Prepare for a transformative journey into the art of golf with internationally renowned golf teacher, Fred Shoemaker. Brace yourself as we flip the script on traditional golf coaching, questioning its efficacy and unraveling a world of self-coaching and personal discovery. Drawing from Shoemaker's enlightening works, "Extraordinary Golf" and "Extraordinary Putting," we explore how to play limitless, free from external outcomes, and how to tap into your unique potential. Our co-host, Justin Tang, seasoned golf coach, enriches the conversation with his vast knowledge and experience, bringing a fresh perspective on golf.
Ever thought about the fine line between coaching and teaching in golf, or how self-awareness can significantly level up your game? Engage with us as we delve into these thought-provoking themes, focusing on empowering golfers to unleash their 'bodily genius.' We challenge the norms, advocating for a learning environment that fosters exploration, creativity, and mistakes. Get ready to redefine your understanding of satisfaction and contentment in golf, embracing a holistic approach that goes beyond just 'fixing' and 'improving.'
But that's not all! We also uncover the role of the mind in golf, discussing how detachment from negative thoughts can enhance your performance. We further explore learning beyond mere information assimilation, stressing the importance of being present and deeply connected to enhance any skill. Revisit the famous "club throwing drill" and delve into the impact of pre-shot routines. We round up the conversation with Fred Shoemaker discussing his upcoming coaching program and new book, emphasizing the power of language and the art of listening in coaching. By the end of this enlightening episode, you'll be ready to approach your golf game and life with a brand-new perspective.
Prepare for a transformative journey into the art of golf with internationally renowned golf teacher, Fred Shoemaker. Brace yourself as we flip the script on traditional golf coaching, questioning its efficacy and unraveling a world of self-coaching and personal discovery. Drawing from Shoemaker's enlightening works, "Extraordinary Golf" and "Extraordinary Putting," we explore how to play limitless, free from external outcomes, and how to tap into your unique potential. Our co-host, Justin Tang, seasoned golf coach, enriches the conversation with his vast knowledge and experience, bringing a fresh perspective on golf.
Ever thought about the fine line between coaching and teaching in golf, or how self-awareness can significantly level up your game? Engage with us as we delve into these thought-provoking themes, focusing on empowering golfers to unleash their 'bodily genius.' We challenge the norms, advocating for a learning environment that fosters exploration, creativity, and mistakes. Get ready to redefine your understanding of satisfaction and contentment in golf, embracing a holistic approach that goes beyond just 'fixing' and 'improving.'
But that's not all! We also uncover the role of the mind in golf, discussing how detachment from negative thoughts can enhance your performance. We further explore learning beyond mere information assimilation, stressing the importance of being present and deeply connected to enhance any skill. Revisit the famous "club throwing drill" and delve into the impact of pre-shot routines. We round up the conversation with Fred Shoemaker discussing his upcoming coaching program and new book, emphasizing the power of language and the art of listening in coaching. By the end of this enlightening episode, you'll be ready to approach your golf game and life with a brand-new perspective.
Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, wishing everyone a happy and healthy start to the holiday season. As the game of golf winds down a bit for those of you up north and in other areas where you do get four seasons it's a good time to sit down and reflect on what you can do this off season to help facilitate a better spring and summer and fall of 24 as far as your golf endeavors. And you can just tune in right here, because we've got tons of folks that are coming on that going to help you with this. This very thing, and this man that we have on this week is certainly one of them. His name is Fred Shoemaker Fred Hales, from from the Monterey Peninsula, where I'm from. He is internationally renowned as a golf teacher, golf coach, golf instructor he prefers the terminology teacher and I just.
Speaker 1:I've come across Fred a couple of times over the years here on the Monterey Peninsula and I've always found him to be very observational. His powers of awareness are second to none and he is undoubtedly a deep thinker and as well as keeping things as simple as possible, and when it, when it's regarding to learning how to play better and how to get to know ourselves better. He is the author of two books Extraordinary Golf and Extraordinary Pudding. I am halfway through currently extraordinary golf and I've got to tell you that it's very profound and it's impacting me in ways that I've always wanted to be impacted, and it's it's really the question of how do we get better, how do we truly get better, how do we truly learn and have it become a part of our golf DNA? And as you listen to this podcast with myself, justin and Fred, I want you to ask yourself these questions why do I play golf? And when you come up to the answer of that, the next question is how can I find the ultimate joy in playing this game, this game that ultimately challenges every facet of our being? And I, for one, am going to go down this rabbit hole and playing on the podcast, and it bears repeating again. The Golden State Warriors have been a dominant franchise over the last 10 years in the NBA, and the players that play on that team have notably been observed as playing with joy.
Speaker 1:So you can play a sport at a high level and enjoy yourself tremendously, and that's what Fred instructs us to do. In my opinion. He teaches us ways that we can become present. We can detach from specific outcomes that are going to be qualified in ways that we would construe as surface level. We worry about what other people think about us, we worry about potential outcomes. The mind is always trying to find outcomes and sometimes those those that process can be have a deleterious effect where we start to allow outside shots, scores, opinions, effect.
Speaker 1:What we can do internally, and what Fred is teaching, is how to have an inside out approach to that that the inside of us determines our golfing reality in our lives, and to better educate that inner self to show up on the golf course when we want it to show up, but to do it in a different way, to do it in a way that is joyful, that is passionate, that is fun, exciting. And you know, ultimately, what would it be like for all of us to go out and play golf, play this game with and have it be the ultimate expression of freedom, of who we are and and how that can be in our shots, in our shot making, to play creatively, to play in such a fun way that the score almost doesn't even matter, and to do that in competition is really the ultimate expression of freedom, in my opinion. Now we are going to have Fred back on and hopefully we can we can get him to talk about these very phenomenon. In a competitive setting, you know, how can we truly let go and allow the best parts of ourselves to show up? And that's what. That's what I think we truly want, at least for me I'm going to speak for myself.
Speaker 1:That's what I truly want at the deepest level is to go out and play the game of golf in a competitive environment, but to play with freedom, to play with, with, with an for lack of a better way to explain it a deep seated sense of freedom.
Speaker 1:There might be some work to get to that, whatever that is, and Fred will joyfully explain that in both of his books extraordinary golf and extraordinary putting as well as having him on the podcast again. So a big shout out to Fred I know he's a very busy man for coming on and enlightening us for for the better part of an hour a little bit more than an hour and also thanks to Justin for for being one of the one of the better coaches out there that is always willing to learn, that's always willing to get better for himself so that he can provide better information to his students, and that is extremely powerful. Shares everyone. Have a great week and we will talk soon. And don't forget to rate, review and subscribe on all of your favorite podcast mediums. However, you listen to podcasts and we are going on to YouTube soon, very soon. I'm learning the editing software to do that as we speak and by the beginning of the year we're going to have added the flag hunters golf podcast to the YouTube media.
Speaker 1:Shares everyone, and have a great week. Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the flag hunters golf podcast, bringing you a very special conversation. A man that lives in my hometown, who I've been fortunate to cross pass with a couple of times and along today with for the ride, is my co-host, one of the one of the great coaches, one of the great minds in the golf instructional landscape, justin Tang and our mutual guest today is his name is none other than Fred Shoemaker. Fred is the author of extraordinary golf and extraordinary putting and and folks. I want to say this before we get into it the intention of this conversation is to help folks to be inspired, maybe, to, to maybe a paradigm shift in their thinking in regards to getting better play in the game. So, without further ado, gents, thanks for coming. Thanks for coming on, fred and Justin, glad to pull you off the lesson to you, pal, as always.
Speaker 2:Thank you, jesse and thank you, fred. Thank you, fred, for gracing us with your presence today.
Speaker 3:Could you just share a little bit. Well, I would say, we'll see if it's with a gracing or a complete craziness on people's parts so we'll see.
Speaker 2:So could you just share for the benefit of some of our listeners who are not familiar with you how do you get into the game of golf?
Speaker 3:And my father started me, like so many golf people are in golf and we live in, and he was in the Navy. So wherever there's a naval port there's usually a golf course. And no one had to tell me to practice were to get at myself out. That couldn't stay away. So I just loved it. And you know I played through high school into college and became a college golf coach at University of California, santa Barbara. That when I was 22.
Speaker 3:And then I realized that you know, very short period I was a coach but I didn't know anything about coaching. I could barely handle my own life and I could I deal with anybody else's. Decided I need some experience about living. So I did enough. You know I went joined the Peace Corps for a couple of years and taught school in Africa and then came back with a different sense of what golf might be and came back and with them. So we've done, you know, since 1990 we've done one thousand three hundred three day golf schools, done approximately, you know, 60,000 individual lessons. So I just wanted to gain experience and find out. You know, not only about my own game but other people's games too. So it's been a lifelong love affair and I'm happy to say I'm as excited about it now that I have, and it was when I was 16.
Speaker 2:So what was the epiphany that made you question the way golf was coached?
Speaker 3:Well, when I first started doing golf instruction I was like everybody else that I thought if I could just have the method or the answer for people that people would develop and they wanted to have some exceptional learning take place. And of course it wasn't. Even though my my book was full, I wasn't seeing well what was the kind of results I wanted to see. And I was watching a program in 1977 on television called the inner game of tennis and a guy did the inner game tennis guy named Tim Galway. After watching this half hour program I said to the body I was watching it with now that was different. I called up and I said can I get?
Speaker 3:a golf lesson from this tennis profession and that didn't seem weird at all to me. So a couple weeks later I'm in Malibu, california. They can lessen from this fall. And he says what do you want really? And I said I'd like to be the best I can be. I want to reach my potential. He said to me you know you sound like an advertisement. You really thought about it. And I said, yeah, but he goes what do you really really want? What's been? What are you stuck with? What's the thing that's been going on with you, if never been able to make a difference? Because you really ask people Almost everybody levels out at some point and it gets stuck. They hit a plateau and they don't know how to break through. And most golf professionals are a little embarrassed about their plateau, so we don't speak about it a lot.
Speaker 3:And I said you know, I have these, my fingers that move on the shaft at the top of my swing my index finger, my ring finger. They move and they shift the shaft slightly. My clubface changes, my divas change, my ball flies change, he goes. How long you've been doing this? I said as long as I was conscious about golf. Then he asked something called a fatal question, and the fatal question was how do you know you do it? And I said well, people tell me and I've seen my divas and I've seen it on video.
Speaker 3:He says do you actually experience the moment that your fingers leave the shaft? And it was kind of embarrassed. I said no, I don't. He said OK, why don't you hit and see if you can sense them? Your fingers leave the shaft.
Speaker 3:Now that's not simple to me, but you realize how difficult it is to observe something without trying to do anything to it. So I tried and I can't let me soon as someone tell me. Of course I would leave my fingers, hold my fingers on the shaft as hard as I could, and then other things would happen and I eventually let it alone. My fingers would move again. So he said are you still trying to hold on? I said yes, he goes, stop it, just let him do what they want to do.
Speaker 3:So I did the best I could and it took about 20 minutes before I actually felt my fingers rise off the shaft and I said there it is. And he said there it is. And so I kept hitting and he just kept saying doesn't move a lot or little. When does it move how much? See? Tim didn't know what was right or wrong, or good or bad. He had one basic premise which has geared my life pretty much for the last 50 years, and that's awareness is developmental. The capacity to be present to something over time is the thing that makes a difference. Now, this was incredibly new to me, and after about 45 minutes my fingers stopped moving on the shaft as if they had no reason to and they haven't moved one since in the last 50 years.
Speaker 3:And I thought what is this? What you know? I'd had some of the best in the business, you know, working on my game and it was an anomaly. Anomaly is something you can't explain, but yet you know it somehow is could be powerful. So I left that lesson and I was, of course, hitting the ball the best I'd ever hit and I said what have I just observed here?
Speaker 3:He didn't use the words good or bad, he didn't have a method, he didn't have even probably know much about swing technique, but he has succeeded where many people, including myself, have failed, and it started something from me. Now I'll give you some of the premises that it started and took many years to work out. See, I'm now this is my 49th year of coaching golf and I no longer see that anything such as swing problems and if you say that to a group of people, especially people who know, like you, they think you're an idiot what do you mean? They're not swing problems. Look at that swing. You know it's coming over the top. The club face open, the body is solid and what I see now there's simply blind spots and solutions that the body makes up. Does that make sense, guys?
Speaker 2:Oh, it resonates 100%, absolutely.
Speaker 3:So one of the things about golf professionals is just, the blind spots are smaller. So let's suppose a golfer swings up to the top and the blind spot is the club face is wide open. Okay, see, the body, with 1 million years plus of evolution, never does a stupid thing. It doesn't come over the top and pull up and cut across the ball. Leave your weight in your back foot because it's stupid. It does it because it's brilliant. So a golfer has the face open, the body of course stays more back to give the face more time to close and if it comes from the inside, because he's casting with the face open, it's going to get eight inches fat. So it comes across it brilliantly and it kind of works out. And he has a seven hour and 110 rather than 140, until his buddy says you know, you're coming over the top. So now we try to swing down the line but the club face is still open. So he learns how to stall, pull up and twist and he kind of hits it.
Speaker 3:Okay, but he can only hit it off a pick-by and can't hit it off or really make any divot, and so it all starts again. And so that basic premise one, awareness is developmental. Secondly, there are no such thing as swing problems, simply blind spots and solutions. So from those two things it occurred to me and I'm going to be on a range for countless of hundreds of hours for the rest of my life how can I make this this time fascinating? And I got what I'm standing back there.
Speaker 3:What makes golf fascinating I just got off the range at three o'clock today is that, this singular question, standing behind a student, knowing I'm looking at a million years of evolution, knowing that what I rather trust, my 35, 40, 50 years of golf information or the million years of evolution. And the question is, I wonder, what awareness is missing, the presence of which would make a difference? And it makes things so it makes life fascinating for me. So there's no such thing as a method. Each body is completely unique, like our fingerprints are unique, and the path just also.
Speaker 3:Guys, if I took, most people say they have a certain technique or they have a certain method. Now I'm maintaining in all humility, with these very smart folks, that it is impossible to teach technique. It is impossible. Because if I said to you Jesse, do you know how you walk? You would probably say what you know you know how you walk. You know how to walk, jesse. Yeah, I know how to walk. Okay, great, suppose I don't know how to walk, could you tell me how to walk? How is the word meaning? By what manner or means? So you are saying that I know by what manner or means I walk? Is that true?
Speaker 1:I would say oh, that's a good question, yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 2:I would like to chime in by saying some things are taught. Some things are taught, and I think that's kind of so.
Speaker 3:I want to keep Jesse a little bit on the spot, if it's okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, let's see.
Speaker 3:Fire away. You know how to walk. I do know how to walk. Okay, tell me how to walk.
Speaker 1:You say you know how Well? Okay, Well, you start by shifting your weight to your right foot and Okay, pause.
Speaker 3:How do I shift my weight? How do I make that first movement? How does a synapse, or an impression of movement, cross my synapse in order to make my right leg go forward? Do you know how to do that?
Speaker 1:That was given to me by a power that's greater than myself, so no.
Speaker 3:Okay. So the question do you know how to walk, yes or no? Yes, Okay, let's start again. How do you get that foot to move? I tell you you can walk. But do you know how to walk? Yes, Okay, let's go again. How do you get that foot to move? I tell it to move. Okay, you say move foot. You don't really do that, do you?
Speaker 1:No, well, subconsciously, I do.
Speaker 3:Okay, but you don't know how to do that. No.
Speaker 1:Okay, it just moves.
Speaker 3:Great. Now it's like you could save people a lot of time here. Jesse, do you know how to walk or do you just walk? I just walk. Okay, thank you, same 10 minutes.
Speaker 3:See, I just read a study by the University of Munich was talking about how human beings have a double bounce in their kneecap. They don't even know why they have two. It's the only species that does. And to categorize how the muscles, tendons and bones move in order to produce walking is beyond any machine. At this point, no one knows how to walk.
Speaker 3:Now, if you take an instance, how do you shift your weight from your left to your right while the club is descending, while the club face is squaring, while your body is amazing? If I said to you okay, justin, I want you to tighten your deltoid for 1, 14th of a second at 50% power, your treasiest measured 1, 9th of a second for 12% power, only at the top of the swing, now that could be called technique and in my experience, that that's why I choose to be a coach and not a teacher. You see, coaching means, teaching means. I have an answer for you and I'm going to propose. I'm going to propose a model for you and you're going to gauge good or bad according to my bottom model, and I will be the arbiter of what's good and the arbiter of what's not so good. For you, coaching means that I'm standing in front of a genius and this body already is able and has a capacity for something, and the object is to lead it out rather than put it in. It's a very different orientation, and so you know when Sherlock Holmes said when you have eliminated the impossible, which is, I think, trying to teach a technique to people, all that remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So I think that the idea I can swing a club, I can talk, I can walk, I can go down scares, but I don't know how I do it.
Speaker 3:I have seen in my experience very few people can translate an instruction into an experience. It lives in with them as an instruction as they go to the first tee. It doesn't live with them as an etching in their body. I know I'm getting off on something. I hope this is understood, because that's the fun part of these things, to stretch a little bit, yep.
Speaker 3:So to be able to walk the first tee with the etching experience in your body is rare. Takes a rare person to do that. Almost. Everybody walks to the first tee with the memory of the instruction, which is a concept, and then just the memory of the concept. So the idea in a golf lesson it has to have people become aware of things they've never been aware of before and have experiences they've never had before. And what will teach them is not anything I say or do or even my experience. What will teach them is their experience. And I think if there is anything that's slightly novel, it might be that because when you say coach and I say coach, I don't think we say the same thing. I think, for what most people call coach is still a really nice person, still telling people what to do. See, is this okay, to kind of keep going in this direction?
Speaker 1:Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 3:See, a teacher will start off a lesson something like this a person will walk in and say you know what I can do? I can hit my wedges in nine irons, but I can't hit a five iron or three iron because blah, blah, blah. And then the coach will say we'll take a few swings, partner, and they take a few swings and he'll offer a diagnosis and have some drills. And so now the student is dependent on the teacher in order to get what they think is the answer for this and the solutions of how to play. So I'm going to take the same scenario and deal it with as a coach. A person walks in with a coach and says I can hit my nine iron and my wedge, but I can't hit my five or my three iron. And they sit back expecting from all our school days, everything that we've done in our lives, that someone will have an answer for you. But then the coach might say where do you think we ought to start? And the student so you're the professional you tell me. I say you know, there's a lot of you seems like you're asking for solid contact. There are a lot of ways to develop it, a lot of ways to get it. Where do you see from your experience, maybe the most valuable place for you to learn and develop? Because what's important in this lesson is your self coaching, not so much all the stuff. I'm going to talk to you about the capacity to experience for yourself. See, from the very first moment of a golf lesson, a coach empowers the student to use their resources in order to be able to be self coaching, and they know they're standing in front of a bodily genius. Now, even though Emma made shoot 120 in her own way, her body is an amazing thing. So you have guided discovery. You have the capacity to have the person be present to things that they haven't been present to before. Get them out of their head, those sorts of things. So lessons in my experience, start off with first creating an environment All coaches are environmentalists, whether they like it or not An environment without evaluation, without judgment, in which person feels safe to explore, in which a person feels wonderful about making mistakes, because mistakes are mandatory in order to learn, to make them as fast as you can, make them as clear as you can make them in the direction of your intention. So, once the environment is there and the student realizes that who they are being their self concept, the way they're seen, has nothing to do with how the ball flies. Then we can actually start something. We can start with velocity, and there's more to it than that, but that's kind of the basic thing. How do you empower a student to begin to develop their own resources Like guys?
Speaker 3:I know this won't sound PC, but I'm going to say it anyway. Helping people doesn't help them. Helping your big, large, just your reaching down and pulling them out. Mostly, even if you're helping people, you see them as helpless and they need to have your help. Fixing people doesn't fix them. Empowering people Now that makes a difference. And I'll give them two and just this, and just this last part too.
Speaker 3:I know this is also not too cool to say, but getting better has nothing to do with happiness. This conversation of get everybody better, get them improved, get them better. I mean, you realize, if that's true, golf professionals be the happiest people in the world of golf, and of course they're not. See this notion of just getting better. It's like getting a knowing you thinking you just don't look good enough, and then you get a new shirt and for about a couple of days of wearing the shirt you think you're really cool and then that I'm not good enough kicks in again and you got to get another shirt. This mania to get better and better is like turning left to avoid right, and what happens? There is no end to it. See, how about something about satisfaction, peace of mind, contentment with wherever you are, which really allows for the development? Okay, that's enough as an intro, guys.
Speaker 2:That was amazing. I think that encapsulates the state of modern golf coaching Teaching Everyone, everyone. When they try to help a student on the lesson, they use words and then the student accepts the information and kind of has a thicker tape in the front of their mind keep the head down, do this and that, but as you say, fred, they never really experience what it means to do those things. And because that's not experience, learning doesn't really take place.
Speaker 3:Yes, it's really good, Justin. I mean, if you ask the person watch, I'm going to give a coaching lesson in short bites. If I asked the person to, okay, get ready to move how would you stand Now.
Speaker 3:if a person would simply, I'd say, turn around and look at the person behind you, they would turn like that. I think you've never had one person who ever swayed and put their hip out. Every human being knows how to turn in a way that's efficient for them. If I said to you listen, if you're dangling a ball by down here and if you're going to swing it up to throw it, what path would your hand take? Where would your hand be? At the top? That would be most efficient and powerful for you. You don't have to tell them they need to be flat or stop right or how. The people will know what's efficient for them and if you can have from that position, you know how would it. How would you do if you're to toss it that way? I mean, there's a hundred drills that will open up a natural movement for people really.
Speaker 3:But people know how to do things. I mean, we figured out how to walk downstairs, which is the scariest act anyone can do, and we learned most of what we do in life excellently before the age of five Balance, speech, not sticking a fork into our lips, but somehow we're all there. See, when I grew up in school. It took me a while to realize that my English teacher was not a passionate poet and my chemistry teacher had never really been a scientist and my civics teacher had never engaged in government or politics. They were simply giving answers that had been given to them and they passed it down. We live in a world in which some we believe that someone has the answer for us and it's outside of us.
Speaker 3:Rarely people say the answer you're looking for is within your experience. We can coach you to pay better attention to your experience, but that's what will teach you. It's just a rare thing because you know, if the hundred dollar guy doesn't work, you go to a hundred and fifty dollar guy who's smarter and more is more stuff, and if he doesn't work, you go to the nationally known guy who's taught ex-professional, who's known like more stuff, and it becomes who's the smartest. But how about the guy who creates the environment the best? How about the guy who, when you're with them, you're more present than you've ever been? How about a guy who teaches you about self-trust and being present and learning to have appreciation for yourself and many other things? So that's another thing to be valued or not, as you say, but I don't know how many people do you know say I am deeply in love with golf.
Speaker 3:I feel a tremendous amount of satisfaction and contentment out there and I find the best moments of my life are on the golf course. I learned how to take that into the rest of my life. That's a pretty rare thing. Mostly it's someday, not yet. I hope for maybe five shots less and I'm trying to put it together and I've almost put it together like that almost thing. It's like putting on a suit that never fits you pull the sleeve and the other sleeve pulls. So I'm putting in a big notion of coaching and most people have a coach as a guy who stands over you and other sports and says give me 10 push-ups and yells at the suit. This is not the kind of coaching I'm talking about. The kind of coaching is someone who's had enough work done with themselves that they can create an environment for themselves, without judgment or evaluation, in which they can learn how to learn in a way that's quite uncommon.
Speaker 2:You know what you just said about coaching, the word education. In Latin education it means to draw out from.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a good word. It's rarely ever practiced, and I'm not talking about the Socratic experience. So Socratic teaching is trying to get to the answer through questions that the teacher already knows. I do not know whether clubs should be pushed or pulled in the downswing. I don't know why my head should be still or moving. I really don't know. But I know if we explore together you can come to something that really works for you and I think that's had some value.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the amazing thing. You just talked about something that works for you. The brain, everyone's brain, has this amazing ability to self-organize according to the intention, their intention. So, after so, I spent I came back to your book in COVID, during COVID or rather came to your book in COVID I linked up with Joe, spent the next three years learning about intentions, nothing more than intentions, and then I realized that intentions creates forces on the golf club that's expressed in the motion of one string. So my philosophy changed 180 degrees to just changing intentions in a person's head. And what you said about top coaches the process of a student going from bouncing from one coach to another that is so seductive but really ever works, and you're almost forced to say, okay, I'm in front of the top three coach in the world. If he says, hey, are you hitting it better? You almost feel that you have to say, oh, yes, I'm doing better.
Speaker 3:Well, it's almost like God has spoken to you.
Speaker 2:And this one is asking you yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and for a while. If you have enough belief in it, it will probably be fine for you, but it doesn't last. You need self-belief, self-knowledge of itself, self-awareness. Yeah, see, justin, we, you know, we've done a lot of different kinds of programs. We've done a program called the mastery program for 15 years, taking six to eight students for six months in the summer. One of the programs type We've done programs for business people to distinguish what the source of performance is. Another program we did, was we've done maybe 35 programs for golf professionals alone Was to we had, let's say, we had 20 professionals.
Speaker 3:We had 10 of them hit balls in the range and the other 10 came back and I said to them listen as they hit, have no intention for them as they hit, because they had a thing they were intending to like maybe feel the club head or something like that. So don't, don't have any intentions that be behind their intention. Just let your mind wander, be present to them, see them, but have no intention, that makes any difference or not, and let them hit for 15 minutes. So they did, and then we said they brought the same coaches back, didn't tell the students we were hitting and said, okay, now, before them, have your intention, matched their intention, not trying, not wishing, but be there for them where they are, you be, give your energy that way for them. And then we they did another 10 or 15 minutes. We brought them all back and we had the 10 students were hitting talk about the process and every one of them said I was much more into it the second time. I don't know why, but I really seemed like I had a lot better learning. And they might have said well, we picked up different body language or something. See, we've.
Speaker 3:You've heard, probably, justin, that intention is the most powerful force in the universe. But what is it? How can you use it? How can you be for another? See, standing behind a student. I am not just there in hope or in want or thinking of what I'm going to say next. My intention is to match their intention, to be there for them, and it's different than hoping and when they're done with the shot, to not go through what my mind wants to say, but to say what did you experience in that one? Was it greater than the one before? How well, where did you? You know that sort of thing, not every shot, because it gets obnoxious, and sometimes the best coaching of all, when the student hits the sweet spot where they're really present, is just shut the fuck up. Excuse the expression, guys, which you really see, they're always yappity, yappity, yappity, you know, so you know anyway. You know you can believe that out if you want. Not at all.
Speaker 2:So, Fred, I want to go back to point, one of the few where you say awareness is development. So at this point I'd like to talk a little bit about the ego. So do you feel that the ego gets in the way of awareness?
Speaker 3:So yeah, of course it gets in the way of everything. So see, we were in a workshop when a friend asked what's the most important question that I should entertain in my development as a golf professional, and one of my co coaches, named Gary, said am I my? Am I my mind, or do I have one? He says what does that have to do with golf? So we went, we spent the entire day on that one question. So I'm going to give you the sneak preview of this and I'm going to go back and work on it just a little bit.
Speaker 3:I realize I have a mind and I am not it. See, if I said to you like Jesse, if I lost a hand, would I still be me? Yeah, of course I'd be physically different, but I'd still be me. Am I my car? No, if I lost my car, I wouldn't be any different than me. So, am I my temporal lobe? If I lost my temporal lobe, you know I'd probably act differently, but it's still me as much. But are you your mind or do you have a mind?
Speaker 3:For people who believe they are their mind and it's telling them truthful things and it's a useful thing all the time, their life is going to be very, very challenging Because this goes up and down, and up and down. You see somebody that reminds you of somebody that you had a bad lesson with. You go down. Then you see somebody who was like being a car and your mind goes up. So see that, that seminal question. Like we would do it in a golf school, you put the ball that far from the hole and you haven't put it in. And the person said one inch from the hole and they said well, anything going on your mind? I said no, just put it in. Then you move it back at six inch inch from this and there comes a point when every human being says, wow, my mind just said something like it'll be embarrassing if I miss, or let me make sure you stay down, or whatever their little thing for magical phrase. They say to themselves and you ask them can you stop that thought? And most people cannot and almost all people cannot. Now, if you want to call that your ego, justin, I'll go with that. It's just talking about. You know this could be embarrassing if I miss, or I'll show them, or whatever it may say. You see, there, you cannot stop it. That's the deal. People go in meditation to try to stop their mind and they most people do that try to quit because it just keeps on going. But see freedom. You don't get freedom from the mind, you get freedom with it.
Speaker 3:It's possible to see it for what it is, this repetitive survival based mechanism that got put in my head before I had a load on it. It's eons old. It learned how to. This is saber tooth, tiger track. That way I'm going to go the other way. So now survival is mostly about psychological survival and survival of yourself, image and self concept of people. So the ego gets into it that way. So you see, it isn't.
Speaker 3:The mind isn't a good or bad thing. Sometimes it's nice to get to plan my future, but it wakes. If it wakes me up in the middle of a night worrying about geez, I have a really tough lesson coming up. That is not a valuable thing to me. See, my, my comb is designed to comb my hair. It doesn't care that my hair gets cold. That's what the mind does. It just chats on and on about drama and problems and what I should have said, if I should have done how, if I did this. It just does that. So this is a story. I think I've told it somewhere, but if you've, if you've heard it, just please stop me.
Speaker 3:I had a perfect month. I was, we had a workshop. I'm like 27 or eight years old. I have a workshop at Huwala Lai on the island of the big island of Hawaii, at the Four Seasons, one of the most beautiful places in the city. I have two days of work with the members and the pros there. Then they give us a house on the beach all to ourselves for free for two weeks and they pay me ridiculous amounts really cool. So I do my two days of work and I realize I have never had this good before. My family is healthy, our financially sound, we have this beautiful two week vacation, everything because we always think someday, when these things happen, then I'll be really happy someday. Okay, this is my day. Never been better.
Speaker 3:So on the beach we're, in front of our house, is this hammock. On the day of my first day of vacation, I take my pillow and I go out to the hammock and I lay in this hammock on this beautiful beach in Hawaii and in a few seconds my mind says to me man, it's hot. Why do they put the palm trees there? What are we going to do for lunch. It's a long way to the parking lot and it does the same stuff it did. It will always do the same stuff and it was such a stark thing.
Speaker 3:I'm older than you guys and as you get older in life you realize that those moments when it's all just perfect are all just. Those are rare things, probably never happens again because you get older. Things happen with families and so on. But I realize you don't have to wait for that to have the life that you want. If you can let your mind alone, let it be and do its thing, its machinery, you can come back to who you are. I am not my mind, I'm the observer, possibly the real ranger of it. But I can live in a place where I can observe and say, no, thank you, I'm just not going there today. I'm going to live in appreciation for what I have.
Speaker 3:So, justin, if you want to call that the ego, I agree, but very few people I've run into have the separation between themselves and their mind. They think they are it. Like if it says something, I should act on it and think it's true or valuable or meaningful. Like if somebody cuts me off in traffic, like someone did on my way home today. My mind will say to that guy a jerk, he's not courteous at all. Well, ike could also be in a rush to get insulin to his mother in the hospital, I don't know.
Speaker 3:So see, the capacity to read what's the right word would be to what's not the word. It would be to have a new interpretation versus the same one I was born with. So you guys, all three of us, have been conditioned and born with a certain interpretation about everything in life what's good and what's bad and what shouldn't, what shouldn't Be a man, be tough. Don't let him find out about you. Something in there is how we interpret life and so most of our lives. We will deal with people who have the minds of a six and seven and eight year old brilliant, smart, fun people. But they're still living in I got to show them, or I got to be tough, or they don't like me or I don't belong. So that's what the mind does.
Speaker 3:But it's possible to live your life out of being an adult and to exhibit one of the great powers I've ever seen in any human being, that is, the capacity to create a context into which you live your life, instead of being one who's given to you as a child. So my context and coaching is to empower people in a non-judgmental environment in which it is over how extraordinary they are and expressive. That's the context that I made up 38 years ago, and whenever I get lost in the game, that's what I go back to people. It's not about looking good or being smart or having my theories matter or show up, whatever it's that. And when I really get crazy, it's because I've lost that and I get to the usual stuff.
Speaker 3:So I don't think you can stop the mind. I mean, I've been working on it now for 40 years, but I know that you can find freedom with it's doing the same thing it always does. Just no, thank you, I'm not going there today when it gets on the first tee and you say I better hit it. Well, these students are watching If I mis-hit it and validate the days where blah, blah, blah, blah, I can say no thanks, who I am. I'm going to let it go freely because that's what I love. This is what I love. I love to play. Let me play. This is what I love to do, and it just changes things. We have the capacity to create a context for living, and then examine our actions related to this context to see if we're actually who we say we are, and that, to me, is the greatest power a human being can exhibit. You're no longer a child with wrinkles Not you guys yet, but me, okay.
Speaker 2:That's amazing, fred Reminds me of an old Jewish saying see things as they are, not as you are. And I think the problem with the ego is that it always likes to describe this is good, this is bad. And I think one of the pitfalls of change, not just in the golf string but in life, is the inability to give objective feedback. So objective feedback would be about starting three degrees to the left instead of saying, oh, it's a bad shot, good shot, like based on who's metric.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that's one of the great difficulties of parents and kids. Kids eventually try to please parents. Parents are believing they pass on the example that was given to them. Good going. I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a parent with a child who's using the word good. If you have good, you have bad. And if a person parent doesn't say anything after shot, the student or the child assumes it's bad. But what would happen if a parent and child could do what you just said the objective, what did you experience? Where was that? Could you sense how it topped it Without you know? I mean, we talked earlier.
Speaker 3:Mistakes are mandatory. They should be lauded, you know, and to have an environment in which the person sees like you know, we could call that learning could be a series of things that happen that you can learn from, including mistakes. I don't even like to call them mistakes, they're just an experience that gives you some learning. So, yeah, I mean, these things we're talking about don't come in the ordinary course of events dealing with your mind, being able to let go of your ego, learning how to learn, find peace of mind. They come because a person chooses them in their life to look at them so you go off, doesn't teach integrity or honesty or any of those things.
Speaker 3:It doesn't teach it any more than bowling or fishing or knitting does. It only can bring you these things if you really put your attention to them. Like today, I'm going to look at my relationship to failure. I'm going to see, when I go into my you know, emotional downer when I failed, see if I can let that be, learn something and have the next life, next part of life, be different. How do you create an extraordinary relationship to failing in people? That would be, and just one thing alone, that would be amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, that's very deep, fred, and also surprisingly simple, because it seems natural to me when we look at it objectively. My question to you is how do we develop the muscles to be detached from the mind?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 1:You know, say, for example, we go through these scenarios if I'm playing and I've got a you know a five footer for par and my mind starts going hey, dude, you better make this, or you're going to go over par, you're going to fall too far back. Or you know, if I don't make this, I might be, you know, less confident the next time I've got a putter in my hand, all the minutiae that people can identify with. How can we observe that and not attach any sort of outer egoic emotional charge to?
Speaker 3:it. Well, first to know it's going to rise, Jesse, like the sun rises. I mean that conversation. I mean you'd figure, after you've heard it a thousand times, at some point you'd say, oh, that's just that conversation. You know it's the same thing about you. You go looking good, not wanting to be embarrassed, wanting to see people. You know it's the same conversation. It's like them comedian with the same bad joke every time.
Speaker 3:See, I would ask you, jesse, see, we are addicted to our minds. I would ask you, jesse, what are you committed to that? Your intention for that is stronger than your addiction. If I said to you, jesse, watch, pay attention to the tea on tidalists. When you putter, I shoot you in the foot with a low caliber gun, wouldn't it open, bring, like, bring up something for you like. I will be here, see.
Speaker 3:I think what most people do is just committed totally to looking good and keeping their self image. Okay, commitment is bigger than anything else. People have it all the time. They're sometimes committed to their family or they're committed to helping someone in any form of life, but rarely do we see people on the golf course exhibiting what they are committed to. Obviously, their true intention is just and said earlier, if it is completely clear for you, it will be taken over by the humanity of what it is to just be a person not wanting to be embarrassed. You know you hear people on their first team. This is your first tea conversation, man. I didn't warm up a lot Again. My wife was up all last night. I got this new driver, we'll see how it works. But they're really saying please don't have high expectations of me because if you do and I fail, I'll feel badly. So they're really committed, no matter what, to try to keep up their self image to you.
Speaker 3:Now some people really said that on the first day it would be completely refreshing. I'm going to do everything I can to have you like me and think I'm a really good person, I'm a good golfer. But is that how you want to live your life? At the end of a puppet string to people? Or do you say is there something that, as an adult male that I choose, that I say is worthy of my living here, worthy of my golfing? You know what I mean.
Speaker 3:So your commitment is the thing that steps out of time, out of mind. A commitment comes backwards from the future. So another way most people go forward from their past, trying to do better than or different than or more than their past. Great golf, in my experience, goes forward from the future. This is who I say I am. This is like really, and when I get to the first year, you can count on me to let it go freely to a target. You can count on me to pay attention to the club head. You can count on me to really feel that shafts moving through the ball, whatever it may be, I don't care. But unless you're committed to something, you are already committed to something that the mind does. You either choose it or it's chosen for you, and to spend your life trying to impress people enough that you momentarily feel good because you've fooled them again about that is a difficult way to live any life that makes sense. Jesse, okay, I can't hear your sounds. I can't quite get your sound, but okay, justin, is your sound on?
Speaker 2:Yes, I am yeah, right into you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so it goes to the question, jesse, which I'd like to continue on what you said why is it that people can't pay attention? I mean, 45 years ago I asked the person can you pay attention to the club head as it goes up, down through until it finishes? Seems so simple, I can do it with my hand.
Speaker 3:So why, can't you do with a club head? And I've maybe asked people maybe 20,000 people can they pay attention throughout a swing? Because if you can feel the club face, it's an amazing jump in development of any human being and goal. Very few people can feel the club head in the beginning and you ask them wait a second, why not? Well, I lose it at impact, I lose it on my downswing, I lose it at the top.
Speaker 3:Okay, so it was an interesting question. Why is it that adult, intelligent, highly motivated people cannot feel something throughout their swing? And I think it's because people try to get their identity out of their swing who they are as a human being, how good they are, and when you're in survival that your identity is in doubt. You can't pay attention, you are in fight or flight mode. So the capacity to realize you are the same delightful person, whether it goes right or straight or left, is a rare thing in people and for those who have that capacity, they learn incredibly rapidly. Two leaves on every yeah, then, okay, you guys got to give me some feedback. Are we off or are we doing okay with this?
Speaker 2:No, just keep going, just keep going.
Speaker 3:So I mean, yeah, the most precious resource is your capacity to pay attention. It's delicate and it's rare. Every teacher should foster that capacity and in many of them, get stuck with. Pay attention to me, what I'm saying and what my thing is, and when a person can really be there fully for lengths of time, any damn person can learn. It's not that hard. It's not that hard to hit a ball solidly. Not that hard to feel the club face and curve the ball related to swing line. It's not that hard to develop power.
Speaker 3:It only requires a certain you could call it a distinction. A distinction is an awareness, experience through your senses over time. In the beginning it starts out. Can you feel the club hit? No, it's a blur. Can you feel it? No, it's a blur. Even if I ask you to twist it in your hands or their eyes close, can you feel it? And after a while the body, by its immense capacity to learn, can start to feel where the club face is or head is as it comes down. It can feel it when it starts to turn over, how much it turns over, when it completes it turn over. Anyone can do this.
Speaker 3:Evil people say I'm not athletic and I've never played ball sports, but it requires the capacity to be deeply present over that period of time. So that's maybe the job of a coach. If a person is more present when you're there, you're worth your pay. If a person is more in their head with hope and fear and doubt and worry and trying to impress you, you're not worth that much. And if people walk away from a golf lesson and telling you how great you are, you are not that good. If people walk away from a golf lesson seeing how great they are, then you've done your job.
Speaker 2:That is an amazing statement. I think a lot of coaching these days is just to showcase to the student hey, look at me, I've got all this information. And then the student kind of walks away from the lesson he's like oh, yeah, the guy's really smart and what's wrong with me?
Speaker 3:I can't do it, yeah, yeah, and then you create this seduction.
Speaker 2:No, they create this seduction of I'm with this coach. He's like on this mountain, he knows everything. And then you kind of feel that you know what I'm not good enough because I can't execute what this guru is telling me.
Speaker 3:Yes, and then you that I'm not good enough. It becomes a conversation that pretty much this throughout your golf life.
Speaker 2:And your golf life. Pardon, in your life not just a person's golf life, but in their life it becomes a millstone around the neck.
Speaker 3:Well, let's take that even further. If you live in the I'm not good enough, you become a driven achiever, trying to achieve enough, attain enough, so you'll finally be good enough. However, you may achieve a lot, but the conversation is still there. I'm just not good enough yet. I'll do more, I'll be better, I'll try harder and then pretty soon you just are exhausted and you've achieved some stuff. Like I talked to a major winner person, one of major, I said how long does the satisfaction last? It was a lady and she said to a Monday morning.
Speaker 2:That's quick and that was it?
Speaker 3:So see, given the context of that conversation in your head, there is no way to resolve it. See the V. There are three things that change people. One is accidents. You can just imagine that. The third things are like natural disasters or natural events Look what happened to Puerto Rico, or or the earthquake in Japan. And the third one is only a new context or a new point of view, trying to change oneself. Keeping the same context has never made any difference in the world that I've seen. Doing more, doing better, doing different is all still tied to the same task. So how does one break out is to see the context that you're in First of all. So see that. Just one thing.
Speaker 3:Getting back to teachers for you guys, fellow asked me what's the most important thing I can keep my eye on, if to become a good teacher, and I said to him I've watched him do some lessons, or coach, I would say. I said, stop being fascinated, be fascinated, because he would tell all these stories about butch and tiger and this other stuff. He tried to be a showman and that's all sounds so good, but he wasn't truly fascinated in the person in front of him. Who is this person? How do they work and live and exist and learn, and if he got that, I think his would be very different and, plus, much more interested. I don't know about you, I get tired of my same old stories.
Speaker 2:I'd like to ask you, fred do you feel that the capacity to be present these days is diminishing?
Speaker 3:I think it's the lowest it's ever been in my experience, especially in younger people, when you can have the entire world on your hand in terms of stuff and the ability to stay with a difficult thought for a long period of time to work yourself through it, or even a difficult read when you can just say, well, well, that's just too hard. I've read where a 19-year-old not a child, a young person touches their phone 2,700 times a day on an average. Now, this capacity to be in social media that much, in my experience, is the greatest addiction that we've ever seen. To know that if I'm the least bit bored, I just grab this and away I go. Boredom is a very high state. It's a good state because it makes you look, but if you look that way, you never get a chance to work your way through it. When we do workshops with coaches, we ask them is there an emergency in your life? If they say no, we ask you to leave your cell phone and you're outside. If there's no emergency, we will leave a number that people have to call their call. If they put it on the desk in front, it will diminish their capacity to be present. That's all that matters. As we said earlier in this conversation, learning is the capacity to be present to things you've never experienced before and learn from those experiences.
Speaker 3:In my view of learning, most people view learning as the capacity to assimilate information, and that's what teachers mostly give is information. Other people view learning as trying to send away a student happy. It's like telling a joke at the end of a comedic session. He tries to get away being happy, but maybe no real learning takes place. Another session could be. I hope they like it.
Speaker 3:All of those things are context. Well, I hope they're hitting it well by the end. That's the same thing With all those. There is no created context for the coach. It's simply the one that gets thrown at them that they think they'll do okay with. But, as I said, creating a context for yourself. Human beings are extraordinary the capacity to learn and to find out what they're capable of. They learn through awareness. That's the context in which I'm standing. If you can create greater presence in a student, they cannot pay you enough. Imagine they could walk away from you having that capacity in life. Like saying when I was with Jesse, what I left? I had the capacity to learn in any subject because I learned how to learn. That would be pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Shall we talk about your most famous drill, the club throwing drill. How did that come about?
Speaker 3:I was coaching a guy and he was driving range he used to work at and I'd given him lessons for about a bunch of months and his handicap was 28. After a few months his handicap had gotten all the way down to 28. I was doing something, having fun. I could hit the ball and let go of the club and both the ball and the club would fly out. It was just cool to watch them both fly. I said to him he's hitting balls and he's kind of you know, click, click, click. I said to him how, just throw the damn club out there, just throw it.
Speaker 3:I had a camera on and I see this man who I had believed to be. Maybe he's going to break 90 someday if he works hard to have this really amazing experience take place. His body looked very effective, competent, free. I had him look at his name as Hal. I had him look at it and say Hal, how are we going to do this? You can do this, and how do we do this? So we had to work it out.
Speaker 3:How do you get someone to do something they can already do? See, most people think that learning is to get you to do something you can't do. That's not real learning is getting to do something you can already do In certain circumstances. That would be challenging. And so you know I've got. This is going to sound weird. I've got over 40,000 videos of people throwing golf clubs. No one ever left their way in their back foot, no one ever came over the top, no one ever crumpled up with a chicken leg, and you just realize. I mean, if, justin, if you could sing beautifully in a shower or in your bathroom every day, you get in front of people and you can't sing, I would not teach you how to sing. I would maybe take a look at how do you let go of what's in your head that doesn't allow you to express what you're capable of? And so that's it. I mean there are many, many, many. I mean I mean pre-shot routine.
Speaker 3:Okay, I would say to a person in the golf suite I have 15 people there. I said, okay, I'm going to bet you drinks at lunch for everyone. So I say we have to throw a club to that spot on the ground, about 25 yards away, and whoever gets it closest wins. You know if you get it close to the night, but you have to walk up and put your foot on a line which is kind of parallel, like you would stand to hit a shot and you got to throw a club there. So first we have timed them how long it takes them to hit a shot normally in golf. Let's suppose it's 17 seconds, right. So the person walks up there and throws the club out there and we do a few of them and we time them and it's nine seconds.
Speaker 3:Now I asked them is there anything you could have done that would have made you throw that club closer to that, or toss a ball close or something? Everyone says no. So what do you do in the other eight seconds? What are you doing over a ball? Because you know you have to somehow orient yourself to a ball. That may take a second more, but people don't even know how to develop a pre-shot. That's them.
Speaker 3:If you watch how a person did it, he might have taken two short waggles, looked at the target and had to look down the throw button. That was part of the deal too. So it's the exact same motion of the golf swing that when you put a golf ball in front of them, it takes them eight more seconds. And we're just saying I don't care what you do, but what would make you most effective. So that's just like a pre-shot thing. We do another one in which suppose, jesse, you and I are standing in front of each other tossing a ball back and forth. I have my hands out, like in front of me, and you're tossing it to my hands. I say, jesse, what are you connected to with my hands? What do you throw? What are you connected to? You say, well, your hands.
Speaker 3:So okay, now in this, so you know when you're connected and you know when you're not. Is that true? And you would say probably, yeah. And I said you don't tell me how you're connected. I don't want to know words, but in this game you're going to, I'm going to put a golf ball down by your feet. You're still, you have to look at it, but you're still throwing to my hands. I want you to tell me if you're simply connected to my hands, even if you're not looking at it, or not. Can I still with me?
Speaker 3:Okay, so a person gets there, they look down, they toss, say no, not connected, not connected. Oh, that one was connected. And the very fact they know they are not connected. They must know what it is to be connected to a target. And I said please do not verbalize this. Once you do, it's out of the world and it gets stuck. So we're going to go hit shots and I simply want you to tell me if you're connected to the target or not. Simple, and it's just another way to develop, through a pre-shot, what it is. I mean this idea of you. Know, harvey Pennock, take that aim.
Speaker 1:What is that?
Speaker 3:exactly what's the exact experience a person is having, and everyone is different. You know, if a person may say, oh, I feel like, don't say it, don't feel it, just don't go there, just stay where you are.
Speaker 3:And you know that the capacity to be with a target is an amazing capacity in anything. So golf isn't just about a target, but most people make it just about the ball. It's an and both experience in which the target ball is captured on the way to the target, but most people on the top are in a complete survival mode that the ball becomes the sole target. And it does that. There's a certain technique that comes from that, not very effective, and they don't know that it does. All they know is that I just hit the ball.
Speaker 3:But people have changed. If you ask any human being what's the target, they will say well, that thing out there, it's 100 yards away. And where do you plan to land the? What's the target? They say I want to land it in the front of the green and bounce it to the hole. Great. They get up, they hit a ball and they say you ask them tell the truth now At the top of the swing. What's the truth? What's your target? And most people say the ball.
Speaker 3:They completely have changed targets. I mean, you've seen it in if you've ever been in any meeting with people. They mod. People say my target is the vision of the company, the mission statement of the company. That's who I'm after. They get in a meeting and it changes. They want to look good and be right, dominate the conversation, be seen as smart. They have changed targets and they don't know they do Good people but unaware that they've switched targets. That one would be fun to do. So, justin, there are many, many ways that a person can recover their instincts, and if you have as the context that's my job, then you begin to get creative. How does a person get back to being themselves? How can they see how extraordinary they already are? How do they find an instinctual top of the backswing, down-swing timing? Face you name it and recapture that. And no, that is the source of both consistency and power, and also freedom, by the way.
Speaker 2:You know, your style of teaching gives a lot of golfers hope. That's what I want to say. Yeah, and a lot of people go. Yeah, please carry on with it.
Speaker 3:And then, and even, I think I'm not sure I'm not being argumentative, but hope is like, I think it's a real possibility. See, I think there's something about a golf teacher is a possibility that they keep possibility alive even when the student is resigned about their own future, and so the student can eventually keep that possibility alive. See, there's a difference between expectations and hope and possibility. Expectations, when they're unfulfilled, lead to an upset. Possibility, unfulfilled, leads to another possibility. Okay, that was there. Now what? See? Language is the very medium of how we work and I look to be as precise as we can with language. When you change your language authentically, you change your world, and maybe it's the only thing that does change the world. I know we're running towards the end of time, I understand that, but I'd like to have this one piece in here. I'll put a person in a golf lesson goes out to hit some balls and they hit a. We said we're doing a drill and they hit the 10, 5, 100s and they come back. We have a little group and they say well, I said, how was it? He goes, I sucked, I miss, hit them all and I said, okay, got it. I said is there any possible way you could see that other than what you said. And the guy says, no, that was just the truth. I miss hit them and I sucked, okay. So I said let's call him Jim. I said, jim, I'm going to play act being you and I'll say, hi, I'm Jim. I miss hit 10, 5, 100s. I went into resignation and lost energy. I says that accurate. He goes completely. I said now, jim, I'm going to play act being you again Hi, my name is Jim. I miss hit 10, 5, 100s. Never changed the facts. Those are facts, but I'm up to solid contact. I'm at the beginning of it. I know what changed everything and I'm very new in my awareness and in the beginning there's mistakes. This was what happened. Can you see it's empowering. Yeah, hi, my name is Jim. I did the best I could with the awareness I had in the moment.
Speaker 3:Also empowering, see, every situation comes with an empowering context and we're not trained to look at them. That's where the first thing you train a coach in of all the ways to see things authentically, how can you empower the situation? So language changes the world. It changes how one acts and sees the world. I mean, like I gave that example, somebody cut me off in traffic. Either he's a jerk, according to my reptilian brain, or the person is on a mission to help his mother, and when I see that I like them, I want to spur them on the way. So we're only trained that the first interpretation that reaches our mind is the truth. No, it's just the one you begin to do from childhood and to reinterpret it. I mean, this is a two hour conversation we can have. I don't want to get too far into it, but language absolutely matters. It is not just semantics, it's a world changing thing.
Speaker 2:We'd like to get you back on for another segment, Fred.
Speaker 3:Well, this one is actually useful to not anyone.
Speaker 2:Oh it's really starting to change my life and, I'm sure, Jesse's. I don't want to let you go without asking this question. The number of lessons, seminars and schools that you have given is the envy of the so-called technical teacher. You've written two books Extraordinary Golf, Extraordinary Putting.
Speaker 3:There's a few that's going to come out soon.
Speaker 2:Yes, I know you're writing your third book, extraordinary Coaching, and designing a new curriculum to teach golf professionals. Could you talk a little bit about this project?
Speaker 3:Well, in the beginning it was individual lessons and I loved it. I did I mean I've probably done, realistically, 50,000 and I realized what an individual lesson, of what one or two hours can do for someone. So I thought we need more time. Those golf schools started the golf schools. You got three days. So after 1300 golf schools, I said this is really wonderful, but yet we need a backup, we need somebody to support this when they go back to the world.
Speaker 3:That doesn't talk about awareness. So the next thing, obviously the next thing is can we work with coaches, people who can support and learn and develop their own games and develop others' people's games and lives? So the thing about what would it be like to do, let's say, a six-month program? The people are committed to making a difference in other people's lives and also committed to having a life they love, and that would be this called extraordinary coaching, and it would not be about what to do on other people. The first thing it's all about you, your relationship to feeling being present, creating an environment, creating an empowering context. When you can do it to others, you have a right to stand up and say I've been through something. I think there's value in it. Let's take a look at it. See, most seminars a professional goes to, they take some notes and they try it on other people. When people is non-ethnic, you put their feet closer together. So what the?
Speaker 3:missing is that is their own experience and their own working through this thing, and so that to me would be really fun, and I love working with young call professions. There's just something about the world still is open, wide open, and there isn't this cynicism or this resignation there, and that would be what I'm doing this.
Speaker 2:So EA Tishler is a good friend of ours. I know he's mentioned before that you are a great influence on him, so how many technical talk technical instructors like him have you influenced? If you don't mind sharing.
Speaker 3:I have no idea, and it's like one of the things is that I'm not interested so much in that. I'm interested that people find a life of contentment, peace, freedom, contribution, and however they find it's fine with me. I don't care. But you don't find many golf professionals. See, this is my 49th year now and I can hardly wait for tomorrow. It's just like the coolest thing. I feel like I'm learning along with people and this is not just glib stuff, and so I'm looking forward to tomorrow's work and then I'm traveling and working forward into the works in Palm Springs pretty soon.
Speaker 3:So if you have a life that you feel the word joy in and satisfaction in, then that's all, that's enough, and you feel like everybody knows that contributing to someone feels much better than being contributed to, and it's like to know, when someone walks away, that they have something. We've done parents and kids workshops in which the kids coach the parents. It's the coolest thing, because kids love to contribute, just like you and I do, and they want somebody to contribute too. And then when their parents see they've been contributing, the parents tell them how great it is. They feel better than they've hit the ball well themselves, see, so that, and it doesn't matter. I mean this idea of lineage and who did what, I don't care. You know it's like it doesn't matter. What matters is I'm having a great life and I enjoy it.
Speaker 3:I think, joe, my wife's having a terrific life, and you know the person I meet. Tomorrow I'm going to ask him the same question. We were just walking at what would be worth your time today? What is it that you aspire to that would make a difference? And then, once he talks about it honestly, gets down to the real deal, then we will say well, what do you think we ought to do about it? Start the empowerment from the first minute and have a person walk away realizing they have capacities they've never experienced before.
Speaker 2:So can we expect the new book and the program?
Speaker 3:I'm not sure how we're going to do it because, you know, not many people read anymore. The program is probably going to be about six months from now, but maybe the book will be part of the curriculum. The program will say but it's like I just there's something about you know, when you do seminars just sometimes just talky seminars are almost worthless because people go away repeating what you've said without the big thing of looking at it themselves. But if the seminar or the workshop or any of the programs starts an exploration for them, even exploration of listening, golf professionals don't listen. They're waiting to talk, and if they think they're a good listener they're generally patiently waiting to talk. But what is it like really to get the experience of another human being, to be in their world, to know that the person knows they've been gotten? I mean, we could do a whole month on. That would change a lot of lives. So yeah, I think I went off topic there, but sorry.
Speaker 2:No, no, you didn't Okay, Jesse, any cotton boots for Mr.
Speaker 1:Shoemaker. Yeah Well, I think everything that you've said, fred is, is all interconnected. You know how we learn the stories that we tell ourselves, whether we're aware of it or not. Interestingly enough, on the golf course they come out. So I want to thank you for your contribution to having us all realize these truths and to you know, for me personally I mean I'm going to say this, justin, you and I have talked about it a bunch, but I always ask myself this question is what would it be like to go play in a competitive round of golf? You know, this is for me, from my perspective, completely free and unattached to any specific outcome.
Speaker 3:What would that be Intentional but unattached there we go. Well, that would be great, Jesse, to aspire to that, and then we can take a look at what gets in the way, what conversations displace your freedom. See, it's not getting something, it's letting go of something. Right Way to go, man.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people can identify with what I just said.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean maybe in the future conversation we'll talk about competition. We could do the whole hour on that.
Speaker 2:Language. I would like to explore language for our next segment. For now, thank you so much for once again being on the show.
Speaker 3:Well, thank you, guys, for your openness and thank you for your capacity to look at something other than how do I use the ground? And you know, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:I mean there's nothing wrong with those things.
Speaker 3:Okay, but you know I never found that produced the kind of joy that I've seen in people.
Speaker 2:All right guys. Amen to them. Thank you, have a great weekend.
Speaker 3:To be continued.
Speaker 2:Take care oh sorry, last bit of a get Forgot to ask you, fred, how can our listeners get hold of you and find out more about your philosophy?
Speaker 3:Extraordinary golf. Just look it up. It's there, you know, and that's fine. So we're not doing golf schools anymore. Completed that. But we will start that coaching program Awesome, which I can hardly wait.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we look forward to it All right guys, Thank you.