#49. Become a Better Golfer By Becoming a Better You

The Golf Hypnotherapist (00:02.07)

When it comes to playing to your potential on the course, do you ever feel like you know what to do, but can’t seem to do it, at least consistently? Well, you’re not alone. If you’re here listening to this episode, chances are you know that you can score significantly better than you’ve been scoring lately. Yet, you find yourself stuck in these cycles of doubt, fear, and indecision. And let’s be honest,

You’ve read the books, you’ve listened to the podcasts, and I appreciate you listening to this podcast. You’ve spent hours on the range and thousands upon thousands of dollars on upgrades to your clubs, swing lessons, and all of the latest training gear. And the result? Minimal progress, stagnation, or worse, your game has gone backwards while your frustration has grown. Here’s the truth.

You don’t have a swing problem and you absolutely do not have a lack of information problem. You have a mindset problem. And that collectively is one of the major reasons that I created and am excited to share with you the first ever edition of the mental game of golf online summit. This first of its kind event is going to bring you face to face with multiple five, six,

of the best minds in golf psychology and mental game coaching. We have Josh Nichols, Michael Leonard, Matt Stillwell, Bo Watson, Shannon Shusky, and two aces up my sleeve yet to be revealed to coming together to help you overcome the mental blocks that have prevented you from playing to your potential on demand. Which is why I’m excited to invite you to join us.

to invite you to finally say goodbye to the nagging doubts, fears, and self-sabotaging thoughts, and say hello to the insights, tools, and frameworks that will make consistency, confidence, and flow your new normal. I mean, imagine this, playing every round with unshakable self-belief, laser-focused clarity, and complete trust in your game. What if you could make

The Golf Hypnotherapist (02:27.608)

playing to your potential, a habit. Join us Saturday, January 25th, 2025. This event is a one day virtual event kicking off at 8.45 in the morning Eastern running up until 5 p.m. Eastern ish with that last hour or so being a live panel discussion and Q &A with all of these speakers. I’m excited to see you there. You can register and lock in your spots.

for $97 at the link below in the show notes. Come learn from the best of the best, the top minds in the golf psychology and mental space and make playing to your potential a habit. And hey, with that said, welcome. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of the Scratch Golfers Mindset Podcast. And I want to kick today’s episode off.

besides, you know, announcing that event I’m incredibly excited for that’s really coming together nicely. By reading a text message that I received from a dear friend and client of mine who is an exquisite golfer to be frank, he’s going through a lot of shit off the golf course. And he sends me a message after what proved to be a powerful mindset coaching and hypnotherapy session.

And I’m paraphrasing, but what he essentially said was, Hey man, thank you so much for the help. was a great session. I’m sorry that we didn’t talk about golf.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (04:04.172)

And if you’re listening to this podcast, I have an imagination. The primary reason you’re here is to learn how to get out of your own way on the golf course. But here’s what I need you to understand. If you are committed to playing to your potential on the course, you need to be equally as committed to de-stressing and overcoming the mental baggage and emotional clutter that is holding you back.

off the course. You need to learn how to diffuse the stress, anxiety, insecurity, fear, shame, guilt, anger, and frustration that you may be experiencing on the course. Because here’s the big truth bomb for you. You cannot separate who you are as an individual, how you show up in your home at the office from who you are on the golf course. Now,

Yes, you can create an alter ego. Yes, you can have a really vivid, emotionally charged confidence statement to help bring the utmost intention, presence and focus to your round of golf. But at the end of the day, you can only compartmentalize so much. And in today’s episode, I want to help you really begin to understand the link between off the course stress,

mismanaged or unaddressed emotions and the direct correlation they have to playing well below your potential on the course. And before I dive in, I think it’s really important for me just to highlight some of the top golfers who we at one point or another in their career thought were invincible, thought were masters, Buddha-like wizards when it came to compartmentalizing

their course life and they’re away from the course life. I mean, let me throw out the obvious. Tiger Woods, you thought literally like a flip of a switch the moment that he committed to preparing for his round of golf, nothing, and I mean nothing could get in the way of him showing up with laser like focus. And truthfully, we got to witness that indescribable run for so many years, yet what was taking place in the background was an outlet that

The Golf Hypnotherapist (06:25.804)

Well, you know what happened, an outlet of emotional expression. Remember, emotion is energy in motion that got him in a world of regret, hurt, shame, anger, sadness, and all of the above. That cheating scandal or the indescribable period of time with all of his affairs stepping outside of his marriage. Eventually, because we knew that was brewing and brewing and brewing in the background.

We saw that outburst literally unfold publicly. We moved to Phil Mickelson in his prime, one of the best golfers. But by the way, how was he managing his stress, his emotions? Well, one could argue his outlet was gambling and not gambling a couple hundred or a couple thousand bucks with his buddies, gambling mass sums, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars. So again, what I’m getting at here is we need to have

a productive framework, specific tools, strategies, and processes to manage the collective emotional experience that is a part of being a human being. You are an emotional being. And if you don’t have a framework toolkit or processes to help you express, release, diffuse, let go of the emotions, the stresses that you carry, you’re gonna have a difficult time.

turning it on when you need it most and playing to your potential on the course. So what I would like to do in the remainder of this episode is really help highlight to help you better understand the myriad of ways that you’re off the course and away from the clubhouse stressors slowly but significantly begin to permeate into your on the course performance.

Number one, let’s just talk about the general umbrella of stress. Think about your body language, your posture. When you are in a physical state of stress, you’re tense, you’re tight, you may be hunched over. There’s tension in your jaw. Maybe you’re grinding your teeth, you’re biting and clenching your jaw rather. Maybe your forehead, your brow furrows.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (08:43.116)

Maybe there’s tension and tightness in your shoulders, your traps, your chest, your stomach, your low back aches. Again, emotion is energy in motion. If the emotion you’re experiencing is stress or anxiety, that tension that’s palpable is going to show up on the course. It’s going to show up in over gripping the club. It’s going to show up in the utmost rigidity.

rather than the fluidity you need when swinging your golf club. And this tension transfers directly to your swing. And you and I both know we want fluidity, ease, lightness, effortlessness in that entire experience. It’s not this overly tight, controlled, stressful endeavor to swing a golf club effectively. So the stress you bring

from that unresolved argument with your significant other. The regret and anger and sadness you bring from lashing out at your significant other or your children or your coworker, the stress and anxiety you bring about trying to pay the bills or having to let someone on your team go, all of that does show up on the golf course unless you do have that framework and toolkit of various tools to keep that stress at.

Bay. Moving on, it’s important to recognize that stress in and of itself is incredibly energetically costly. It’s draining. It’s exhausting. present with more fatigue. You’re quicker to tire, which on the course reduces not only your physical stamina, but your mental stamina. Your ability to focus, concentrate is drastically diminished when you are constantly stuck.

in this chronic, stressed out state. And even more, I think worth mentioning too, is just the natural rhythm of your heart rate is going to be significantly elevated if you are in this period of chronic stress. And that just makes you much more emotionally fragile on the golf course as well. You start to hear and feel your heartbeat growing stronger standing on that first tee, standing over that.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (11:06.316)

birdie opportunity or that eight foot par saving putt. And it starts to get to you. It gets in your head and you get hooked into this what if worst case scenario downstream ripple effect of negative thoughts and worst case outcomes. Even more, the mental overload of unaddressed stressed, unexpressed emotions absolutely depletes your focus

and your decision making. mean, first and foremost, you’re just showing up on the course preoccupied, thinking about that work issue, thinking about what’s coming up for your company, your goals, your leadership meeting, thinking about that unresolved conflict with your significant other or how to discipline your child. Your mind is preoccupied. You are far more likely to make a mistake.

to overlook or skip aspects of your routine, which creates a greater likelihood of making a mistake, executing well below your potential. When you are ruminating on things that happened in the office or at home, you have difficulty staying present in the moment. And ultimately this overthinking in and of itself creates tension. It may sit on your back, your shoulders, your chest as a heaviness, which begins to lead to more pressure.

over analyzing each shot and difficulty moving on to the next one. next, you know, we’ve talked about the physical ramifications. We’ve talked about the mental clutter that depletes focus and decision-making. How about the emotional spillover? know, emotions such as frustration, anxiety, shame, anger, regret, sadness. Well,

When you carry all of that stuck emotion onto the course, you are much more emotionally fragile, easily triggered. And you and I both know, because I talk about this all the time, the course offers no shortage of not only physical hazards, but mental and emotional hazards.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (13:17.528)

And when a buddy of yours who you’ve played with for years makes a comment rubbing you the wrong way, rather than brushing it off, laughing or jabbing back at him. Now all of a sudden you’re triggered. You lash out, you snap, you’re quick to feel irritated. And that in and of itself is just turning up the volume of emotion, tension, tightness in your body. It’s creating a bad aura. It’s affecting your posture, your inability to focus.

and the rest of your round starts to become a struggle. And that emotional spillover begins to affect the enjoyment for the game. Now, a Friday afternoon endeavor with some of your best friends and local partners there at the clubhouse, it becomes a slog. No longer are you interested in or happy to be there. You’re just trying to get through the round. You’re distracted, you’re unfocused, you’re frustrated.

And you’ve been hooked into this unconscious destructive mental program of defeat, hopelessness, and a sense of being disempowered. It’s not a fun place to be. And as we continue going down the list, you’re beginning to see that if you don’t have a rock solid framework in place to manage your stress and the collective emotional experience that is a byproduct of being a human being, there’s an

uphill battle to climb. And what I would like to empower you with in the remainder of this episode are strategies and tools that you can use to help become not only more emotionally resilient, but more emotionally flexible on and off the course, because it is normal, valid,

and okay to experience anger, frustration, sadness, grief, shame, regret.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (15:25.052)

If, however, you do not intentionally attempt to manage, diffuse, and release these emotions, you’re doing yourself a major disservice. And I wanna bring this back to the story, in the text message, rather, I shared with you in the beginning of this episode.

We had to work on releasing feelings of helplessness, feelings of anger that were occurring as a result of things happening in his professional and his personal life. To be frank, he felt immensely betrayed. He was filled with anger and rage. There are parts of him that felt sadness. And as a result, you know what suffered?

The collection of self-care habits that typically help keep him sharp and emotionally resilient. His gym consistency, the amount of alcohol he was consuming, the types of food he was consuming, how he approached sleep. All of these habits began to regress. And guess what else began to regress? His fucking performance on the course. So you can imagine that

By defusing the heavy emotions he was carrying, he was stuck ruminating, stewing within. We were able to experience a release in a sudden surplus of energy that presented itself as a significant feeling of lightness and ease beginning to return or resume to his unique collection of self-care habits. Better sleep, better diet, better exercise consistency.

Lo and behold, he started feeling better again. Lo and behold, he’s performing better on the course. I’ll share another relatable example and then we’ll get into the frameworks here. I have a client of mine who roughly, believe between three and six months prior to us working together, he lost his daughter. Yeah. So as you can imagine,

The Golf Hypnotherapist (17:42.306)

This man is carrying around indescribable amounts of grief, sadness, for his loss, for the impact that loss had on his wife, his other daughter.

And I have an imagination you’re beginning to connect the dots that if this man did not take action to manage to experience and deal with his grief, sadness and the emotions he was feeling that distraction, that overwhelming and consuming anger for his loss, sadness and grief of the loss would continue to consume him on the golf course. So a lot of our initial time together was spent releasing some of that

grief, diffusing some of that stuck and accumulated sadness and anger he had been experiencing ultimately with the goal being to free him up. And as I start to share some of these practices with you, first and foremost, they’re not going to come across as novel. I’m not going to invent or share these frameworks you have never heard of before.

My goal is to help bring them top of mind as a reminder with the understanding that these practices under that self-care umbrella are vital to cultivating the emotional resilience you need to play to your potential on the course. Because if you think about your emotions, and I want you to put your best…

what’s the word I’m looking for, visualization hat on for a moment. Maybe even close your eyes if you’re not driving and you’re in a safe place to do so. If you imagine sitting at this command center of your mind and you see this dashboard in front of you, there might be 10, 20, 30 different dials. Each of these dials representing a specific individual emotion. You might see joy.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (19:46.264)

Confidence, sadness, anger, regret, shame, guilt, disappointment, the list goes on and on. All of these are set at a unique place on that dial. And let’s assume that your dial you see goes from a scale of zero to a hundred. And throughout even a round of golf, the dial of confidence, anger, disappointment, sadness, joy, excitement, all of those are going to fluctuate.

And we each have our own unique range of acceptable movement within these particular or with these particular emotions. And the concept of emotional resiliency means is when some of these emotions fluctuate in their normal range of acceptable fluctuation, you’re okay. You’re able to weather that move forward, maintaining that sense of poise freed up to play intentional, present, confident golf.

But when you’re slacking on your self-care practices away from the course, when you have mismanaged, unaddressed or repressed emotions away from the course, these dials are far more likely and far more likely to move much more quickly out of that zone of tolerance. That anger is quick to shoot from your baseline of 20 to 30 to an 87.

That frustration from a 20 to a 30 to a 93, that disappointment from a seven to a 49. And quickly now you find your collection of emotional dials out of whack and you start to feel out of control because guess what? That primary emotion whose volume has been turned up dramatically has now entered the driver’s seat of your decision making and your action taking. The round goes by like this.

You are fueled by anger or frustration or regret. It’s almost like you are caught playing the rest of your life, rest of your round on autopilot. It’s unconscious and it happens in the blink of an eye before finally something or someone snaps you out of it and you look back and you realize, holy shit, I was so unfocused, lost and consumed in my own mind, enraged for the last six holes.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (22:10.302)

I can’t barely recall or describe what happened. So I want to talk about these tools through two lenses. Number one, you, like let me be frank, trying to optimize your potential and performance on the golf course cannot happen unless you share that similar commitment and passion for optimizing yourself as an individual, a human on planet earth. So,

you need to possess a framework of foundational self-care habits that are absolutely non-negotiable, that empower you to take care of your mental, emotional, and physical well-being. There needs to be a non-negotiable form of exercise, specifically including resistance training, high-intensity interval training, and cardiovascular health, as well as mobility and flexibility. Period.

the best of the best prioritize exercise because not only of the physical benefits, but the benefits that permeate into the emotional and the mental realm as well. You need to have a place or an outlet to express, release and understand while also learning to better manage your emotions. This may be journaling, this may be cold plunging, this may be speaking with a therapist, working with a mindset coach.

You need to have a practice, a safe space to share your emotions, to understand your emotions. Because again, when you are attempting to become the best golfing version of you, you can’t have emotions like anger, sadness, regret, and frustrations driving you around. You need to remain in the driver’s seat and keeping those emotions in check in their seat belts, in their car seats, in the back.

of the car. So we’ve got this physical practice, we’ve got this emotional practice, you need to continue to be introspective. And this introspective behavior is kind of checking that mental, that mindset box. How are you learning about your past behaviors? What are you taking from past setbacks, challenges and perceived failures? Are you taking learning lessons?

The Golf Hypnotherapist (24:30.486)

Are you moving forward as a better person tomorrow than you were today? Are you better today than you were tomorrow? And this can look like journaling, meditation, breath work, working with a coach, having some type of daily reflection, weekly reflection, or goal setting exercise in which you’re able to constantly track, measure, monitor, and experience the progress you’re making and the payoff of the action steps you’re taking. So all of this,

is foundational, is non-negotiable. You need to have these in place. And we’ll go back to the story I shared originally with that text message. This person noticed that across the board, his self-care habits went out the window because he was accumulating so much stress. Emotion had taken the driver’s seat of his daily decision-making and action-taking.

And it can feel like an uphill battle when emotion begins to occupy the driver’s seat of your mind. It can feel incredibly difficult to summon that activation energy necessary to follow through on some of these processes, especially when emotions are heightened. And my counter to that

as I plant a seed of curiosity for you is how can you create an environment that favors and allows black and white thinking and all or nothing in situation for these non-negotiable habits, meaning you have to become a caveman, robotic. You just do. 6 a.m. alarm goes off.

you cold plunge or you meditate or you journal or you work out, you just do, you need to find a way to create an environment that’s zaps, diffuses any emotion or thought process from following through and executing whatever action step needs to be done that gives you that emotional and mental bandwidth to be resilient and flexible.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (26:46.686)

mentally and emotionally throughout the day. So the questions you need to begin asking yourself are, when is it most likely that I can get these particular non-negotiable behaviors done? Let’s state the obvious. For the vast majority of us, it’s first thing in the morning. Before the day gets away from you, the kids are up, the wife or husband is up, and the coworkers start coming at you. You need to protect this time.

You need to identify when the best time of day is, and you need to go one step further and identify the top three biggest obstacles that will get in the way of you committing to executing these non-negotiable habits. Is it your phone? Is it time of day? Is it distraction A, B, and C? And you need to update and audit your environment accordingly. So for example, I go into my office.

And every morning after I finish walking my dog and I bring my cup of coffee, I do my stretching, I do my breath work, I journal, I read 10 pages, takes me 20, 25 minutes. My phone is nowhere to be found. It remains on airplane mode, it remains in my kitchen, out of my office. My email, my social media are blocked. I can’t access them.

for the first few hours of my day because I want to get these non-negotiable self-care habits done. And then of course I take it a step further and I have this blocked out time for what I call get shit done time. I tackle the biggest priorities of the day that are going to move the needle the most. Frameworks, my environment has been shaped. The phone is out of it. Web browsers and certain web pages are blocked at certain times of day to allow me to follow through on the collection of self-care habits I know.

will help me be the best version of me. And in a nutshell, if we look at what I’ve shared thus far as a one-off, it may not seem that significant.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (28:44.78)

The magic is in the accumulation, the compounding interest of showing up and consistently executing every single day. The magic isn’t necessarily in one journal session, one breathwork session, just like it’s not in one range session, one lesson. But when you show up and you’ve executed a hundred journal prompts over six months, maybe four months even.

When you’ve completed 12 lessons with your coach, when you’ve logged 100 hours of range time, you begin to see, and experience a dramatic difference. And I think that’s invaluable for you to keep in mind. These, a nutshell, in a vacuum probably is the better expression, they seem fairly insignificant, but over time they accumulate to pack a massive punch of progress that maintains

emotional resiliency, flexibility, a disciplined, resilient mindset that allows you to start going not only further, but go faster as a result because the little hiccups, the little triggers and speed bumps no longer bother you, get to you or slow you down like they used to do previously.

So as I wrap up today’s episode, what I want you to take away is you need to have a framework of foundational habits within the physical, mental, and emotional realm that optimize emotional resiliency and flexibility. If you are serious about taking your golf game to the next level, you need to bring that same commitment and level of action to becoming the best version of you as well. Asking for help accelerates results.

taking action alleviates anxiety. So whether that is working with an accountability buddy, hiring a mindset coach or a mentor, hiring a personal trainer or a dietician to help you better maintain who you are as an individual, get it done. Take that action to better care for yourself and optimize who you are as an individual and watch your scores go lower and lower on the course.

The Golf Hypnotherapist (31:01.281)

Well, thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Scratch Golfers Mindset podcast. Again, excited to share with you that the first ever mental game of golf summit tickets are live. The event is Saturday, January 25th. There’s a link in the show notes in the description, sharing more, announcing the majority of the speakers and giving you an opportunity to secure early bird tickets before the price goes up after January 5th.

I appreciate you watching. you found today’s episode valuable, share it with a friend. If you continue to find this podcast valuable and you’ve yet to leave a genuine rating and review, it takes 30 seconds. It goes a long way in helping me grow the show. It’s greatly appreciated. So hit pause now, leave that rating and review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you are listening to today’s episode.

Have a fantastic rest of your week. Hit them straight. Practice, practice, practice. And I’ll catch you in the next episode.