Unlock the secrets of your golf game's mental landscape as we welcome Karl Morris, a sage in the realm of sports psychology, to our Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. Prepare to redefine your approach to the game as Karl unveils the intricacies of the mind's influence on every swing, putt, and drive. This episode promises to equip you with an arsenal of strategies, from setting potent intentions to nurturing a resilient golf identity, ensuring you'll leave with the tools needed to transcend the technical traps that ensnare so many players.
Imagine reshaping the very narratives that dictate your performance on the fairway. Through our conversation with Karl, we unearth the profound impact of the stories we tell ourselves, and how simple shifts in perspective can turn a golfer's tale from one of struggle to triumph. We also delve into the art of gratitude, exploring how this powerful emotion can not only enhance your enjoyment of the game but also sharpen your focus and execution under pressure. By embracing a spirit of thankfulness, you'll learn to play with a full heart and a clear mind.
Our journey with Karl doesn't stop at mindset shifts; we also pay homage to the legends of golf coaching, like John Jacobs, whose insights remain as relevant as ever in today's data-driven world. We scrutinize the delicate dance between the science and artistry of golf instruction, highlighting the transformative coaching programs that Karl has developed for those eager to elevate their game. If you're ready to challenge conventional wisdom and embrace a holistic approach to golf, this episode will be your caddy for mastering the psychological fairways and greens that lie ahead.
We thank Taylor Made and Adidas for their incredible support and to reach us:
Jesse@Flaghuntersgolf.com
OR Instagram @flaghuntersgolfpod
Justin@elitegolfswing.com OR Instagram @elitegolfswing.com
Lastly, be sure to check out Karl’s amazing Podcast called, “The Brain Booster”. I listen every week and it is a must if you want to get an incredible education on how to improve on and off the Golf course !
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brain-booster-improve-your-mental-golf-game/id1258525394
Unlock the secrets of your golf game's mental landscape as we welcome Karl Morris, a sage in the realm of sports psychology, to our Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. Prepare to redefine your approach to the game as Karl unveils the intricacies of the mind's influence on every swing, putt, and drive. This episode promises to equip you with an arsenal of strategies, from setting potent intentions to nurturing a resilient golf identity, ensuring you'll leave with the tools needed to transcend the technical traps that ensnare so many players.
Imagine reshaping the very narratives that dictate your performance on the fairway. Through our conversation with Karl, we unearth the profound impact of the stories we tell ourselves, and how simple shifts in perspective can turn a golfer's tale from one of struggle to triumph. We also delve into the art of gratitude, exploring how this powerful emotion can not only enhance your enjoyment of the game but also sharpen your focus and execution under pressure. By embracing a spirit of thankfulness, you'll learn to play with a full heart and a clear mind.
Our journey with Karl doesn't stop at mindset shifts; we also pay homage to the legends of golf coaching, like John Jacobs, whose insights remain as relevant as ever in today's data-driven world. We scrutinize the delicate dance between the science and artistry of golf instruction, highlighting the transformative coaching programs that Karl has developed for those eager to elevate their game. If you're ready to challenge conventional wisdom and embrace a holistic approach to golf, this episode will be your caddy for mastering the psychological fairways and greens that lie ahead.
We thank Taylor Made and Adidas for their incredible support and to reach us:
Jesse@Flaghuntersgolf.com
OR Instagram @flaghuntersgolfpod
Justin@elitegolfswing.com OR Instagram @elitegolfswing.com
Lastly, be sure to check out Karl’s amazing Podcast called, “The Brain Booster”. I listen every week and it is a must if you want to get an incredible education on how to improve on and off the Golf course !
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-brain-booster-improve-your-mental-golf-game/id1258525394
Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. Welcome you to another great week, another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. Along with my host, my friend Justin Tang, one of the great coaches in all of Asia. He teaches at the Tanah Merrick Golf Club in Singapore, so if you're over there, please feel free to reach out. I'm sure he would love to help you out with your game and you would be in for a heck of an experience. I can tell you that this week we have on none other than the Carl Morris.
Speaker 1:Carl Morris, notably, is the inventor, originator of the mind factor. He also has an absolute phenomenal podcast called the Brain Booster the Brain Booster by Carl Morris. I encourage every single one of you to go out and give that man a listen weekly, because he has some great guests. He's much in alignment with what Justin and I do with this podcast, where we examine the game as a whole and we try not to pigeonhole anyone or anything in any particular method, but we also encourage people to take a look at what's underneath the hood, ie the mind. This is exactly what we do in this episode with Carl. We ask him a litany of mental questions and how to help navigate, getting better playing this game and also to get to know yourself. Knowing yourself really is one of the great superpowers that we can employ to help us on the golf course, because you can really go down some incorrect rabbit holes and subjugate yourself to emotional attachments If you're not disciplined and haven't developed that awareness muscle in the observatory muscle that we talk about in this particular episode. I encourage everyone to listen to Carl's podcast. Follow him on social media. I'll make sure that all of the links are posted. This was a really enjoyable conversation and I'm truly grateful being in the space along with men such as Carl that really try to carry the flag in how we teach and also how we learn the game of golf. I think now is a great time as we enter into another year 2024, that we really shift the paradigm in asking ourselves the right questions and not going down the techno babble of the minutia of the golf swing if we don't need to.
Speaker 1:Unfortunately, the way that we've been taught over the last, however many years, is to outrun or outwork or out-technique feelings of fear, anger, despair, sadness that all can be elicited due to poor play. When we examine the reasons why we play poor, we usually go down the technique rabbit hole where it should be the other way around. Understand what your internal environment is prior to pulling the trigger, so that you can get more accurate feedback, and it's going to be hard to get an honest representation of what you're doing in your golf swing or if you're game, if you are subjugated to some of the lower vibrational emotions, such as anger, fear, what have you. Not that those aren't not necessary. They certainly aren't necessary in learning of thyself. However, we usually try to outwork or outrun those lower level feelings and then we go down rabbit holes that we don't need to go to rabbit down and we can really spin ourselves in the proverbial technique pretzel and tie ourselves in unnecessary knots. So we want to avoid those things at all costs.
Speaker 1:I encourage you to listen to this episode more than once, because it's very powerful. Carl has a. There's a lot to unpack here, and then, once again, I'm going to encourage all of you to go to his website, the mind factor, and his podcast is called the brain booster, and you're going to find it on all of the directories, apple, spotify, etc. And I'll make sure that I post all of those links in the show notes as well, as well as how you can find Justin and myself. If you have any other further questions, we're happy to answer those and you know.
Speaker 1:Cheers everybody and congrats to Wyndham Clark for winning a shortened Pebble Beach event my backyard 54 holes. We're getting some pretty good storms here in Northern California right now and I hope everybody that is listening in the state of California please be safe, and we're very getting close to green grass y'all. So there's a lot to that we can do off the golf course to help prepare, prepare ourselves for this year. Whether you're playing competitively or casually, there's no reason to examine, not examine what we talk about here on this podcast, and I want to give an extra special thank you and a shout out to Taylor made adidas for being a part of the podcast and please remember to rate, review and subscribe. Cheers everybody and a big shout out and thank you to Carl for coming on and enjoy this episode as I did, and may it lead you and lead you well.
Speaker 1:Cheers, hello and welcome once again to another edition of the flag hunters golf podcast. We've got my co-host, justin Tang, my brother from another mother all the way in Singapore and it's a little bit late there, and then we've got one of the great, renowned mental experts in the game of golf, carl Morris, the brains behind the great podcast. I listened to the brain. It's the brain booster. Right, carl, it's the brain booster podcast. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:It is Jesse yeah.
Speaker 1:I remembered Well welcome. Thanks for coming on, this is great.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. I look forward to the conversation.
Speaker 3:Thanks very much, carl. It was a real pleasure to have you on. As I mentioned to you before in our conversation, I came to know about you 26 years ago through the book Masterstroke, which you authored with Harry Adler.
Speaker 2:Harry Alder. Yeah, god, that's when you sent that through to me the other day. That was like a reincarnation. It seems so long ago. It was like a lifetime ago. Yeah, it was, it was. It was in the very early days, that, yeah, so you must have been the person who bought the book.
Speaker 3:No, I'll tell you what it was. I bought the book because one of my heroes, Ian Woosne, was there. So I figured you guys should be talking about his stroke, his string patterns and how will we let him send the ball 300 yards on command. So I opened the book. Clearly it was none of that. It was about how you guys taught or teach good players that Ian Woosne would think their way around the course. But then back then I suppose my mind wasn't ready for that, given that it just started the game of golf, and put that aside. But years later I would return to the book only to say if only I had opened this book X number of years ago, I would be so much further ahead in my journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, as we'll probably talk about. You know, I look at that long and winding path that I've been on and I went down a similar route in my own game, trying to achieve technical perfection and just endlessly being frustrated with hitting good shots on the range and seeing a golf swing appear to improve and I looked at it on video but then not being able to perform on the golf course. And I think you know I try and simplify things these days because I think there's enough people out there making it complicated, and I try and simplify it down to the idea that really to be good at golf, you have to develop skills, which is obvious. You need to develop some skills to control the ball flight and play various shots, but not only do you need to develop skill, you need to be able to access the skill, and I think that's where we often lose out. Really, we don't spend enough time understanding how to access the skill that you currently have available to you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and Jesse and I always have discussions about the mental game and the technical game and we say this right, it's not black and white, it's probably something like 50 shades of gray. Because you could get the Dalai Lama, who is very aware of and very present, but put him on the golf course. He probably shoot 200 strokes, yeah, but he'll have fun doing that. Then, on the other hand, they're guys who just want to focus on how their body moves, without understanding the software that actually controls the hardware. So I think there is a happy place where people can kind of nestle into where they are technically proficient but mentally proficient as well.
Speaker 2:And I get really annoyed when people say, oh, golf is all in the mind or it's 90% mental, and that's patently nonsense. You know, as you say, the Dalai Lama would go and take 150 shots on a golf course. You'd feel very happy doing it, but he's still taking 150. Whereas we need to understand how the brain and body interact with each other to develop skills and then be able to access those skills in the environment that you want it to come out, which is ultimately the golf course. And I think, whilst that is a fascinating puzzle to solve, I think when people get real clarity that you need to look at both of those two aspects to be the best player that you can be, you're then not leaving anything on the table.
Speaker 2:You know, I see a lot of players who get to the end of their career. You know, I've met a lot of guys over the last 25 or 30 years and they'll get to the end of the career. They perhaps were on tour for a period of time. They worked very hard on the game, but almost to a man, they almost all say or a woman, they almost all say I wish I'd paid a little bit more attention to understanding how my mind worked and what got in the way of me releasing that capability that I clearly had.
Speaker 3:You mentioned something which I find to be truly ironic. There's this camp of instructors and golfers who say, oh, golf is 90% or 100% mental. The irony is this this particular camp does not spend 90 to 100% of their training time on the mental game, and it's quite baffling to say something and then not follow through with your actions. So there's a lot of all these myths and superstitions that are banded around in golf that are absolutely unhelpful to golfers who are looking to pick up the game or looking to move up the next round of the ladder.
Speaker 2:And I think that you made a good point there, justin that unfortunately the mental game, just like the physical or the technical game, can become immensely complicated if you have not got some kind of framework to work around.
Speaker 2:And again, that's why, when I say to people, you need to develop skill, you need to develop the ability to access those skills when you come down the next level, I'll say for me, in the mental game, there are the big three, the three, for me, three key things that I think, when people begin to look at these three key areas, these three pillars of the mental game, as I call it, I think you get much more clarity on what the mental game actually is.
Speaker 2:Because you know, when you say the mental game, what the hell do we mean? It's, that's a huge, huge subject. Isn't it that we can just get lost in the woods with all of that? But when you understand the principles of, you know I'll say the three words, the three principles of intention, attention and attitude, and we'll perhaps go into some detail of what they mean or what they're about. But I think when you understand that that can be your foundation of the mental game, then you've a way forward, you've a way of working on this, rather than it just being a series of words or theories or ideas.
Speaker 3:My favorite one is Carl, relax, don't get so anxious, don't think so fast. But a lot of golfers don't understand where all that anxiety, all that let's get this over and done with attitude to movement comes about.
Speaker 1:But before we delve, deeper.
Speaker 3:Could we just ask you how did you get started in golf? Just give us a very brief background and what attracted you to the mental game.
Speaker 2:I mean, the main thing that attracted me to the mental side of the game just was my own failures as a player. You know I was. I took up the game relatively late. I was a pretty decent cricketer and I only took up golf I think it was 14 and a half, 15, something like that but it was relatively late compared to, you know, many players, especially these days, and I was fairly natural at sport. I suppose looking back at it, and within it was just over 12 or 18 months of playing competitive golf.
Speaker 2:I've never taken a formal lesson. I shot level par in a competition, in a club competition, and it was. I'm not saying it was all downhill from there, but it was certainly. It was certainly a challenge after that because I started to play the game and did pretty well and then people started to say to me if you took some lessons, do you realise how good you could be? And I look back on that and up until that point when I got started to play, I started playing golf. I loved the idea. I saw some good players and I love to see the ball moving from right to left, I love to see a nice little draw.
Speaker 2:And I think back in those early days all I was really concerned with was the shot that I was trying to play. I was really into what I, what I needed to do to produce this lovely little and I managed it. And it might a little bit, a little bit unorthodox there might have been a few moving parts in there, but I could stand on most T's and just aim a little bit down the right and turn this thing over and I had somewhat of, I said, control over the ball, but I had an ability to produce shots. And then, when I look back, when I started down the lesson route and I consulted with some of the best coaches or you know, some of the big reputations in the game I can't think of any coach that I work with in sort of 10 or 15 years, of trying to perfect the golf swing. Nobody, nobody ever asked me what shot do I want to play. Everybody was just interested in telling me what I was doing wrong in the swing, what positions I wasn't in or should have been in, and I got so far away from shots and so heavily into swing that eventually I really couldn't play the game.
Speaker 2:I really struggled with the game and I left it over a couple of years I went away completely from golf and in that period of time I studied various things, lots of different approaches, be that NLP, hypnosis, cbt, lots of, lots of different things and then started to work with people away from golf in areas like habit control, you know, people trying to help people to quit smoking and lose weight and things like that. And I look back on those couple of years they were the most important two years of my life really, because I stepped out of the system of golf and I was able to look at it through a fresh lens. And then I came back. I started to work more on the performance side of things, more on the I suppose, the mind side of it. But it came from a position of my own failures but an understanding that what I was doing initially with coaching was I was just passing on more of what didn't work for me. I was just passing on more and more technique, and so it was that it was it was. It was that fresh understanding.
Speaker 2:And I got really lucky with one guy I started to work within the early days, did really well. He went to tour school and got his tour car I'll have to call Philip Archie, who was in the same region as me in the Northwest, and then from that I worked with some, some decent players. You know Graham McDowell, darren Darren, clark, lee Westwood, louis Stison, and you know there was some success there. So it was, it was a winding road, a long and winding road. I certainly not got all the answers these days, but I think I asked some decent questions.
Speaker 3:You may not have all the answers, but you have most of it.
Speaker 2:That's very kind of you to say. So I, yeah, I think I think I do understand. When I get the chance to work with somebody, when somebody wants to consult with me, I do understand the position that they're in. I understand the frustrations that they're going through. I do understand the technical side as well as the mental side, and I think that has been my strength really.
Speaker 3:And your strengths has really helped a lot of players. Let's reel off a little bit of your accomplishment. One of the world's leading golf performance coach worked with six major winners and over 100 PGA to DP, world Tour, lpga and LET golfers. That's quite a mouthful.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it just shows there's quite a few golfers out there need some assistance, which has been, which has been lucky for me definitely.
Speaker 3:And the paradox is this right, the lesser golfers. I'm talking about the 24, 36 handicapped golfers. They are taught how to relax, how to visualize, but the problem is this they've not built up their motor movement patterns. The technique base is not there and all this visualization is not going to be useful because there is no base for the brain to draw from or the mind to draw from. And earlier we talked about where does anxiety come from? This get it and over and done with attitude to movement pattern, where does it come from?
Speaker 2:I think, the fundamental genesis, or the fundamental origination of an awful lot of anxiety that golf has experienced, and we've all had that and we've all experienced that on the golf course, right at the heart of it. If you think well, what is anxiety anyway? Anxiety is projecting into the future, isn't it? We're imagining something that may or may not happen in the future, and this is the root of anxiety and for most golfers, I think, the key to that anxiety is a reluctance or unwillingness to accept the variability of outcomes. If somebody said to me what is the single most important mental skill that you can develop, and that would be I'll go back to the three words that I used before intention, attention and attitude the most important element to develop is one of acceptance, a willingness to be able to accept the variety of outcomes that every single player will always have for the rest of the time that we're all playing golf. Now, acceptance isn't resignation, it doesn't mean that you're giving up, it doesn't mean that you're happy with poor shots or anything like that, but it is a willingness to accept the variety of outcomes and then, within that, to realize that the outcome of a golf shot does not define your value as a human being.
Speaker 2:I fell into that trap that I valued myself relative to what a golf ball did.
Speaker 2:So if I shot 69, I was a good person, if I shot 83, I was a not good person, a lesser person.
Speaker 2:And I think when you can start to see through these illusions and really you know, for anybody listening I think if you could embark on the quest of developing acceptance skills because it is a skill, an ability to see the game, hit a shot and see it for what it is, that the ball has gone left, it's gone right, it's gone high, it's gone low, and be objective about that rather than subjective in the sense that was the face open, was the face closed and I hit the ground too far behind the ball. Did I catch the ball off the toe or the heel? The more objective that we can be, the more we can move forward. Subjectivity is when we start getting into stories about capability, about I'm no good or I can't do it, or I've got no value as a goal, all those things that drag us down into the emotional term. So a kind of long-winded answer just to your question is what is the root of it, of anxiety? Is an unwillingness to accept the variety of outcomes that golf will provide.
Speaker 1:I'm going to chime in here on that. Let me chime in here on that, justin, and that's so well said. Carl, in my own game, I've been coming into the last several weeks with a spirit of objectivity. My next question to you is and I think it really goes hand in hand with acceptance. My next question to you is how do we develop the spirit of being objective, how do we develop the skill of acceptance?
Speaker 2:Well, I think one of the things that is very important to do is to realise that who you decide to be before you play is really important. Golfers will spend time stretching, they'll spend time hitting shots before they go on the golf course, but for me, a very important ritual is for you to decide who you are going to take on the golf course, the person that you're going to be when you get out there. Being comes before doing so. I get a lot of players to sit down before they go and get out of the car to go to the range of the first tee and answer some questions. For instance, one question would be what am I committed to today? Now, if you can answer that question, what am I committed to today? And you can commit to the fact that you are going to accept good, bad or indifferent any outcome that happens out there.
Speaker 2:You're then going to be objective about what the golf ball did. Where did I hit it on the club? Where was the face pointing? Where did I interact with the ground?
Speaker 2:If you can set that frame before you play, then you are going to develop the skill of acceptance.
Speaker 2:It is almost impossible to engage in that skill once you get out there and the chaos of the game takes over. Unless you've set that intention before you start to play of this is who I'm going to be, it is very, very difficult. When you hit it at a bounce, you're leaving in a trap, you miss a short put, those things kick in, the chaos of the game takes over and if you've not got that anchor point to hold on to, it's very, very difficult. And then what perhaps most importantly and this is about developing your identity as a goal for you, developing the identity of acceptance is after the round is to then, in your journal, is to reflect what were the best examples out there of me accepting outcomes and what did I do? So you're kind of front-loading the behavior that you want and then you're actually back-ending that behavior by reflecting on the examples of when you did it. Well, and if you embark on pre-game and post-game you do those two things, that behavior that you desire will start to become your reality.
Speaker 3:So it's almost like a pre-mortem versus the usual post-mortem that golfers do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, if you think about it, if you look at any area of life, if it was important enough in any area that you went into. Let's say that you were going into a social situation and you knew you were going to meet a lot of people in that social situation, but naturally you were quite a shy person. But beforehand somebody offered you a million dollars to go into that social situation and be engaging and ask loads of questions, which is what shy people don't do. If there was a strong enough why, the how would fit into place. You would become that behavior because you'd pre-program that personality that you wanted to be in that situation.
Speaker 2:And it's exactly the same with your golf. And I don't think golfers look anywhere near enough at this. They don't look enough at the person that they're going to be on the golf course. They look at what they're going to do and they try and work out how they're going to do it. But I think unless you get really clear on who you're going to be on the course, the person that you're going to be, all those other things will always be unstable.
Speaker 3:And that's the kind of visualization I think beginners should do, as opposed to trying to visualize a draw when they've not hit it in practice. I think some psychologists call this concept that you've just described as pre-living Sit down. They kind of time travel to the future. This is the kind of life I want to lead. This is the kind of game golfer I want to be. What are the steps that I need to accomplish that?
Speaker 2:Exactly, yeah, and you know you've just said about the beginner there. You know you could have a beginner visualizing a lovely draw all day long and that will have no impact whatsoever. But if that beginner has the intention of developing certain shots and then, with an assistance of a good coach, they have a clear concept of what the golf club needs to do to produce that shot, then we can start to use some imagery. Now we can imagine what the golf club needs to do to produce that shape, whatever it is that you want to do. So imagery and visualization, yes, can be beneficial, but in imagery and visualization, without skill it's just fantasy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a great word fantasy. And earlier you talked about stories as well. How big a part does the stories we tell ourselves impact reality? I think a lot of people think of stories as all fake it till you make it. I think it's deeper than that. It's not some fantastical thinking oh, I'm going to be a billionaire. Well, sit tight, it's going to. It might take a while, but that's not the kind of stories that you encourage your, I guess, clients to engage in.
Speaker 2:No, not at all. If you were to ask me what is the most influential book, you mentioned a book previously. Justin. If you said to me what's the most influential book you've ever read, it would be a book called Redirect by Timothy Wilson, a Yale professor and he's Yale or Harvard professor and the subtitle of the book, I think, is the stories that we live by, and it had a huge impact on me when I read that.
Speaker 2:But with the understanding that we're all just a bunch of stories, we create a narrative about our place in the world, our capability in the world, and that narrative becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy that everybody's heard about. So let's say, if we took golf specifically, if you're poor on the Greens, you'll have probably created a story about your capability on the Greens. Now what kicks in with the story is something called the thinker and the prover, and what the thinker thinks the prover aims to prove. So if I've built a story around my ineptitude on the Greens and my inability on the Greens, that story, then my thinker thinking that story, then the prover aims to prove that. And so every three-part, every mischop, is evidence to support that story, because that is what my brain is searching for Now.
Speaker 2:You can't just change a story by sitting under a tree and saying I'm going to put like Tiger Woods. Clearly there's got to be a route. But the first thing, if you become aware and this is one of the things I always work on with players you need to become very, very aware of what your current story is, what is the narrative that you carry around with you. It's very similar to what we've said about the identity. And when you're really clear about your current story, how you talk about your game, what you believe about your capabilities, when you're clear about the current story, then you can begin to consider creating a new story.
Speaker 2:And I'll say to players what you want is to become a director of the story rather than an actor, in the sense an actor just follows the script, whereas a director can change the script. A director, with the assistance of an editor, can edit the script and change it. So, absolutely, story and the power of stories is huge. And these are all areas. They're not simple things are they. It's not as simple as just bow your left wrist a little bit more or start down with the lower body or whatever. It's areas that can take a little bit of work. But my goodness, the other side of it is really well worth exploring to see what could be possible.
Speaker 3:Indeed, I think, to me the changing someone's technique is far easier than changing their primary values and way of thinking, changing deep seated habits, Absolutely because it's more tangible, isn't it?
Speaker 2:You know, we can see what the club face is doing, you can see the position of the shaft on the downswing, but it's a little bit more difficult to actually see the narrative, to see the story that you carry around, and that's where a little bit of work with a coach and I'm a big fan of you know, when you start to have a journal and you write some of these things down, it's amazing what emerges. You know, I'll get a player to sit down and start to write out and start to write out their current story. And when they get into that, when they really get into the process of that, it's amazing what emerges. And it's amazing when they look back on their life, the people who've said certain things at certain times, the influences that they've had, and they start to see how that story is being formed and then, more importantly, what they could do to adjust that story.
Speaker 3:And I think changing someone's mindset also has the effect of pushing the ego into uncomfortable positions and places. You talk a little bit about the role of the ego in the mental game.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you look at the ego, I would probably be less qualified than many people to go into the full nuances of the ego, but basically, when you look at what the ego is, it's that part of our self that is constantly focused on what we don't have and what we lack, and I think when we begin to understand that, that can drive the show so detrimentally and then you realize that coming back to what I said previously is that a person's value, your value, my value, is not dependent on what a golf ball does. Your value as a human being is a given. Now, I think, when you can start to see through some of the illusions that the ego creates of constantly comparing ourselves with others and constantly comparing a life that we think we should have as opposed to the one that we do have. The world is being driven so much, the ego is being fueled so much these days by the influence of social media, because people go on social media and constantly see reinforcements and perceive there's a lack in their life, there's things that are missing, and that's where, when you come back, and what can really settle things down is an understanding in. You know, I taught Gary Nicolam and myself talked a lot in the Lost Art books about the concepts of gratitude, of being truly appreciative, of being able to play golf today just for its own sake, not for what it might give you in the future, but just for the sheer appreciation of what has to happen.
Speaker 2:For you to go and play golf today, you've got to be healthy, you've got to have enough money to go and do it, you've got to be a member of a golf club or you can afford a green fee or whatever it may be. And, as trite as that might sound to many people listening, here's my experience with this, justin, is that a truly grateful and appreciative golfer is providing a really, really solid platform for them to express their true capability, because when you are in a state of gratitude and appreciation, the activity in the brain is far less active. The communication from brain to body is far more efficient. So I think when you look at these areas like gratitude and appreciation, they're not just these weird concepts, they're very, very real, and you know the amount of people who said when they read the Lost Art books that the thing that resonated with them more than anything else is a really big, clear understanding of the role of gratitude in the game, not waiting to be happy.
Speaker 2:You know I call it I'll be happy when. I'll be happy when I break a hundred. I'll be happy when I get to scratch, I'll be happy when I get on tour. Well, I've worked with guys who've won major tournaments and I'll be happy when I win another major and another major. So it can be rampant that we can. I'll be happy when Now, that's not to say that you don't have dreams and goals and aspirations Okay, that's, that's fine to see how good you can be. But playing the game from a strong spirit of gratitude is a wonderful place to play the game from.
Speaker 3:Indeed. So once, to be full of gratitude, you have to be present as you are counting your blessings. And you mentioned earlier about not being complacent. I think there is a place where we can be content but not complacent. That's that little happy spot. You don't have to be just grinding your way every day and be oblivious to what the rest of the world are doing. You can't be happy and keep progressing 100%.
Speaker 2:you see, I think you can be happy, grateful content, but you can also aspire to see what you're truly capable of. I think that is a very different. That's not coming from ego, I don't believe that's not coming from a place of lack. It's coming from a place of let's see what's possible. What could I achieve? What shots could I hit, what scores could I produce? That is very different than trying to prove your value as a human being by what a score says on a scorecard.
Speaker 1:What a great conversation this is, boys. I'm thoroughly enjoying it. I got to chime in too, along with having a spirit of acceptance and gratitude, and I think this all goes hand in hand. Also, too, when we're learning this game especially, the majority of the people that listen to this podcast are the better players. One thing I would love to see changed in how this game is taught, and also to a different possibility of learning, and I don't know why this is, and it goes along the lines with what we're saying, but I don't know where in our society or our culture that demonization of mistakes is prevalent. I mean, it just kills me. My game changed dramatically when I started accepting the fact that golf is not a game of quote, dr Rattela. Golf is not a game of perfect, but it's a game of mistakes. The best players in the world, they manage their mistakes the best period, and that has to come from within.
Speaker 2:You see, the point you just made there I see is so important. But if you then link it to if we're trying to get better at this game is to fundamentally understand that the brain learns from mistakes. A baby doesn't learn to walk by getting it right. A baby learns to walk by falling to the left, falling to the right, falling forwards, falling backwards, and then the brain begins to organize around that. So your progress as a golfer is very dependent on your relationship to failure, or your perception of failure.
Speaker 2:When you can become, instead of it being an ego, as Justin mentioned, an ego judgment of your capability, when you can become a little bit more curious, as you've just said. Okay, that club face was obviously way open on that. That's curious, that's interesting. I've hit the ball halfway up the ball. The contact's been poor. I've hit it off the toe, I've hit it off the heel. Isn't that interesting? A lot of guys will be listening and thinking it's all right, saying just be interested in your outcomes. But I promise you, the more interested and curious that you can be about what actually is happening, the more your relationship with failure will change. And when your relationship with failure changes, then you're able to express and find out your true capabilities.
Speaker 3:I'd like to put it this way bad shots are the business expense of tournament golf.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah and it really just goes in a lines and goes hand in hand with the spirit of acceptance. I find it very interesting when we watch our favorite players on Sunday. It's usually the men and women that are on the top of the leaderboard that aren't necessarily getting ruffled after poor shots. They accept it. They get ticked in the moment but they accept it. They chip it or blast it out of a bunker to a tap and make bar and move on and they might file for later examining it on, and I think that those are powerful little things that we can pick up from the world's best and apply it to our own.
Speaker 2:I've never worked with anybody I see who has said to me I've worked with a lot of people who have been fortunate, who have worked with some guys who've won tournaments. I've never, ever worked with anybody who said I hit it great for four days. It's never. I've never heard that statement. There's always, for every guy who wins or woman who wins, there's always some period within that 72 holes where you start to miss a few greens, a few funny shots. But it's back to what we've been saying all the way through this podcast it's a willingness to accept those variability of outcomes when they come along and then deal with it objectively and get on with creating the next one. So I know we've been beating the acceptance drum really hard in this podcast, but it is such an important concept, indeed.
Speaker 3:So earlier you mentioned your partner Gary Nicholl. Let's talk a little bit about the loft art. Does the swing create the shot or does the shot create the swing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've known Gary for a good number of years. We actually knew each other and we were both working out on tour without really communicating that much. We knew of each other for a good while before we actually got together and had a conversation and found a lot of common ground, and Gary's worked with some of the best players in the world numerous rider cut players, major winners and things like that and a wealth of experience out on tour. But when we sat down and discussed this, we both felt that there was such a shift towards the science of golf. There's so much analysis, there's so much data which has its place.
Speaker 2:I'm not a complete luddite. I don't say all of that stuff isn't of value it is but we felt that all the science was, to a degree, to the detriment of the art of the game, the art of creating shots. And then, when you ask that question, you're saying for me, that's maybe the fundamental for anybody playing the game does the swing create the shot? Now, if you believe that the swing creates the shot, the problem is with that. If you have to get the swing just right, when do you ever get finished? However, there's always something to think of, there's always something to put right. You know when people say to me, oh, such and such your body got a good golf swing, and I say, well, I don't know, unless I can see him hit shots. You know, and when you, when you start to look at it, if the shot creates the swing which we believe it does, it comes back to that word I mentioned at the start intention. What do you intend to do with the golf ball If you intend to a low fade? Now we can begin to organize everything around that intention. We can support that intention with efficient use and application of the club and body movement, whatever it may be.
Speaker 2:But surely it was a guy called Stephen Colby who said many years ago in a book called the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of the seven habits was begin with the end in mind. Now, what is the end in mind in golf? The end in mind is a shot. So if we don't begin with that, we can't work our way backwards. If we begin with the idea of a perfect golf swing, as I said, it's a journey that you never, ever complete. So I think for many people again listening, if you can stop focusing so much on what's wrong with my swing and get a little bit more into how do I create better shots. I think that opens up a different world and I think coaches should endeavour to be a little bit more of shot coaches rather than swing coaches, because, as far as I know, when you've played around a golf, they don't ask you how many swings you've made. They ask you how many shots you've hit.
Speaker 3:Indeed. And when you mentioned shot coaches, one of your fellow countrymen's name came to my mind John Jacobs, the legendary John Jacobs. I've got a video of him presenting to the British PGA. It's very precious to me. I watch it every now and then and in that presentation he talks about how he would turn his back towards the target and he could just tell from which part of the club phase the ball came off from. That takes experience and I read I've got all of Mr Jacobs books and it's amazing. Even though he talks about technique, what really stuck with me that I used to this day for the past 20 years is the principle of Goldilocks If someone slices, you make them cook it so it's not too hot, not too cold. So goes back to what you said about being a shot coach, and I think if coaches have that paradigm shift, they are going to be much better coaches to the benefit of their clients.
Speaker 2:Now. I was fortunate enough to meet John Jacobs, a true, true gentleman, a lovely man, a friend of mine. Andrew Murray spent a lot of time with him and Andrew has been on my podcast and we dedicated a whole podcast to John Jacobs and what he did for golf. But John Jacobs back in the 1960s was talking about things that it took until many years later, with the advent of Trackman and flight scope and things like that, to actually fully understand how far ahead of his time John Jacobs was. John Jacobs had a Trackman in his head, as you just described there. He could actually look at a ball flight and work out what the golf club must have done to produce that. So I think back to the idea of the shot creating the swing. What are we trying to do with golf? We're just simply trying to keep the golf swing in balance and if there's too much movement of the ball from right to left, as you said Goldilocks, balance it out with some opposites.
Speaker 2:And here's a liberating thought for everybody listening, justin, is that if you go to the golf course with the question in your mind, have I got my golf swing today? There'll always be fear and anxiety with that. But if you go to the golf course asking yourself the question what shots have I got today? That is a completely different thing Now. On any given day you might only have a couple of shots and they might not be pretty shots, but you will have shots that you can play. When you start to then look at the game and think, okay, when I go to the course every day, I just find out what shots I've got, then you can go on the golf course and then you can unpick the puzzle which is the architects design, what the architect is trying to get you to do on the golf course. And I think there's so much more freedom in focusing more on shots rather than purely technique. I'm not saying technique doesn't influence shots Of course it does.
Speaker 3:But it is a paradigm shift to go from the swing creating the shot to the shot creating the swing as you say intention would create a resultant action that allows the mind to draw from the storehouse of technical movement patterns that has been built through long hard work and practice.
Speaker 2:That's the clue. If I have the intention to play a draw, I have clear intention. That's what I want the golf ball to do. Everybody should explore clarity of intention. How clear can I be on the intention on the golf course? But then the next level of it okay, once I'm clear on my intention, where do I need to place my attention to produce that shot?
Speaker 2:Now, I would suspect that for an awful lot of people, placing your attention on what the golf club is doing, what the club face is doing, probably would be a very productive area. Because that is the thing that, whether we like it or not, the only thing that supplies the golf ball with information to do what it does is the golf club. And yet we must be the only sports whereby the people who play that sport are completely. Many people are completely detached from the implement in their hands. They have no awareness of what that golf club is doing because they're so wrapped up in all of the things that they've heard and all the videos that they've watched telling them to move the body in certain ways. Now, I'm not saying body movement doesn't have a part to play, but ultimately the best golfers are the golfers who are most aware of what the golf club needs to do to produce certain shots.
Speaker 3:So post the loss out of golf, there was the loss out of the short game and the loss out of parting. So clearly you have had a lot of interest in the initial book to roll out the other two editions. In my mind I think this is one of the greatest trilogies in golf. Quote unquote, instructional library. Every golf coach and every golfer should have that. These three books.
Speaker 2:I appreciate coming from you, justin. I really appreciate that. Ironically, the order was the loss start of putting was the first book and then we wrote the loss start of golf and then the loss start of the short game. But, as both me and Gary have said, we promise that there's no more. We're not going to be like Rocky 5 and Rocky 6. We're not going to keep knocking at that. So that's the trilogies there.
Speaker 3:Now. But besides these three books, you recently have been quite busy with a few other releases, product releases. Let's quickly go through some of them for the benefit of our listeners. Let's talk a little bit about neuro parting that you did with our friend Dr Izzy Justice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a really interesting collaboration with with Izzy. I think he's done some great work on brain activity, brain wave frequency and about how to access your skills by reducing the activity of your brain, so that that program is primarily about that, about how to understand from a kind of neuroscience perspective what are the best states, what are the best best brain states. If he talks about getting into green, you know, if you look at a set of traffic lights green, amber and red and as we all know, when the brain activity ramps up and we get very busy with our thinking when we're in red it's very difficult to access our skills, it's very difficult to feel the appropriate force to apply to a put very difficult to sequence movement. So that program talks a lot about how do we get more into green, how do we calm that brain activity down. And then, most recently, just in the, probably the program I think of all the things that I've ever done has the potential to have the biggest impact on golfers and as the collaboration with a guy called Raymond Pryor who's developing a great reputation as a sports psychologist working with some of the best players in the world, and we produce this program called Building Stable Confidence and a real it's a real, in depth look at.
Speaker 2:It's an audio video presentation. It's a real in depth look at how do you actually go about building that stability in your confidence, which is the opposite of what most people experience is, which is really unstable confidence and it's anything to really hang on to. So, yeah, it's. It's been fun to put some of these things together.
Speaker 3:And you also put book to video. I'm talking about the lost art of starting. So I got the video and I told you I can do 50 foot parts in the same round. That has never happened to me before in 25 years of golf and to this day it continues. So each round I play I would roll at least a 30 footer in. Well, technical, no, nothing technical about it. It's, it's what you say, right, asking yourself what's the story I'm telling myself and what? What does the situation require for me to roll the ball in the hole? That's it. That's what I asked myself and, yeah, I know it may sound very simplistic. If every golfer gets a look at this program the lost art of putting they're going to cut at least one to two strokes minimum of their parting strokes per round it is.
Speaker 2:We do go into some detail about the importance of questions and what questions actually do, and fundamentally, questions focus our attention. And I'm going to go for everybody listening now. If I said what are you, what can you hear in the background? Immediately you'll leave this podcast and you'll tune into something into the background and you know when you walk onto a green if you can ask a couple of the questions that we talk about in that program, as you're obviously doing. You know your attention is in a very, very productive place then. And then you go back to these three words. You know the theme intention, attention and attitude. Keep circling around those three things and you'll not go too far away. You'll not be too far off where you need to be. But if I'd known that you were going to hold puts and improve so much, I'd have charged you more for that. Probably just that.
Speaker 3:Are you going to release videos for the other two books?
Speaker 2:We've got some plans for the video side of the things. Yes, I'll keep you posted on that.
Speaker 3:Amazing. Before we let you go, let's talk about the granddaddy of all the programs, the Mind Factor course.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the thing I'm most proud of. We've been doing certifications for coaches now for 17 years. We do a live course every year in Manchester. It sells out every year. We get people from all over the world the one that we just did recently in Manchester in November, with guys coming in from China, singapore, right, a few people from Switzerland, all across Europe. So there's that. We just run that course once a year. It'll be November 2024, the next one, but there's also an online version of that for people who can't get to Manchester, that you can do that and become a certified Mind Factor coach. That's basically three days training with me, immersing yourself in a lot of these things, and I think, as a coach, well, when you do the course and you become certified, you give yourself another string to your bow, you've got another addition to your teaching armory, and I believe for many golfers it could make, for many coaches it could make a serious difference.
Speaker 3:What are some of the concepts that you covered in this course?
Speaker 2:Well, many of the things that we've discussed in this podcast and understanding about, you know, brain, but mind, body connection and understanding about those three, going into a lot of detail about the three words in tension, attention and attitude. Very detailed about the story, about how you change the story, and a big part of it is how to develop skills, how to train more efficiently, how to gain more control over the club face, things like that. So it's not just mind. There is the technical aspect as well, but linked to mind and body.
Speaker 3:How can our listeners contact you and find out more about your services?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if they. Thank you, justin. If they go to the website themindfactorcom, they can find all the programs there. But you know anybody's got any questions. I'm pretty responsive on email things like that, so please just get in touch with us if there's any help that we can give you.
Speaker 3:And there you have it, carl Morris, one of the world's leading golf performance coach. Thank you very much for your time, Carl. Do you have any questions for Carl Jesse?
Speaker 1:No, I'm just as curious as ever. And Carl, thank you for coming on and thank you for gracing us with your time. Justin, thank you as always, and I'll make sure to put all of the ways to get ahold of Justin and Carl in the show notes. Thanks everybody for listening and cheers.