to, when you learned how to do the thing and how long was that. It's going to vary for everybody, right? And what are all the variables in there? It probably depends how often you did. It depended how present you were.

Right? It depended on how, how much you cared about what you were doing. There's a lot of variables in there. There's no real defined time. You don't tell somebody, okay, you're going to learn how to do this computer program and it's going to take you a week. Okay, go ahead and start now. Like, there's no timing on that. We're all different. There's lots of variables in that. How complicated the thing is matters too.

Golf is complicated. Somebody posted that golf is complicated. Golf is hard. Golf has lots of variables. There's so many moving parts. And how do we judge ourselves based on those results? This actually probably shouldn't be your first question, but I did this. The first one I wrote down, like, how fast do you think it should happen? But the better question is, how will you know when you get there?

Anybody answer that? Like, I'm practicing, I should be getting better results. Well, how will you know? What's your standard? How do you Measure it, put in there, like, how much effort should you make? How often do you think you should practice to get the results that you want? Which is a good question for a lot of people. Sometimes I think just showing up to the golf course, people think that they should get the results.

Sometimes just thinking about golf, I should, I care. Sometimes it's just, I care so much, I want it so bad. Therefore I should have the results. Why aren't I having them right now? When you get to be a scientist about it and ask yourself, how much do I think I should practice and play to get to the results that I want and how long do I think it's going to take me?

It's just interesting to hear what your brain's going to offer for you, to you. And by the way, here's another variable. Time does not equal results. And in golf, this is one of the most challenging things because as high achieving people, particularly the harder you worked, the more results that you saw if you played other sports too, that the analogy is the harder you try. A lot of times you will see a direct correlation to the results because there's more energy in it.

If you're playing a sport that maybe involves, you know, running, let's say, for instance, we don't run when we play golf, right? So if you, the more energy you put in, maybe you can view anger and determination and all those other emotions that might serve you when you're playing another sport. If you're a higher achiever, you're very successful in your career. In your head you're like, well, the harder I work, I get a direct correlation to the results I create inside my business and my career.

So in your head you're like, work hard, time, result, time, result. I do this, I get that, I do this, I get that. And golf just wonks that whole thing up. It's like upside down world with golf. And this is one of the challenges for people who are high achievers or successful in other sports when they're, they're expecting to see a direct correlation between the amount of effort they put in and the results that they create on the golf course.

It is also very challenging if the desire, your desire is so high, like I want it so badly. Where we become a little bit needy and graspy with the game of golf. Because I want it so badly. I, I watch so many YouTube videos. Kathy, you don't even understand, right? It's like, yeah, I spend all my time reading books, I spend all my time at the golf course, right?

You get to Pause and ask yourself, is this like, is this moving the needle and moving you closer to what you want, how much you want it doesn't really matter that that could drive you to create some, some actions. But wanting it and desire doesn't necessarily correlate to results, especially in the game of golf. Because the harder we try, the worse we do in golf, right? If you go to practice being needy and grasping, needing to see the results of the ball flying the way that you want to see it fly, because you think that's going to correlate to your results, you're going to show up your practice session and not get anything out of it.

That's why time doesn't equal results in golf, is because you could practice the wrong things. And this is the other point that I wanted to make about results not happening fast enough is really the ultimate question to ask yourself, is how do I think I'm going to feel when I get there? As Sherry said, there is no there. But when I get there in my head, how do I think I'm going to feel?

Right? This is what you want to ask yourself. Because when you're, when the results aren't happening enough for you, it's because I hate the way I feel right now. I want to leave, I want to quit the way that I feel right now. And I want to be over, over here and I want to be done. I want to have the result. Because when I get there, I'll feel blank.

And you got to answer that question. Everything we do and don't do is based on how we get to feel or not feel. So the reason that you want to achieve the thing or create the result is because you think you're going to feel a certain way. Like whatever you're doing in your day to day life is the same thing. The way that we play, when we go and play in events, our expectation is that I want to shoot a certain number, I want to see my results, I want to see my hard work showing up on the scorecard.

Because I get to be all proud, fulfilled, successful, admired enough. I get to feel enough, right? And the goal and the secret for you to be able to get there faster is when you are fulfilled and successful and proud right now. So if you can feel that way right now, and you do not need golf to make you feel that way or the result to make you feel that way, you will get to the result so much faster because you're in a positive state, you're not in a hurry anymore.

I'm not saying we don't get to feel those emotions of having success and feeling fulfilled and being proud of ourselves and feeling like we're enough. The connection is when we are feeling like it's not happening fast enough, when we're upset with ourselves about the game of golf or the results that we're seeing, our expectations need to be in check. But it's also the question you want to ask yourself is, how do I think I'm going to feel when I get there?

And most of the time, right. This is about your relationship with yourself, plain and simple. The person who I had this conversation with is a college golfer, a female golfer. And when I asked her that question, she said, well, I, you know, mom and dad will be proud of me. So I want to feel proud. I want to feel like they're proud of me. I want my coaches to be happy when I get to that place.

I want to be proud that all the hard work I put in was enough, right? And she wants to feel like she's enough, like she has success. And so because she's not creating that result right now, the opposite of that is that she's feeling shame and not enough. And so I need to hurry up and get out of this feeling of shame. And so I need my golf game to show up.

Then we play with pressure. It's this little inside pressure that you put on yourself. I call it that little weighted raincoat that you put on yourself while you're playing. Nobody knows you're having it. It's an invisible little raincoat that you put on yourself because of what you make your score mean. Your score either means I'm, I'm enough or I'm not enough. When it gets attached to your identity or that you think that you're gonna win the tournament or you're going to have the handicap or whatever it is that you want to see out of yourself, that you're going to feel so much better.

And as the season ended and we look back and you think that. And this can happen during the season, too. So let me not just say it happens now, but you're looking and you're saying my results didn't happen fast enough. It wasn't a direct correlation between the amount of work I put in and the amount of results I'm getting. I want you to ask yourself, like, what are you making that mean?

What are you making it mean? That you're not creating the results. And this is the other thing that I want to tell you is this was a hard thought concept for me to get through my noggin. You're exactly where you're supposed to be. You are exactly right now at this given moment in time, exactly where you're supposed to be. This is what you're supposed to be learning. This is what you're supposed to be absorbing.

This is what you're supposed to be experiencing, right? You're not supposed to be anywhere else other than where you are. And it hurts my head sometimes at certain situations in my life where I'm like, how can that possibly be? But the answer to that is the reason that you're right here and where you are is because that's where you are. It's you arguing with reality. It's you wishing you were something different or wishing you were somewhere else.

And you're missing the point that you're right where you are because of things. There's things for you to learn. There's things for you to experience. It's going at exactly the pace it's supposed to be going for you to learn or shift or pivot. And when we argue with reality, which we already talked about, we suffer unnecessarily, right? So it's going exactly at the pace it's supposed to be going.

And you're exactly where you're supposed to be. It doesn't mean you're going to stay there, but you're exactly where you're supposed to be. And then you get to ask yourself, why am I here if I don't want to be here? And that's where your growth happens. That's where you ask yourself good questions. You're going to get some really good answers that will move you forward. But when you argue with being where you are, you get to stay stuck.

You get to keep it.