How to Choose Better Thoughts on the Golf Course

Golfers say a lot of things—to themselves and to each other—and sometimes those “helpful” comments create more doubt than confidence.

In this episode, I’m talking about how to notice the thoughts running through your golf brain, decide whether they’re actually useful, and be more intentional with what you say to your playing partners. You don’t have to judge every thought, fix every thought, or believe every thought. Sometimes you just need to notice it, let it pass, and hit the next shot.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

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. Hello my golf friend and welcome back to Think Above Par. Hope you're having a beautiful July, enjoying lots of golf. So if you're wondering what happened to my podcast last week, there is not one. I had one up and I took it down because I said some things that I really wish I hadn't said or may have been interpreted the wrong way. So I didn't even reload a podcast. I didn't re-record one. I just let the week go. It was my birthday week and I was just going to enjoy the week. And I put a lot of thought into why I took that podcast down and what I wanted to say to you today. And my job and what I'm trained to do and what I do every single day is I listen to people's thoughts. And I picture them instantly in my self-coaching model that I call steer, and I play them out in my head. The process happens so fast because I've been doing it so long, particularly with language on the golf course or actions out on the golf course. So it's a very fast process for me. Most of the time, someone will come to me with something that they're struggling with on the golf course, either a way that they're feeling, some things that they're doing or results that they're creating for themselves in the course that they don't like. They're inconsistent, they're not hitting the ball in play, they're experiencing a lot of doubt or fear or anxiety on the golf course. My job is to get to the source of that, which most of the time is coming from a thought, something that we're thinking or something that we're believing, whether we're saying it out loud or not saying it out loud. If we're not saying out loud, then my job is to dive in and find it. Find the thought or the belief, something that you're repeating to yourself that is creating a feeling for you that is making it so that you can't take your talent, access your talent on the golf course consistently or the way that you want to do it. So I have a very keen ear for this as I listen to people's thoughts all the time. I do not judge thoughts at all. They're optional, they're interesting. We're working against a negative, biased human brain. We're working with the primitive part of ourselves that has fear and worrying about what other people think. And it's absolutely amazing how much we can shift our experience by being intentional about what we choose to say and what we choose to think. And when I coach somebody, I stay out of the pool, meaning I stand on the edge of the pool and I witness you in it so that I can throw you a life preserver and pull you to the edge of the pool. If I am in the pool and agreeing with your thoughts and what you're doing, I'm commiserating with you, I am no help for you. As a coach, as a friend, yes. I will complain all you want about certain things with you and commiserate. But if you want coaching, if you want a solution, then I have to get on the edge of the pool and I have to look at your thoughts in a very neutral way. I have to look at your emotions in a very neutral way. No judgment. Let's find the solution. What do we want to think so that we can feel better instantly? Sometimes you are one thought away. So that happens when people ask me for a solution. Ask me to help them feel better on the golf course. I can do that. I can help you. I can help you find thoughts that aren't serving you and work with you to shift them into something that is better and more useful. If you're coachable and if you're open to it. But last week I talked about some thoughts that people weren't asking me for coaching. And therefore, it seemed judgmental. I get that. And it totally wasn't. And it was a huge learning lesson for me because I also learned that who am I to tell you that that's not a useful thought unless you're asking me for my advice. And this is one of the things, since I was talking about playing in a tournament or a club event or with a group of people, a foursome or a two-someth where you have partners, there's a different dynamic involved. You're dealing with other people's brains too. Most of us have a hard enough time figuring out whether something works for us or not in our own brain, let alone trying to figure out if it serves somebody else. So the point of my podcast last week was to try and shed light on that in a light way. But I realized also it could have been insensitive. And that was in no way, shape, or form my intention, but I can totally see in hindsight how it could come across that way. So I chose just to take it down. And this is really what I wanted to share is that since you are your own container and you're the creator, right, of how you feel based on what you're thinking, in a group, we can volunteer information. We can't unhear it. If you have a playing partner and you say words to the playing partner, they can't unhear those words. And then it creates a little cocktail in them. It's either useful or not useful. And we sometimes don't know this. They can be well-intended, and the words can seem factual. But if you can't put yourself into someone else's shoes and wonder how this is going to land for them, then you don't know whether you're making a positive or negative impact on your group or your playing partner. So for instance, you could tell someone where to aim and pick a target and maybe what kind of shot to hit on that hole, if they're not familiar with that golf course. Because to you, saying that seems very factual. It seems like a good line. Given the distance that I hit it, that's perfect. And the ball flight that I like to see, it's super easy for me to say, go right along the edge of that fairway. That's a perfect place. If I all I do is see fades. But if that person going down the left side of that fairway and there's trees right there and all they see are hooks because that's their game, that might seem like a very scary place to aim. It might not be useful. It might not be helpful. It creates fear in them. And your brain's like, I don't know what the problem is. I fade it. I can't hit it left to save my life. The trees are not a problem for me. So this is your playing partner who you want to be at their best performance. And I know our intention is to help the people in our group. But the question to ask is, is what I'm saying useful for them? Sometimes the problem is we don't know. Let's say someone's in your group and you're questioning their decision on how to hit a shot or a club that they chose. Someone, depending on their level and your relationship, might say, Thank you, this is great. I needed that advice. Another person is going to have a bunch of doubt come in, an indecision. They're starting questioning themselves. They might feel very self-conscious. They might stand over that shot and have a lot of doubt that they've made the wrong decision and then they're not going to execute very well. And then what happens after that usually is a little bit of shame and embarrassment. Well, your intention was great, and you might say, I have no problem with someone telling me what to hit. The other person might. And we just don't know this. If you have a break in slow play and getting on the phone and scrolling or shopping or doing whatever you do sues you, amazing. If it helps you pass the time and you feel more relaxed and distracted, you don't have to think about your golf or that we have to wait, awesome. But someone else might get on their phone and look at their email from work and go sideways. Not helping the group. But who am I to tell you which is right? I'm not. I won't. I won't tell you what to think. I won't tell you what to do. I will ask you if it serves you. Is it useful? If you came to me and said, I have a lot of doubt, I don't trust my decisions out on the golf course. And you tell me you're constantly playing with a spouse who is questioning every club that you play, I'd like to start there and help you work on that to build up your trust in yourself and your decision making so that you can stand over a shot with more certainty. So it is very helpful to have the skill of being able to put yourself in someone else's shoes or getting to know people or just getting really good at saying vanilla kind of answers on the golf course so that the chances of it creating a non-useful response in somebody go way down. So, in other words, the ideal position in this fairway might be at the left side of this mound. How you get there with a fade or a hook doesn't matter. What do you see? That might be a useful thing to say. Instead of hit it over that tree and fade it about 10 yards into the center of the fairway when the person can't hit it but ankle high. But the more aware you are personally of what works for you, the more you know what doesn't work for you. Meaning it's not helpful to tell me don't go in the water. This one I think is pretty much universally agreed upon. Don't say don't, basically, because that's put your mind's attention on whatever you said after that. Don't hit it in the water. Your brain just basically goes to water, right? That's where your attention goes. This one has science behind it and studies, and so pretty sure it's not going to be very useful. Even if you sit there and say, Oh, my friends don't care. But if we don't r recognize or make the correlation, how my ball goes in the water every time someone says, Don't go in the water, we're lacking a little self-awareness. Because in my coaching, if you told me that you always have a blowpole and you go into the water every time on number 16, I'm gonna ask you, What are you thinking? And you're saying, Don't go in the water to yourself, not out loud. And I would say, How do you feel when you think that? And your answer is gonna be anxious or nervous. And then I'll say, What do you do after that? Well, I get really tight, I don't finish my swing, my tempo's really off, and I hit a big slice into the water. And then I would say, What do you want to think on this tea box that serves you? What do you want to believe? But if you say, I say don't hit in the water and it doesn't bother me, and that's your awareness and your experience, who am I to tell you that those words are not useful for you? You get to decide. Not me. I get to show them to you. You get to decide if they're useful. Y'all may or may not have seen the Rory clip of where he hit a shot left. I think it was on a part three with an iron. And he said, God, Rory, you're such a bad golfer. And the commentators went on and said, No, actually, Rory, you're not. And then there were some questions about his thought there. And he went on and evidently hit a good shot after that and finished fine. But the question was, do you want to tell us about what you were thinking? Now we know he works with a sports psychologist. Pretty sure Bob Rotella is not saying to Rory, you know what, when you hit a bad shot to the right, just tell yourself you're a horrible golfer.

unknown 11:17

Right?

SPEAKER_00 11:18

It's my belief, if it's a negative thought, your brain is listening, it's gonna have a negative feeling, and it's just more work for you to get back to a place where you can swing freely and start executing. But he also said, at that moment, over that shot, I was a horrible golfer. And then he dismissed it and he moved on. Who are we to question it? We hear it and we go, that can't be good for you to say that. But sometimes those things slip out because we have a human brain that has a negative bias, that is working against us, that is quick to blurt out things that don't serve us. But ultimately you decide how long it affects you. And if you can get over whatever you say to yourself before that next shot, what difference does it make? So, a couple points in this is if you're playing with a group of people, your first step is knowing what works for you and what doesn't work for you, and then putting yourself into someone else's shoes and questioning whether this would be useful or not. Is there something that I could say that might be more benign so that I can help the team or impact the team in a positive way? If you all have a shtick and you do your thing, do your thing. And if you're wondering whether a thought serves you or not, you just get to ask yourself, how do I feel when I think that? If you're wondering whether a thought serves someone in your group, just pay attention to the results they're creating. But the bottom line is you are not your thoughts. You are the thinker of your thoughts. You're gonna have so many that come through your brain, the crappy ones every once in a while, like Rory's, slip out. It's all about whether you grab onto it and keep thinking it or you let it go. And Rory was saying he let it go. Ultimately, your own self-awareness in that place, in that moment, is going to be what serves you the most. And how often we hear a thought from ourselves or from somebody else, and then we decide to think it over and over again. And the question is, is it working or not working? All right, my friends. So this week, go out and be the observer of your thoughts. Don't judge them. Just witness them and ask yourself if they're working, if they're useful or aren't they? And if you haven't taken the quiz yet to see how many shots your mental game is costing you, go to quiz.mymentalcaddy.com. All right. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.