#29. The Art and Science of Acceptance to Accelerate Progress

episode-29-the-art-and-science

Episode Introduction and Summary

Hey fellow golfers! Welcome back to The Scratch Golfer’s Mindset Podcast. I’m your host, Paul Salter, The Golf Hypnotherapist, and today, we’re diving into one of the most powerful principles that can transform your golf game—acceptance. If you’ve ever struggled with shaking off a bad shot or letting a double bogey ruin your round, this episode is for you.

Acceptance is the key to keeping your cool, resetting your focus, and maintaining emotional resilience—essential for shooting lower scores. I’ll be sharing my personal experiences of how acceptance has influenced my game, along with practical advice you can use to develop this skill on and off the course.

In this episode, we cover:

  • What acceptance means in golf and how to practice it.
  • The difference between acceptance and avoidance.
  • How acceptance reduces stress, boosts confidence, and improves performance.
  • Research-backed strategies on acceptance from top performers and athletes.

Whether you’re a beginner or aiming for scratch, mastering acceptance will change the way you play and how you respond to challenges on the course. Listen in, take notes, and get ready to transform your mindset and performance.

If today’s episode resonated with you, please take a moment to leave a genuine rating or review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and don’t forget to share it with your golf buddies!

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about how mindset coaching and hypnotherapy can help you get unstuck from the proverbial bunker of poor performance on the course and in your business, click here to schedule a coaching discovery call with me. 

Key Points:

  • Acceptance is the practice of acknowledging and allowing thoughts, feelings, or outcomes without resisting or trying to change them.
  • Acceptance helps golfers stay calm, focused, and resilient, regardless of the outcome.
  • Practicing acceptance reduces stress, improves mental resilience, and increases confidence.
  • Acceptance enhances enjoyment of the game and allows golfers to play more freely and instinctively.
  • Practical tips for applying acceptance include using breathwork, focusing on one shot at a time, and maintaining positive self-talk.

Key Quotes:

  • “Acceptance is the mental practice of acknowledging and embracing each moment of your round without judgment or resistance, allowing you to stay calm, focused, and resilient regardless of outcomes.”
  • “It is a principle, a concept that will absolutely accelerate your progress to shooting lower scores.”
  • “Acceptance in this scenario means acknowledging the rough start, the poor hold, the mistake, the poor outcome without letting it dictate the remainder of your round.”
  • “Acceptance doesn’t mean passivity or timidness. It’s about staying mentally engaged and confident in your ability to recover and perform regardless of what the game, the round, the hole throws at you.”

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Time Stamps:

  • 00:00: The Power of Acceptance
  • 08:00: Acceptance and Confidence
  • 16:21: Acceptance and Performance
  • 23:31: Practical Tips for Practicing Acceptance

Transcript:

The Golf Hypnotherapist (00:02.508)

Hey fellow golfer, welcome back to another episode of the Scratch Golfers Mindset podcast. I’m your host, Paul Salter, the golf hypnotherapist, and I am incredibly grateful that you are here and I’m ready to rock and roll. hope you are too. Be warned, the energy is at 11 out of 10 this morning. The topic we’re gonna dig into is one I feel incredibly passionate about, so buckle up.

Get your notepad ready. If you’re listening while driving, pay extra attention to the road and make a note to come back and listen to this one again, because it is a principle, a concept that will absolutely accelerate your progress to shooting lower scores. And today we’re talking about acceptance. And before I dive in, I just wanna say, hey, welcome.

Quite a handful of new listeners the past few weeks and welcome to the Scratch Golfers Mindset podcast. Thrilled that you’re here, thrilled that you’re spending time with me and other experts in the realm of golf psychology. All things mental and emotional side of golf really appreciate you being here. With that said, I want to begin today’s episode with a personal story that

I have an imagination really resonates with you and your golf journey too. In the past month, there have been several rounds where I have led off the round with a double or to be frank, several triple bogeys. And it’s almost as if from the very first hole, I have come

to a fork in their road. I have had these moments where I have gone on to shoot a 104, a 105, even a 109 and 112, which is really hard to say out loud. I’ve also, however, started with a double or triple bogey and gone on to shoot a 48 or a 47 on nine, gone on to shoot both a 98 and a 97.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (02:16.35)

And what’s the key difference between these two paths that to be frank have both been well traveled? The difference has been acceptance. And I want you to allow your mind to drift for a moment and imagine the most recent round where you started with a bogey, a double, a triple, something well below your expectations and potential, something that was not a great start to say the least. And

Just really take a moment to reflect, did this whole set the tone for the day and be the catalyst for a poor round of frustration, inconsistency and just fucking anger? Or were you able to shake it off, reset, refocus, accept the whole, the shot, the mistake, the OB and move on?

You know, acceptance in this scenario means acknowledging the rough start, the poor hold, the mistake, the poor outcome without letting it dictate the remainder of your round. And acceptance, like let’s be frank, it’s incredibly simple. The concept is simple and we’re gonna deconstruct it and make it simpler. It’s not necessarily easy.

So my goal in the remainder of this podcast and as you’ll see in tomorrow’s edition of the weekly more pars than bogeys newsletter is about distilling acceptance in a way that is simple to begin practicing and easier to begin implementing. And I think the best place to do this is to begin with defining this word acceptance. So to me and for our purposes today, acceptance is

The practice of acknowledging and allowing your thoughts, your feelings or outcomes you experience, good or bad, without resisting or changing them. Again, acceptance is acknowledging and accepting your thoughts, feelings or outcomes without resisting or trying to change them. It means facing reality and moving forward without judgment, without emotional attachment to what just happened.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (04:37.066)

And achieving a state of acceptance allows you to stay calm, focused, and resilient, regardless of the outcome that just took place. So let’s get a bit more practical. On the golf course, acceptance means acknowledging reality. Whether you hit a bad shot, you’re victim to a bad bounce, acceptance just means recognizing it happened without dwelling on it. Acceptance means letting go of control.

Oof, I struggle with this one. And in this context, you and I both know we can’t control everything on the course from the weather to the course conditions, our playing partners, the bad breaks we all encounter. What we can control, however, is our response. And a quick but relatable side note, you the primary goal I have with every single client I work with is helping them to shift.

from a state of unconscious reaction to a state of conscious response. The latter invites Paul’s intention and a choice to create a new neural pathway, a new belief, a new emotion, a new behavior that’s aligned with the next best version of themselves they’re trying to become. So again,

We’re all seeking to shift from unconscious reaction to unlearn those outdated automated responses and instead quickly shift to a place of conscious response, which invites in Paul’s intention and a sense of control. Circling back again in practical terms, acceptance also means staying present, keeping your focus on the current shot and not dwelling on past mistakes or letting your mind wander to potential future outcomes. And in practical terms, acceptance means

building both emotional and mental resilience. And the way to think about that is when we begin accepting mistakes, poor shots and negative outcomes, we begin to build the collective skill set and emotional resiliency to recover faster and move forward. So the most common example you and I can both relate to is we hit a bad shot into the rough. Instead of getting frustrated, we accept the result.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (07:01.578)

We take a deep breath and we calmly focus on resetting and refocusing before our next shot. And let’s be frank, when we talk about fairways hit, you and I, even me early in my golf career can still hit a green in regulation if our tee box shot ends up in the rough. We can still make par even birdie after a poor shot. Only if we accept that shot has happened, we leave it in the past and we move forward.

to be focused in the present moment. So acceptance allows us and empowers us to stay focused on what we can control. But let me be clear. Acceptance does not mean lowering expectations or being passive. In fact, you know, as I’ve worked to create my golf identity, I am one who really leans toward confidence and aggression, showing up with this resounding belief I can hit and make any shot, any putt. So acceptance doesn’t mean

passivity or timidness. It’s about staying mentally engaged and confident in your ability to recover and perform regardless of what the game, the round, the hole throws at you. And a state of acceptance allows you to focus on executing the best shot possible in any situation, which leads to more consistency and of course better results over time. Now.

We can’t have a well -rounded discussion on the concept of acceptance without acknowledging and discussing its enemy, its opposite. The antithesis of acceptance is avoidance. And avoidance occurs when you deny, suppress, or escape these unpleasant feelings, thoughts, or situations. I would also say you repress, or numb. Hello, opening up six to the beer of the round and you’re only on the fourth hole. So on the course,

Again, aside from the joking example, which maybe is relatable to you, of cracking open another cold one, this might look like pushing away negative emotions, trying to repress them, ignore them, hide from them. And all that really does is create tension, create tightness, frustration. And you and I both know that this tension, this tightness is the antithesis of that fluid swing we’ve poured so much time and you’ve poured so much money into developing. It can be

The Golf Hypnotherapist (09:24.268)

gone in the blink of an eye, feeling as if you have never swung a golf club before, if there is too much tension and tightness present. And that is a byproduct from trying to avoid or repress the negative feelings that come up with having to traverse difficulty, challenge, and poor outcomes. So in practical terms, what does this avoidance look like during a round of golf? First and foremost, it might be denying reality.

refusing to acknowledge it was a bad shot or a mistake and just letting the frustration linger and fester. And again, it’s suppressing emotion. It’s trying to bury that frustration or anger, which eventually, inevitably leads to that blow up, the tossing of the club, the snapping of the club, or all of a sudden, the triple bogey or the snowman that ends up on your scorecard. Avoidance looks like avoiding discomfort.

And this is important to note because when we avoid discomfort, this stifles our growth. Growth occurs just outside our comfort zone. There’s going to be adversity that demands resiliency and strength and patience and presence and intention throughout every single round, maybe even most holes on the golf course. You need to reframe your relationship, your experience with this discomfort, because when done so appropriately, it becomes a catalyst for your growth.

And ultimately too avoidance can lead to compounding mistakes. It leads to rash decisions, poor shot selection, mental breakdowns, emotional blowups, blow up holes and more snowmen littered across the scorecard. So again, a very common example is hitting a bad shot, immediately having that unconscious reaction of anger, trying to convince ourselves it’s not a big deal, it’s not a big deal. But instead of just moving forward and accepting the shot,

We get so stuck in this negative thought loop, this negative self talk. It’s not a big deal. We’re ruminating. We’re so angry at ourselves. We’re way better than that. How could that happen? Fuck this game and the tension builds. On the next shot, the tension is present. You shank another one, it compounds and there’s the blow up hole in action from start to finish.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (11:34.73)

Here’s what you need to know about the difference between acceptance and avoidance. Acceptance helps you face and deal with what happens on the course, good or bad, with a clear mind, a state of equanimity, just this clarity, this neutrality. And I’d also add, I am a big advocate for inviting curiosity into the game. You hit a wayward shot or a poor shot, you make a mistake.

Get curious, not judgmental, just curious. Why did that happen? Through a lens of non -judgmental curiosity, can you investigate? I’m curious why that happened. And again, you don’t dwell on it in that moment, but maybe you make a note to revisit it later. You put something in your notes app or it just sticks out to you, you revisit it later when you’re reflecting on your round. What happened there? So think of acceptance as flowing with the game, adapting to whatever happens and moving forward smoothly.

Avoidance on the other hand, leads to ignoring or denying the reality of mistakes or emotions, which often results in bigger mental and emotional blocks and poor performance. Avoidance is like hitting a wall. It stifles you and the harder you resist or try to push away these negative thoughts, feelings, the more you block your progress. So I want to move our conversation now into talking about some additional specific benefits.

of practicing acceptance on the course. Because cultivating this skill of being able to practice acceptance on demand, it empowers you to remain calm, focused, mentally flexible, and emotionally resilient. Let me expand upon that with a few more examples. So first and foremost, acceptance reduces both stress and overthinking. And again,

Let me be very clear here. Acceptance doesn’t mean giving up or lowering expectations. And I wanna make this very clear. It doesn’t mean when after the front nine and you are eight to 10 strokes over your usual, just having a horrendous day, you give up and throw in the towel and accept it’s a shit day. It’s one shot at a time. Can you go have your best round of nine ever? You absolutely could with the right mindset and the ability, the skills.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (13:58.23)

to harness intention, presence and focus to move forward one shot at a time. So acceptance means acknowledging what has happened at that moment without fighting it. It’s accepting the reality of the situation and let’s be frank here, you can’t go back in time and play that shot again. I would be a scratch golfer if I consistently played a two ball scramble. Well, maybe not quite, but I would definitely be shooting better. So when you remain hung up on a shot,

wondering, questioning why, cursing the golf gods, cursing yourself, you’re just wasting energy. You’re losing focus, quickly turning up the volume of your emotional brain, which distracts you, moves you further away from playing to your potential. So by practicing acceptance, you reduce stress and you avoid spiraling into frustration, thus you’re able to stay calm and focused.

Second big benefit, acceptance improves your mental resiliency. Acceptance teaches you, would argue it forces you to handle disappointment without letting it negatively affect your performance. When you learn to accept things beyond your control, you learn to redirect your focus and your energy on those elements of the game you can control, like your attitude, your effort, and your presence for the next shot. Number three.

Acceptance builds emotional control, emotional resiliency. Golf is an emotional game. mean, fuck, let’s just call it what it is. It’s very easy to get frustrated after a poor shot or a series of mistakes. But when you learn to accept that mistakes, poor shots, negative outcomes are part of the game, when you learn to accept that golf is not a game of perfect,

You learn to better regulate your emotions. Therefore, you’re able to remain calm and clear. This leads to better decision making, improved focus and more enjoyment on the course. Number four, acceptance increases confidence. I want you to listen to this very carefully. When you stop fighting, resisting, avoiding elements beyond your control, you begin to build confidence in your ability to handle adversity.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (16:21.132)

Confidence comes not from perfection, but from knowing that no matter what happens, you can recover and play the next shot to the best of your ability. I’m gonna share that one more time. Confidence comes not from perfection, but from knowing that no matter what happens, you can recover and play the next shot to the best of your ability. This mindset shift helps you feel more in control of your game.

which dramatically increases the chances of shooting a lower score and playing to your potential. The fifth benefit, acceptance. It helps you get back to the reason you started playing the game. It’s enjoyable. Acceptance enhances enjoyment of the game. If you’re stuck in your head, you’re ruminating over past mistakes, and ultimately you’re stuck there.

You’re not in the present moment and the enjoyment of the game quickly fades. So acceptance lets you quickly find that enjoyment again, even when you’re not playing your best. And this allows you to play more freely, to play instinctively, which more often than not leads to beginning to play better, experience better results and lo and behold, find more enjoyment in the game. Acceptance, acceptance, acceptance.

That is the theme here. We’ve got to accept that the past is in the past. Whatever happened, happened. So through a lens of non -judgmental curiosity, how can we quickly get curious about why and what happened? Accept it, like passionately accept it and move forward. So I wanted to go one step further in preparing to write this newsletter and to record this podcast. I did a little digging into…

some of the research, literature of peak performance in high achievers around the term, the practice, the concept of acceptance. And one element I knew, which I quickly was reminded of, is there’s an entire field of behavior change psychology dedicated to this concept of acceptance. And that’s known as literally acceptance and commitment therapy.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (18:36.724)

And acceptance and commitment therapy or ACT emphasizes the importance, get this, of accepting thoughts, feelings, and experiences rather than fighting it. Like again, there’s literally an entire branch of change framework psychology rooted in the power and necessity of acceptance. In the context of golf, this means accepting mistakes, bad shots, negative emotions without.

letting them derail your performance. And research shows that athletes who practice acceptance, get this, perform better because they avoid getting stuck in unproductive thought patterns and emotional spirals. They stay focused on the present moment, which you and I both know improves consistency and results. Beyond acceptance and commitment therapy, I wanted to share a couple other key points that the research

continues to benefit you, me, every high performer out there by practicing acceptance. So multiple studies on the overall kind of umbrella term of mindfulness, suggest that acceptance is closely tied to achieving flow stage. And remember, those flow states are characterized by high levels of focus, enjoyment and performance. It’s when all of a sudden,

we realize we’ve already played seven holes and it’s like, holy shit, that time flew by yet every individual moment was so slow and sensory rich, vivid and present. By practicing acceptance, you find more flow. You can let go of distractions and maintain concentration on your shot, the hole in the round. Research also indicates that mindfulness, again, which includes acceptance, leads to greater focus, better decision -making, increased resiliency and improved results. Another

key consistent finding is that acceptance helps high performers manage emotions like frustration, anger, and disappointment. And by accepting these emotions as part of the process, rather than suppressing or fighting them, you can stay calm. You can think clearly and make better decisions. Now there’s an entire newsletter I wrote and a podcast I recorded all about what’s known as

The Golf Hypnotherapist (20:54.912)

the adult learning model or the conscious competence model of learning that talks about the literal four stages, you, me, every adult goes through when learning a new skill. And when we’re able to not only have the clarity on this natural framework and expected progression, but we can accept that there will be some growing pains and inevitable frustration, a handful of expected and unexpected challenges, the state of acceptance makes this ride.

far smoother to go from beginner to proficiency to mastery. Moving on, acceptance enhances cognitive flexibility and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances and greater strength and ease to recover from mistakes. You and I both know golf is a sport where anything can go wrong at any time, a bad bounce, poor weather or mistakes. Acceptance allows us to let go of this need to be perfect.

adjust on the fly and make better decisions to play better golf. Acceptance has been linked to increased levels of resiliency and grit. Research shows that the individuals who accept setbacks, failures and mistakes without internalizing them. Really important here, detaching our self -worth from our scores, our shots, our rounds. Without internalizing them as reflections of their self -worth,

are more likely to persevere through challenges and stay committed to their goals. And lastly, I found this finding really, really interesting. Research suggests that self -compassion is an important psychological factor that accompanies acceptance. Research shows that athletes who practice self -compassion, who speak kindly to themselves, accept mistakes without harsh criticism.

are more likely to improve and perform better over time. By accepting these mistakes as part of the learning process and treating themselves kindly, they remain motivated, avoid the burnout that comes from constant self -criticism.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (23:01.984)

Are you accepting what it is I’m sharing with you? Accepting the truth, the power, the simplicity, the peace, the state of calm and presence that comes with acceptance. So how can we begin to tangibly apply what it is we’ve discussed in today’s episode? Hopefully at this point, you’re very well versed and more keenly aware than ever before of the power of acceptance.

What does that look like practically? How can we begin practicing acceptance on the golf course and in our everyday lives? I mean, first and foremost, you’ve heard me mention this numerous times. I’ve spoken about it, I’ve written about it. There’s so much power in the breath. The breath is your tool if you’re a visual person to turn down the dial of the emotional volume of your brain, to turn up the dial of the logical, critical, rational aspect of your brain.

which allows you to be clear, focused, calm, present, and intentional. So using the power of our breath, developing a breathwork practice on a daily basis, using any one of the five emotional reset breath practices I’ve shared in a recent edition of the More Pars Than Bogies newsletter is a great way to beginning to fine tune the skill of being able to cultivate presence on demand.

That’s important because after a bad shot or a mistake, the mind wants to wander and ruminate and remain stuck. If you can implement a quick, rapid reset breath, suddenly you’re garnering presence in that particular moment, and instead of unconsciously reacting, you are consciously responding to move forward, accept what happened, and go onward. There’s the practical tip and reminder that never gets old one shot at a time, one shot at a time.

Focusing on one shot at a time and again my best recommendation for this is to move forward after a negative outcome or poor shot is take ten seconds to non -judgmentally and curiously explore Why did that happen? Hmm? That’s interesting. I just sliced that I just shanked that I just topped that and to passionately accept it within ten seconds and move on You’ve got to pay attention to yourself tall

The Golf Hypnotherapist (25:22.674)

absolutely have got to pay attention to your self -talk. Your self -talk needs to be infused with positivity and acceptance. It is what it is. I can only control what’s next. I’m moving forward. These need to be ripe and rich in your self -talk.

I hope you found value in today’s conversation about acceptance. It is a necessary component. You are going to come to so many micro forks in the road that if you do not have an ability to practice acceptance, your round, your hole, your even game will quickly get away from you.

I want you to keep that in mind. And if there’s any questions, any further clarity needed on this topic of acceptance, connect with me, Twitter, Instagram, send me an email, paul at unstuckyourselfmindset .com. And just a quick heads up, may or may not be relevant, but worth sharing. I’m about to update or upgrade all of my social handles for congruency and consistency. So the name is the same across all platforms. So shortly here by, you know, the next week, maybe two weeks, everything will be at the golf.

Hypnotherapist at the golf hypnotherapist on Twitter and on Instagram and with that said I thank you so much for listening to another episode of the scratch golfers mindset podcast if you found today’s conversation valuable share it with a fellow golfer and if you’ve yet to do so it is a Tremendously positive help if you take 30 seconds to leave a genuine rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify

or wherever you’re listening to today’s episode. Thank you so much for listening. Hit them straight this weekend. Have fun, accept what happens and enjoy yourself. I’ll catch you in the next episode.

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PAUL SALTER

Paul Salter - known as The Golf Hypnotherapist - is a High-Performance Mindset Coach who leverages hypnosis and powerful subconscious reprogramming techniques to help golfers of all ages and skill levels overcome the mental hazards of their minds so they shoot lower scores and play to their potential.

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