#51. Where the Results You’re Seeking Reside (and how to unlock them)

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This episode is coming to you live while I am high on love, drunk on caffeine, and desperately lacking on sleep. Yes, our little guy as of recording this episode is eight days old. We are madly in love with him becoming a father.

has been absolutely wonderful, indescribable in so many ways. And if you happen to be a parent, you know what it is I am attempting to convey. It’s been a magical, chaotic, adventurous eight days since he entered the world. And I am just beyond grateful for this opportunity to be a father. It has helped me already level up and grow beyond any description or

combination of words I could use to articulate that. But without further ado, we’re here another episode of the pod. Welcome back to an episode of the scratch golfers mindset podcast. I’m your host Paul Salter, the golf hypnotherapist and you know, I already know because in in my downtime between changing diapers, making sure Jessica’s needs are met holding the little guy and trying to squeeze in some movement and sleep. There’s been a lot of pondering.

a lot of reflection, a lot of productive downtime to rest, to be, to think. And I’m sure I’ll have an episode or five dedicated to these reflections and what I’ve learned stepping into fatherhood. But where I want to focus the direction of today’s episode is on the following statement, is on the following truth, the following fact.

of life, which is the results you are looking for reside in the work you are avoiding. Again, the truth, the fact is this, the results you are looking for reside in the work you are avoiding. The results you are looking for on the golf course, the results you’re looking for in your business.

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the results you’re looking for in your marriage, in your parenting, all of those results reside in the work you’re avoiding. Now, what type of work are you specifically avoiding? The uncomfortable work, the hard, challenging actions that propel you outside of your comfort zone where it’s unknown, uncertain.

sometimes feels like beyond your control and as scary as hell. But that is where you will achieve the results you desire, the results you speak about, dream about, lose sleep about. If you’re truly committed to your goals, to becoming the best version of you, to empowering yourself to have the ability to play to your potential on and off the course,

The results you’re looking for reside in the work you’re avoiding. Now, I’m gonna break down today’s episode into three, let’s call them categories to address the location of the results you’re looking for, which again, is in the work you’re avoiding. And I’m gonna break it down into information, mindset, and emotional regulation. The common mistake that you are making

to achieve your goals is assuming that you have a lack of information problem.

At least that’s what your actions would show. Your actions are reflections of your beliefs. So if you are someone who is constantly scrolling social media, perusing all of the different golf profiles, if you are binge watching different technique videos on YouTube, if you are reading every golf book under the sun, there is some part of you who feels

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that the obstacle in your way from achieving the results you desire is a lack of information problem. And maybe for some of you, there are some wide or deep knowledge gaps, which given the information age we live in today can quickly be filled. You can close the gap on any present knowledge deficit very quickly.

very effectively because there are a thousand and one different books, podcasts and social media profiles that pump out more content per minute than you can begin to fathom. Yet when you continue to pour yourself into this phase, this pattern of information consumption, information acquisition,

without taking the necessary action, you find yourself stuck because here’s another truth for you. Information alone is not enough. You still have to do the work, but let’s unpack this for a minute. We feel we have a knowledge deficit. So we listen to a podcast. We purchase a book. We may even purchase an online course.

And this feels really good in the moment. First and foremost, we have taken a micro action towards bettering ourselves, towards our goal. And the instant we learn something new or we glean a new perspective, we get a little drip of dopamine. So we get these subtle hits of dopamine for these micro actions in the direction of our goal. But the truth is, these are microscopic actions that…

consistently continue to drain your energy. And although they’re micro actions, the hit of dopamine you receive becomes incredibly energy draining. So what happens is you feel good reading the book. You feel good reading the pod or listening to the podcast, maybe even taking notes. Yet by the time you’re done, and let’s be frank, that’s if in a big if you finish the podcast, you finish the book.

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Your energy stores have been completely depleted that there’s no energy left over to take the action, to apply what you’ve learned, to integrate these new thought patterns and ways of thinking, speaking, believing and feeling. So you never experience any change. So you then begin developing the belief, okay, I didn’t quite get what I needed in this book, in this podcast. So let me go over here. I’ll purchase this book and this podcast.

And you can begin to see how this cycle goes on and on and on. And again, I remind you, information alone isn’t enough. You still have to do the work. And in the game of golf in particular, where I see this magnified, and I’m guilty of talking about it often because I do think information is valuable.

Particularly depending on what chapter of your golf journey you’re in, there are different facets of the game that have more relevancy, importance, and impact. You know, a beginner doesn’t need the same information as a five handicap. There’s different pieces of information he or she needs. But information acquisition, information consumption without action is a draining, defeating cycle. And one of the common mistakes I see

from avid golfers is you continue to consume content on the same five to 10 fucking topics over and over again. You read another article on the pre-shot routine. You watch another article or video on course management strategy. You listen to a podcast on the positives of self-talk, of breath work, of acceptance, of grace, of gratitude, of neutrality. And all of these are good concepts.

to understand, to develop proficiency in.

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but they’re fucking surface level. Because the truth is, you know these things. And yes, hearing them in different lights, getting different perspectives, hearing the wide array of different experts out there share them through their unique lens and point of view can hit you differently, can resonate, challenge your old outdated ways of thinking. But these topics are still incredibly surface level. Because the truth is, you know them.

Or you can quickly fill that knowledge gap and have the information you need to be successful to ascend to the next best version of yourself. Where you get stuck is there exists a block blocking you from consistently acting upon executing.

Implementing that knowledge. That’s the thing. You already know what to do to become a five handicap, maybe even a scratch golfer. You know what to do. You know everything there is about pre round routine, pre shot routine, post shot, post round routine, acceptance, gratitude, positive self-talk, positive thinking, a growth mindset, curiosity, patience, persistence, grit. You know all of this, but your failure

to execute consistently your failure to take action in certain environments when the pressures on money, status, pride, ego are on the line. All of that collectively points to you don’t have a lack of information problem. So stop trying to apply lack of information solutions. You have a mindset problem. You also have an emotional regulation problem.

and I’m gonna take a sip of my coffee and we’re gonna shift our conversation into those directions.

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So worth mentioning again, there’s a handful, there’s like a dozen core topics in golf that get repeated over and over and over again. And as I mentioned, they’re valuable and they’re fucking surface level. You need to learn why you continue to sabotage yourself.

why you continue to inconsistently apply or execute upon the knowledge you have. And we can trace that back to two core culprits, lack of emotional regulation ability and a mindset problem. And I want to talk about the emotional regulation first. Very simple, relatable example for yourself and me. Let’s talk about anger or frustration, whatever name you know it by.

When we feel this anger or frustration after consecutive mishits, consecutive poor holes, playing below our potential, we feel that emotion, which again, emotion is energy in motion somewhere physically in our body. For me, it’s tightness in my chest. For you, it might be heaviness on your shoulders, a heat in your forehead, maybe a heat in your whole body, butterflies or angst in your stomach.

And that tension first and foremost completely derails your swing even further, thus creating more opportunity for further frustration and anger. But what happens is emotion is a pre-programmed unconscious reaction. It just happens. That emotion permeates your self-talk, your thoughts, your belief, your actions, and your results. That’s the downstream effect of your emotions. All emotions can be inherently

Neutral. Anger can be healthy, can be productive, can be positive, can be a growth tool, a catalyst for more work, better results. But if you don’t have the capability to first identify and label your emotions, and then the prerequisite tools to diffuse or turn down the volume of your emotions, you’re going to continue to navigate your rounds on the course and everyday life with some of these big

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destructive toxic emotions in the driver’s seat of your decision making and your action taking. And if anger is driving the car of your life every single day, you are gonna crash that sucker over and over and over, taking you further and further away from your potential, your goals, who you desire to be.

You have to begin developing emotional intelligence. You have to begin developing a relationship with your emotions, an ability, a courage to look inward, to take ownership and accept there may be parts of you, emotions of yours that are counterproductive, holding you back, weighing you down.

from moving in the direction you desire and being the person you are capable of being. And you need to take action to begin leaning into these emotions. And this is that uncomfortable work I’m talking about. Again, the results you’re looking for reside in the work you’re avoiding. Let’s be frank, and this is especially true for my men out there listening. Emotions are fucking messy. They’re uncomfortable.

And if you’re anything like me, as a man, you’re taught to avoid them, repress them, hide them, not even acknowledge you have them. And I like to use the term to describe that as emotionally constipated. And I’ve shared this before. I was emotionally constipated the first 30 years of my life. I was a victim to toxic positivity. Everything’s great, everything’s fine. I avoided arguments, confrontations. But deep down, I was just repressing, repressing, repressing. And finally,

I did reach a breaking point. That shit boiled up and it exploded and came to the surface. And my life looked very different after that for a couple of years until I learned to confront, to befriend my emotions, to understand that many of the big emotions I were experiencing, first and foremost, they’re normal emotions. You’re an emotional being. Hello, welcome. Congratulations. You’re human. But ultimately,

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I learned to label them, to help creating distance between me and anger, me and sadness, me and shame, regret, understanding that these are just parts of me. They’re not who I am. I’m not an angry, sad, frustrated person, but at times I feel angry, sad, and frustrated. And this started to empower me to take some ownership, to take back elements of control. I began to understand where, when, and how.

My counterproductive, destructive way of dealing with emotions came to be. And remember, emotions and their associated sabotaging behaviors, they’re all learned, which means they can be unlearned. They may be learned from your mom, your dad, your upbringing. They may have been learned in order to protect your childhood needs to feel accepted, belonged, loved, and connected. But just like you learned them, you can also unlearn.

You’ve got to begin looking inward and getting comfortable sitting in those uncomfortable emotions. So many of us, and I’m guilty of this on occasion as well, is we feel that anxiety, that worry, that fear, that anger, and we retreat inward and we numb, we dissociate, we turn on sports, we f—

scroll through Facebook, we binge YouTube, we do all of these short-term dopamine-providing behaviors to temporarily numb us out until the emotion on its own begins to calm down a little bit, but it’s never actually been fully diffused, expressed, released. And you can imagine how much emotion is just continuing to accumulate, to build up over the weeks, the months, and the years. And inevitably,

It comes out as an unconscious reaction when something triggers it. It’s yelling at your child. It’s snapping at your significant other. It’s snapping a club on the golf course. It’s cursing at your coworker. It’s raising your voice. It’s hitting something. It’s throwing something. We’re talking destructive, toxic, sabotaging behavior. You’ve got to learn how to manage your emotions. Period. The most successful individuals

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in all walks of life have incredibly strong emotional intelligence, emotional awareness, and an accompanying set of skills and tools to help them manage their emotions. And that can look like a myriad of different tools, from journaling, one of my favorite, to breath work, also a favorite, to meditation, to cold plunging, to a regular exercise routine.

to a healthy diet, to a sound sleep routine. All of these help cultivate what I like to refer to as emotional resiliency. Your ability to navigate the limitless amount of triggers you will face every single day, to be emotionally flexible, to acknowledge that maybe some anger has been triggered, but rather than unconsciously reacting, you have the tools and the awareness to shift to consciously

responding. Notice my word choice differences there. We want to move from unconscious reaction to conscious response. The only difference is that momentary pause, which creates an opportunity to choose how to respond rather than to react unconsciously on autopilot.

And with that said, I want to shift to the third bucket of mindset.

When I talk about mindset in this context, know, emotionality is a huge piece here. know, as a mindset coach and a high performance hypnotherapist, I often tell my clients, you know, a lot of the things that we work on, really it’s emotional coaching in a way, helping to identify and diffuse these toxic emotions, turn up the volume, turn up the depth of control that you have over your emotions.

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But as I alluded to earlier, there’s a downstream effect. These pre-programmed responses, emotions, permeate into your talk, your thoughts, your beliefs, your actions, and of course shape your results, identity, and your reality. When I talk about mindset here, first and foremost, I wanna talk about your beliefs. And to talk about beliefs, we have to go back one step further. know, every single day, you have an estimated 50 to 70,000 thoughts.

the more time, energy, and emotion you give to specific thoughts, the more likely they are to be upgraded to beliefs. And it’s estimated that in the first seven years of life, 95 % of your belief system is formed, which means you basically walk around the first seven years of your life as a sponge, completely open, suggestible, and absorbent to all that’s taking place in your environment and your family life. So these beliefs,

One way to think about a belief too, if you’re a visual person, is just a thought is above the surface, below the surface is your subconscious. And this thought has just been hammered with awareness, hammered with awareness, like a hammer into a nail, so far deep into your subconscious, it becomes a belief. And what is a belief? A belief is essentially a lens through which you see the world. It’s a filter for the decisions you make and the actions you take. And all of us have different

beliefs that ultimately shape our actions and who we become. Where I do the bulk of my work with my clients, where I’ve done the bulk of the work on myself, is upgrading the beliefs that I have or my clients have about what they are worthy of, deserving of, and capable of.

Logically right now, it might be quite easy for you to say I deserve all of what I desire. I am worthy of millions and millions of dollars. I’m capable of becoming a scratch golfer. I’m capable of becoming a multimillionaire. But do you like truly believe it on a deep down visceral level? And if you say one of those statements out loud,

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I want you to notice if there’s any subtlety of a physical sensation that becomes present, a little angst, a little fear, a little disbelief showing itself physically throughout your body. Because the truth of the matter is, if you are not following through on the actions, those surface level topics and actions that I mentioned in the beginning of this episode, there is a belief holding you back. That belief also might be rooted in fear. If you’re not taking the necessary actions, putting in the amount of

practice and playing time to become the best golfer possible, you might believe that you’re not capable. You might believe you’re not worthy or deserving. It might be scary because what if you do succeed? That’s a completely different identity. And that in and of itself is a completely separate podcast conversation, which we will have inevitably. But your mindset encompassing these beliefs about what you’re worthy, deserving and capable of.

That’s your glass ceiling. That’s what holds you back. You can see and begin to think about what it might be like to become a scratch golfer, to hit your next seven figure year, to find your dream spouse. Yet these beliefs, like I mentioned, they filter your decisions and actions. These beliefs are deeply embedded in your subconscious, which triggers these unconscious reactions and behaviors.

which on the surface look like continuous self-sabotage. It’s not executing your pre-shot routine. It’s not doing this uncomfortable work to dig deeper into who you are, why the way you are, or why you are the way you are, so that you can begin to unlearn and upgrade these certain aspects to become the best version of you.

You don’t have a lack of information problem. have a mindset problem and an emotional regulation problem. And if I had to give any prompt or call to action in this podcast, it start doing me uncomfortable work.

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So many of you want to be fucking great golfers, but you do the same shit over and over again. You can’t change unless you change mindlessly hitting balls on the range once or twice a week, half assing putting in your garage on your birdie ball mat a couple nights per week, know, drinking a couple beers and smoking a few Stogies every round you play with your buddies. If you continue to experience feeling stuck at that 15 to 20 handicap, that

eight to 10 handicap and you’re not changing your approach, your beliefs, how you look inward and lean into discomfort, well guess what? You’re gonna continue to experience the same result over and over again. And let I remind you, it was Einstein who said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over, expecting different results. The results you’re looking for reside

in the work you’re avoiding. Go take uncomfortable action. Lean into the discomfort. You already know. And I want you to hear me on this. You know what it is you should be doing that you’re not. You know exactly what you need to be doing that you’re avoiding. Go fucking do the thing.

Put more time into practice. Go hire a coach. Start working with a therapist. Begin that journaling routine. Start that meditation practice. You need to remember the results you’re looking for reside in the work you’re avoiding. With that said, the biggest of thank yous to you for listening to today’s episode. Remember the first ever mental game of golf summit.

tickets are live January 25. It’s a one day full immersive and transformational experience with the likes of Michael Leonard, Josh Nichols, Bo Watson, Shannon Shusky, Jim Waldron, Matt Stillwell and myself. Yours truly it’s going to be a hell of a day tickets are in the show notes below $97 for one day of learning from the top minds in golf psychology and golf mindset.

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I can’t wait to meet you to see you there. Have a fantastic Thanksgiving. This episode’s coming out on Thanksgiving. Have a fantastic weekend. Great live, great weekend of play ahead of you. Hit them straight and I’ll catch you in the next episode.