#40 [Journey to Scratch] 

The Golf Hypnotherapist (00:02.39)

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’m looking forward to sharing a handful, three, maybe four specific points with you today as I’m now a week removed from shooting a new lifetime low and in my opinion, passing the litmus test like

Can I play have I actually made progress the past couple of months by finally achieving my goal of breaking 90 scoring an 87 at Heritage Isles just last Monday pre hurricane such a neat experience and I’ve had a lot more time to dwell on this achievement to be frank in last week’s journey to scratch episode. It hadn’t quite set in yet.

I was a bit rushed and maybe even unclear and discombobulated in both my thoughts and my feelings around the achievement. But now, a week later, time has passed, emotions, feelings have settled, and a new goal is already crystallized. So we’re gonna dig into a few key points that I think will benefit you immensely when it comes to helping you continue to see, feel, and experience progress.

on your journey to achieving whatever your respective golf goal is. Before I do that though, just a quick shout out to a client and friend of mine who has crossed the age of 70 and is still open, willing and courageous enough to do the deep work on himself.

to become the best golfer he can as well as the best husband, father, grandfather. The list goes on and on the best version of himself as he can. And when I first met this gentleman, he was consistently shooting low nineties would occasionally score at 87, 88. Just last week had his lifetime low of an 82. And I attribute to that his that to his courage and commitment to navigating some of the

The Golf Hypnotherapist (02:16.508)

uncomfortable work we’ve done that have been completely unrelated to the game of golf yet ultimately freed him up enabling him to step onto the golf course not only with more ease more lightness more freedom but more trust confidence and belief so big shout out to him new lifetime low for him again at the age of 70 further reinforcing age is just a number it’s never too late to start

Never too late to make yourself a priority as you go after your goals. And on that note, as we’ve turned up the dial of confidence in that particular client’s life, I want to talk about confidence in my journey. To be frank, as I alluded to moments ago, I feel like achieving this goal of breaking 90 was a litmus test. I have proven to myself and maybe even to some of you

I can play this game. can string together the appropriate technique, focus, concentration, and execution consistently enough to post a respectable score. And for me, this is huge because my long-term goal is to become a scratch golfer and to hoist the trophy of my club championship. If that is all I were to continue focusing on at this stage in my journey, well,

It would be a recipe for chronic frustration and mental and emotional exhaustion. What achieving this short-term goal has done for me has exponentially boosted my confidence.

My confidence in my swing, in respective clubs, ability to score on holes at different courses, and just in my golf game in general, my confidence is next level. And that has afforded me to be able to show up to my practice sessions with a sense of ease, a sense of neutrality, a sense of stronger emotional resiliency, which thus far has transferred as

The Golf Hypnotherapist (04:29.688)

present intentional composed practice sessions that are productive, short, sweet, highly efficient, highly effective practice sessions. Achieving this short-term goal has simply boosted my confidence. And the reason I bring this point up is because I’ve hammered periodically to date the importance of having short-term goals. Because the number one factor, maybe I shouldn’t say number one.

One of the strongest factors in maintaining motivation and commitment to goal attainment is progress or the perception of progress. So having been stuck shooting in the nineties and even in the low one hundreds for a period of time, this gradual trend downward, know, in 96, 95, 94, 92, and then in 87, I am seeing, feeling and experiencing progress across multiple metrics.

This progress has strengthened my motivation, has reinforced my commitment because I know to be true with absolute certainty that there has been a monumental payoff from the work time and effort I’ve been putting in hiring a coach, taking time for two hour lessons, putting time on the range on the putting green in the swing net in my backyard. This has paid off and I have tangible proof data to back.

that claim and that just further strengthens my confidence but what’s really interesting here is we unpack the topic of confidence even further, you know confidence, you know, we can unpack this further to really be deep belief based on prior or past evidence and for me if you look at the handful of last scores I’ve had just even irrespective of

the score for a minute, just my process, the ability I’ve shown up with, it’s all trending in the right direction, a lot of positive takeaways. So confidence is bolstered by this deep belief based on past evidence. So here’s the challenge that you and myself at times absolutely face around this theme of confidence, is our subconscious is hardwired to scan our environment.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (06:47.062)

for negatives, for the bad, the ugly, the red flags and the threats. So it’s very easy to get hooked on a downward spiral of negativity. It’s very easy when we’re standing over that makeable three foot putt that we’ve executed hundreds and hundreds of times to quickly find ourselves wandering to and latching on to the handful of times we’ve missed these putts, specifically maybe missing these putts in

moments that we needed them more than ever. So again, if we move forward this assumption that confidence is rooted in a deep belief based on past or prior experience, it reinforces the need to consciously cultivate, to consciously command confidence on demand by continuing to focus

on all of the positives, the aspects of your game that are going well, working well, trending, or that you’re grateful you’ve seen, felt, experienced progress in. You have to make the time on the course and away from the course to find, to train the skill of finding and connecting with the positives, the indicators of progress. So for you, what does this look like? First and foremost, away from the course, it is some time.

of gratitude, mindfulness, or positivity in presence practice. For me, I have a gratitude practice of writing five things I’m grateful for down every single morning to begin my day because it’s just an act of training my brain to find the positives in my life. But more importantly to that, it’s bringing this

emotional attachment to all the good things you do both during a practice session and during a round to reinforce that feeling. You hit a couple really good shots during practice or on the round. Hold that follow through. Pause for a moment. Allow yourself to truly feel the sensation, feel the body positioning, the fluidity of that swing and take a moment to reinforce.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (08:58.498)

This is easy. This is normal. This is what I do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done that in my practice sessions. You the way to think about it is creating a sense or a state of all at a practice swing or shot, at a shot on the golf course. Creating that sense of all helps to continue to cultivate this sense of positivity, this feel good, which bolsters a deep belief and confidence in yourself. So,

A note on confidence there for you that I hope you find value and will take to the course and away from the course to make it easier for you to cultivate confidence on demand. The other aspect, which I have an imagination you are already doing, but shouldn’t be overlooked, is you’re tracking your stats. Whether you’re using an app to log them, I use the Grint and I have some stuff in some Google Sheets as well.

but track your stats, see your improvement over time based on fairways, greens, putts, OB, whatever other metric you need to track, number of anyway shots. Have something tangible, quantitative that even on your worst days you’re not feeling your best, you have an ability to look and see, there has been progress because again,

Progress is not linear. There will be plenty of moments of frustration. mean, let’s be frank, my score has trended downward quite significantly the last six months. And I have had some hellish, dark, frustrating moments along the way. It’s part of the process. Having this objective data helps to lessen the emotional charge during some of those negative moments to keep you grounded, to keep you neutral, or at least in a place of indifference.

where you can calmly move forward to focus on the next shot, the next practice round or actual round at hand. Now, another hidden benefit of consistently monitoring, tracking your stats is based on the concept and there’s a wonderful book by this exact same name, I can’t recommend enough, the concept known as the gap and the gain.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (11:07.702)

And the gap in the game is a very simple concept. And in short, what it really means is that society has conditioned us to always look at how far we have to go. You know, for me, I shot a new low of an 87 and I’m still 15 strokes off of shooting even par for a round. That can seem daunting. If I’m constantly looking at how far I have to go, I’m coming up short.

There’s always a gap between where I want to be and where I am. So what this book argues is rather than looking at how far you feel you still have to go, like again, I’m 15 strokes away. Instead, the way to look at progress is to look backwards at how far you’ve come, how much you have gained since three, six, 12 months ago. So simple example, my first round in

late April about six months ago, I shot a 65 on nine holes and truth be told, there were a handful of Mulligans and probably not every OB shot was counted there. It was an ugly round to say the least. So even if we do some quick math and make it simple, a 65 is essentially shooting a 130. One could argue that I just took off 43 strokes the last six months. Look how much I’ve gained.

And even if we set numbers aside, the ability to understand that I can proficiently and consistently swing a golf club and execute a shot I want is a night and day difference. me, one of the underlying benefits of this weekly podcast sharing my journey is I’m constantly looking at observing my progress over the time, over time. And I’m choosing to strategically look back even further.

to remind myself just how far I’ve come. I mean, I just broke 100, I don’t know, six, seven weeks ago, and that was a couple 99s. It allows me to see that my hard work is paying off, that progress, again, like I kicked off this episode with, progress is taking place. It reinforces me to commit to doing the things that need to be done, even on those days.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (13:23.576)

I don’t fucking feel like doing extra mobility and flexibility and, and thoracic rotation and this, that, the other, I’d rather just go swing a golf club. It highlights the importance and the value of doing those little things because they’ve, they’ve proven to be catalysts to help me get to where I want to be. So when it comes to you, and as we really begin to come up on the end of your golfing season for 2024, at least for many of you,

Instead of looking at how far you still have to go to break 90, break 80, shoot par, look at how far you’ve come. And let me be frank, maybe you reflect back on this year and you’re like, fuck, I didn’t come very far. How can you view this through a lens of non-judgmental curiosity and get really curious as to why? Was the effort there? Did you take aligned, effective action steps? Did you ignore some of the harder, uncomfortable aspects of the game that you need to work on?

Hint, hint, like the mental and emotional aspects away from the course. It’s a wonderful learning opportunity when you bring forward this gap in this game concept. And I know it’s gonna serve you incredibly well on and away from the course. Now, with that said, let’s wrap things up. Here’s what’s on the docket ahead. As you notice, I didn’t actually play last week. I forgot to mention that. We had Hurricane Milton make a wonderful arrival. Fortunately, we were safe.

No issues where I’m at sending my best wishes out to everybody who was affected really, really terrible winds here. And I’m 20, 20 miles north of downtown Tampa at about 35 miles inland. So it was even more destructive to say the least around the shore and downtown. So my heart goes out to everybody affected there. Many golf courses, holes are underwater. They’re not open carts, fleets of carts are ruined. So it’s an interesting time in the local Tampa Bay area for golf. It appears.

that a lot of courses are beginning to open this coming week. So I have a tee time for tomorrow morning and Friday afternoon nine tomorrow 18 on Friday, got some great practice every day either putting or hitting it in the net in the backyard this week, things are feeling really good excited to really start leaning more confidently into my driver. Now that I feel that I understand the mechanics I need to be executing.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (15:42.122)

And really what I’m most looking forward to is my next goal is to break 85 from the blue tees three times. That is my next specific focus. And this week, you know, it’ll be the first time I’ve played this course from blue. So I’m really just excited.

about the new distances, the new angles, the new challenges that this adjustment is going to bring. I’m coming in open-minded, completely neutral and curious about what is going to unfold as I show up with confidence and play. I don’t know if it’s 500 or 900 yards further. I really have no idea, but it’s somewhere in there. I have an imagination and looking forward to the challenge and all of the growth and learning lessons this next phase of my journey brings.

Well, I thank you so much for listening to another Tuesday recap on my journey where I am at, still trying to squeeze as much golf in as I can before the little guy comes. And I appreciate you tuning in every Tuesday to follow along as well as to take literally take action upon what I’m sharing, what it is you are learning to apply to your own game. So you too can achieve your goals and play to your potential. If you haven’t done so already,

If you’re finding value in this podcast, hit pause, open up the podcast listening app, Apple podcast, Spotify, take 30 seconds to leave a rating and a review. means the world to me. It really goes a long way in just putting the show in front of more avid golfers like yourself who are trying to better themselves and play to their potential. I appreciate it. I wish you a wonderful week and I’ll catch you in the next episode.