Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Hello and welcome to Flaghunters ! It is a privilege to bring to you this powerful insight into playing better Golf. In all my years of being in the game of Golf from competing at a high amateur level, to caddying, teaching, and being a overall Golf geek, I have an insatiable, curiosity driven desire to get down to the bottom of what it takes to truly get better playing the game of Golf that we all unconditionally love. This has been one of the greatest journeys of my life and I am deeply grateful for all that Golf has given me. Thank you for joining me in this incredible journey. This is my ever evolving love letter to Golf. Jesse Perryman P.S. Please Rate, Review and Subscribe !
Flag Hunters Golf Podcast
Your Mind is the Most Important Club in Your Bag
Trevor Telin, mindset coach for elite athletes including those at IMG Academy, reveals practical strategies for golfers to overcome mental barriers and perform at their best under pressure. After experiencing his own mental roadblocks as a college basketball player, Trevor developed techniques that help athletes bridge the gap between technical ability and peak performance.
• Awareness of personal thresholds is the first step in managing pressure situations
• Mental skills require dedicated practice just like physical golf skills
• Personalized strategies work better than generic mental game approaches
• Resonance frequency breathing (4-second inhale, 6-second exhale) helps regulate nervous system
• Observational skills allow players to step back and avoid emotional reactions
• Mental resilience developed in golf translates to all areas of life
• Elite performers aren't surprised by adversity—they expect and prepare for it
• The goal isn't to eliminate challenges but to respond to them effectively
Follow Trevor on Instagram and YouTube @MindsetTrev or email him at trevortalene@gmail.com to learn more about his coaching services.
This episode is brought to you by Mizuno Golf and Jumbo Max Grips. Are you curious? Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, welcoming you to another edition. As we are approaching the season, we are coming out of the doldrums of wintertime, spring is upon us, sun is shining a little bit longer during the day and the grass is going to start getting greener. For those of you that are having to deal with the seasons and here in California the seasons are very mild, so eat your heart out.
Speaker 1:Anyway, happy pre-master's week. It is almost upon us and this week we have my friend. His name is Trevor Talene. He is a mindset coach. He has a great Instagram channel called Mindset Trev at Mindset Trev, and it's the same with YouTube, at Mindset Trev on YouTube, and he has some fantastic practical applicatory methodologies for helping you to play your best golf and getting out of your head, more importantly, to see things as they are and practical wisdom and, as I said, applications to get around the ego, to befriend the ego, to understand what the ego wants and to help us navigate that. More importantly, trevor works with elite athletes. He has for quite some time, has a background in psychology and in mental toughness, has a college athletic background himself, so he knows what he's talking about and he's coming from experience and teachers who have been there and done that and they have done the requisite work in the field, both experientially and educationally, to give us you and I the best possible chance to play our best golf. Check them out again at mindset Trev on Instagram and at mindset Trev on YouTube.
Speaker 1:And happy great rest of the week, everyone. And for the next couple of weeks I'm going to be releasing a few more in celebration of the Masters. I'm going to be releasing some podcasts, a little bit more than one per week to get some fantastic conversations out there and to celebrate our first major of the year, and also to co-celebrate the Women's Amateur at Augusta as well A powerful tournament for the ladies, showcasing the world's greatest amateurs, and having that Sunday at the National is quite special. So cheers everyone and have a fantastic week. Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flight Hunters Golf Podcast. I am your host, jesse Perryman, and we're giving Justin the week off. He's in Singapore, he's teaching, making people better, and then this week we've got a mindset coach. This is pretty cool. His name is Trevor Talene and I found him on Instagram and it really is my wish desire to examine the it Trevor. Thanks for coming on, bud. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, Jesse. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm excited to dive into it today and see what we come up with.
Speaker 1:Trevor, you're a mindset coach and you're a mindset coach for you. Do some work with IMG, which is pretty high cotton.
Speaker 2:Yes, indeed, yeah.
Speaker 1:How did you get involved, how'd you get started and what inspired? You?
Speaker 2:That's a wonderful question. So what really got me started on this track was my own roadblocks, my own shortcomings, if you will. Basketball was my sport growing up as a young lad, all the way through high school and then into college and such, and in college I took probably one of the more interesting routes you could. I actually, first year of college I decided I didn't want to play. I thought I was over it. It took about three months, realized that was probably one of the biggest mistakes I had made and it was time to get back into it.
Speaker 2:So I took a bit of a risk and I actually went up to a school in Iowa, literally in the middle of a cornfield, a junior college there, spent two years up there in a town called Mason City, loved it, said all right, I want to keep going for this. So then transferred to a school down in Arizona, right outside the Phoenix area, down in Mesa specifically. And that's when things, though, I thought were really charging ahead. They actually got a little more bumpy, and about halfway through that first year there, or so, I decided it was time to really hang it up and quit. And when I did that a few weeks afterwards, through some just self-reflection and kind of just sitting with all those emotions and thoughts that were flushing through, I came to the conclusion that my goodness, my mind is really what got in my way here. This is really probably the biggest piece holding me back from playing at that potential I know is there, I know is possible.
Speaker 2:So with this realization I decided was already on the track to go to graduate school for psychology in general, just didn't know which way I wanted to specialize that and I consider myself incredibly lucky for this opportunity. But I actually started reaching out to a few professionals in the sports psychology world that were in that area and was incredibly blessed to get the chance to intern with Trevor Moad at his office over in Scottsdale. They're a small team, just Trevor, a gentleman named Sean Kelly Quinn, and they had a videographer there, jonathan Schultz, and they kind of took me under their wing. I saw everything that they were doing and learned from who I consider to be one of the absolute best in our field while he was working for some really large programs. But just got the bug and from there it was off to graduate school and now we're here. The rest is kind of in history and now we're here, the rest is kind of in history.
Speaker 1:So If I'm a player and I need help with my mindset and I reach out to you, I say, Trevor, I've, I've got some. You know I'm getting in my own way. How would you start that process? What would that process look in the beginning?
Speaker 2:That's a great question for myself. Where I like to start is I got to understand who you are. I got to understand what we're dealing with here. What has it maybe looked like in the past and maybe where are you hoping to take things in the future and just what's getting in the way of that, what's making that more difficult? So we start with a quick, easy 30-minute chat. I'm going to have some questions.
Speaker 2:I just want to hear folks' story their background and from that initial conversation we're hoping we can find at least one piece, one little lever that we can start to work with a little bit and from that change hopefully start to see some different sort of results, performance, et cetera, whatever you want to call it actually out on the course. And from that point it's a fluid and ever-adapting and evolving process. Human beings are constantly changing from day to day, so therefore what we're dealing with, how we relate to it, what comes up for us, is changing as well. So then it's really a collaborative partnership. I mean, whether that's we talk once a month or twice a month or four times a month, no, just checking in what's been going on, giving ideas, giving tactics, getting feedback and just kind of working that process through until folks feel like they're at a at a good spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds great. My, uh, the the majority of the listeners that listen to this program, trevor, are pretty good players. Um, and once you get to a certain proficiency with your golf swing, it no longer is your golf swing and it becomes something else. In addition to that, not that technique is not important, it very, very much is. But you need to learn how to drive the vehicle after you've built it. And some people run up against some of the mental blocks getting in their own way. Maybe they're trying to, you know, chase out, chase their fear or outrun their fear on a driving range trying to figure it out. But you know, you and I both know, and a lot of people know this, that once you get to a certain level, it's not your golf swing, it does become. What's going on under the hood? Yeah, can you describe that a little bit?
Speaker 2:absolutely well. I'd say this is true in golf and I'd say this is true in probably a variety of sports, if not all of them. I mean, we see this especially as we get to the upper levels of things at a certain point, and even at the highest level, like you, can't do much more technique wise, right it is. It is almost maxed out in a sense, and what then starts to create that edge in that situation is exactly what you're mentioning. It is the mind. It is how we relate to the adversity, the friction, the, you know, the, the situations that go wrong.
Speaker 2:I mean, how we work with all of that is realistically, and of course I'm biased in this nature, but I think one of the biggest aspects of it, as you mentioned, your technique is always important and sure that might refine over year, over year, and that's totally cool. And oftentimes, I mean, everything runs through the mind first at least this is my opinion, right? I mean we look at the world, how we react to it, what comes up for us is all processing through the mind. So if we're not working with that space, well then we're kind of doing ourselves a disservice. I personally think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree, and I do believe that this is the missing link. You know, with the advent of track band and force plates and everything that you can look at under the sun to see what your body is doing in space with a golf club, I think we've got. We've got that pretty dialed.
Speaker 2:You don't have the mind dialed no, no, and I'd say do we ever fully get it dialed? Perhaps not, but we have to at least be in the and I don't know, fight is even quite the right word, but we at least got to be engaged with it right, building that awareness so that we know all right what little uh pivots changes, adaptations do I need to make along the way?
Speaker 1:Sure, here I got it. I got a question for you, Trevor, this is a good one. Um, this has come from a few of my friends. My my friends said you know, if you ever get any mindset people on your podcast, you know, ask him this. So I'm going to ask you this. There's been a lot of talk about, you know, how do you get over breaking 80, breaking 90 and that stuff. But in the case of the questions that I get is, how do you get your nervous system used to being under par, significantly under par, even? You know, what I found with a few of the questions that I've asked is a threshold of where one would be comfortable. I've mentioned this several times. For me, it's a certain amount under par and then, once I get beyond that, the speed wobbles start happening right. Sure, start happening right. So my question to you is how do you, how do you, get used to being significantly under par and not let it stop you from doing the things that you did to get to that?
Speaker 2:place? That's a great question. My mind goes to, I guess, kind of three elements here to begin. The first one, and perhaps the most important, at least in my mind initially here, is awareness. So I mean, it clearly sounds like you have a good grasp on where this threshold exists. I'm not sure if every player has that. If they don't, let's start there, let's start to understand. When do things start to feel a little wonky, a little shaky?
Speaker 2:For me here, a great way of doing that is, I will perhaps not the world's greatest kind of analogy for it, but I'll kind of use the image of a stoplight and we can kind of look at those three colors green, yellow and red and we can associate these with these different states. So what does green feel like? Well, that's when we're in our groove, we're in the zone, we're just rocking and rolling, we're doing our thing. That's perfect, wonderful, that's helpful to know. But perhaps, maybe even the least important one to really have a grasp on, what's really important in my book is that yellow, because that's going to be the signs, the signals, the cues of when we're starting to approach that threshold. And in my mind, if we can pick that threshold up earlier or quicker or sooner. Well then it's far easier to kind, of course, correct and get ourselves back down to that green Comparatively, if we blow right past that yellow and all of a sudden it's a hole later and it's oh crap, I didn't realize like I'm really feeling it right now and we're in that full-blown red state. It's far more difficult to bring ourselves back to that grounded place, especially if we haven't trained any sort of tools, techniques, strategies, whatever it is you want to call it that'll help us do so.
Speaker 2:So for one, I think it's awareness, and that's not just awareness of the thoughts, that's awareness of the body. For myself, it's always my palms. When my palms start to get sweaty, I know, all right, this might be a moment to kind of just recenter or reground myself here If my chest starts to get a bit tight. Okay, I know, maybe I'm a little more elevated than even just the palms. So picking up these signals, I think, are huge. It's different for everybody. I'd say that's kind of step one and two.
Speaker 2:The third piece, though, I would add, is like let's get outside. We're talking golf here specifically. Let's get outside of golf and let's go put ourselves in other situations in life that maybe increase a little pressure for ourselves and we can build confidence, handling those moments of adversity, even if it's in a completely different aspect of life. And what we oftentimes find is that will help translate over to the golf course, because it's nervous system is the nervous system. It doesn't know if we're playing golf or if we're like you know, we just got cut off in traffic. There really is not a massive difference there, it just reacts. So if we can find our way in other moments of life to ground recenter, you know, manage those moments. I think that also plays quite nicely and gives folks a little bit of an edge benefit when they're back out on the course itself.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's very, very well said, trevor. I really like that. I like the awareness part because I think that, by and large, especially in the United States, where we've over-trained the physical so much that when we do bump up against some adversity, we don't necessarily have the mental tools to reground ourself, to connect with whatever it is that we need to connect with to get us back in the here and now, absolutely, would agree. It's, like you know, just my comfort zone, which I'm going to do whatever I can to break through. It is four under. As soon as I get to four under, I start getting a little shaky. Sure, I can cruise all the way there, but once I get to four, for whatever reason, so you know, I'm just as much of an inquisitor in this case as anybody. Sure, sure, you know what are some of the things that you can suggest. Say that somebody is bumping up against that, or they're playing in a golf tournament and they might find themselves in the lead. Mm-hmm, you know, there's another kind of a happy accident problem.
Speaker 2:Sir Sure, of course.
Speaker 1:I mean, is it a case of being there, uh, getting yourself in position to get the nervous system acquiesced to that level of, you know, quote unquote pressure? I think that all pressure is internal anyway, but is that part of it? Um, is part of it, maybe, connecting to the breath? You know what, what, what can, what are? Give us us some clues of what we can do when we do get ourselves in that situation?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. There's two things that come to mind here, and I'll mention the first. First and then the second is probably just as, if not more, important. The first piece is and this is obviously not a wonderful answer, but it really depends is and this is obviously not a wonderful answer, but it really depends no cool strategy technique that I ever suggest with an athlete is a one-size-fits-all. Humans aren't one-size-fits-all, so we always got to be willing and open to customize these a little bit. So I'm hesitant to ever give like try this and this will do it.
Speaker 2:However, you can take general principles so breathwork absolutely. Now, there's a million different ways to do it. However, you can take general principles so breath work Absolutely Now. There's a million different ways to do that and knowing what works best for you, what feels most comfortable, well, great, once we fine tune that, that's excellent. For an example, one technique that I will share with a lot of folks is one referred to as resonance frequency breathing. There's a good amount of research done on this technique and it's directly related to heart rate variability, and what we see is, when we dive into this resonance frequency breathing, which is typically about a four second inhale, six second exhale, we know that starts to create a better synchronization between breathing rhythm, heart rhythm, starts to create a little more flexibility in the nervous system. So therefore it's one that I would highly recommend to folks. But in other cases it can be keywords, it can be physical actions, if you want. I actually have and I don't have it here with me, but I actually have a plastic tiny toilet. It's about this big, and I'll use that sometimes with folks as a reminder to just flush it. When situations come up and we feel like we can't grasp them, let's just get rid of it that way.
Speaker 2:Worked with a young golfer the other day and we were talking about similar ideas. Wind pressure starts to really build up. How do we let it go? For some reason, throughout our discussion the idea of a balloon came up. So we said, all right, well, why not bring a little balloon with us, like put it in our bag or put it in our pocket, whatever it may be? He loved the color orange, so we made an orange balloon, so it's personalized and it's special to them, no-transcript.
Speaker 2:So with all of that said, the biggest piece I probably harp on with the folks I work with is none of this works if we don't practice it, and ideally we don't want to practice this when we're in the heat of the moment. Right, professional athletes don't practice when the stands are packed and the lights are bright. They do it when no one's around. And so for any of these tools we got to do it the same way. We got to build it in a comfortable environment where our nervous system is more relaxed, so we can really build that familiarity. And then, as we stack those days together and we get out in competition, well now, when we go and lean on it, the recall is quicker, the body knows what to do, the brain knows how to respond and we can actually get the desired effect. So tool is great, but if we don't practice it, the tool, quite frankly, is kind of useless oftentimes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that is absolutely well said, trevor. I appreciate that getting your nervous system prepared is literally a regular practice, and 100 percent it's just the same as going out and hitting balls or tripping and putting and working on the tangibles.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and it's, you know, our, our, our, our body and mind's way of responding to situations didn't come this way in a day. So therefore we are not going to get it to be different in a day. I mean it takes the reps, it takes building that strength. It to be different in a day. I mean it takes the reps, it takes building that strength. And this is a good place where we can use data. In a previous role we worked very closely with different wearable technology and this was a really nice way of saying, hey, look, you go do this practice and then look, we can check back in and see that heart rate variability is increasing or that resting heart rate is getting a lot lower. So we can use data in a helpful way. But it really takes two to tango here to get it across the line that we want to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's very well said and I think that you know I love this quote from Tom Watson. I've said it several times. But he said I didn't learn how to win until I learned how to breathe. So somebody asked me the other day about breath work and I said well, you have to practice it. You have to practice it. You can't just magically call upon it when you're going sideways in the middle of a golf tournament. Right, right, actually, have to work on it. It has to become a part of your. You know the pie chart? Absolutely, yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:And what I find oftentimes is when folks don't practice it, what will happen is, if they even remember to use it in the midst of, let's say, a golf tournament, which usually we don't if we're not that close to it, if we don't practice it well, then it doesn't work real great. And then all of a sudden we're sitting at the end of that day or that tournament or that round. We're like, well, screw that, I'm never doing that again. It didn't even work Well, we just didn't even give ourselves the chance for it to work in the first place. And therefore you can see people you know get kind of just, I guess, let down or just kind of lose hope that these tools actually work, when in reality you just got to put the right inputs in to get the right outputs just got to put the right inputs in.
Speaker 1:To get the right outputs, yeah, yeah. And since you know what we're talking about isn't a one size fits all for everyone, and rightfully so how do you? You know, give us, give, give me some examples of what you would do to find what does work for us.
Speaker 2:Great question. The first thing that we're going to pull on that I typically pull on is past experiences. We know from research done by Alfred Bandura, even late 70s and such, that our self-efficacy, our belief in a certain skill is very impacted by how the past has played out, has played out. So we're going to go back. What were some high pressure moments or intense situations that you felt you navigated through nicely? What happened? How did it feel? What'd you do? We're just going to kind of crowdsource all this different information and try to build out some sort of mosaic, if you will, of all these different insights From that.
Speaker 2:Then we'll start to simplify and say, okay, well, what do you maybe want to try out? This is a really important piece too when it comes to these techniques. I will frame it like it's like you're going to go buy a new jacket. Well, when you go buy that new jacket, you don't just like grab, maybe some people do, but you don't typically just grab it off the shelf and say, boom, I'm walking out the store. You want to go try it on. You want to see if it fits your arm length. You want to see if it fits your shoulders. Does it zip up? Is it too snug, is it not?
Speaker 2:These techniques are the same way. So we'll crowdsource that past to figure out, maybe, what has worked. Great, we come up with an idea and then we're not married to it. We're just going to go test it out, right Almost like an iterative process here, kind of an agile way of thinking. We're going to go use it, we're going to change it, manipulate it, mold it, whatever you want to say, until we get something that really feels nice and great. Then we'll stick with that for a while. So that's kind of how we'd work through that process.
Speaker 1:Do you ever bump up against anybody that doesn't have the ability to be objective in the feedback, if they're attaching, you know, maybe a missed opportunity or choking down the stretch to something completely negative and it clouds their, their, their known observational capability.
Speaker 2:I would say, yes, it is. It probably comes up initially. What I find with a lot of I mean, all my work is it's just conversations like this. It's, you know, 40, 60 minutes and we're just talking questions, thoughts, throwing out ideas. So initially, yes, you might get that kind of right off the bat, but then usually that's what I train myself to be good at I kind of poke some holes in it, challenge it a little bit, try to extract out what might be true and what might just be kind of misinformation meshed in. So I think that is really the importance of having a sounding board, a mirror, a mirror, a coach, whatever it is you want to call it, because when we're doing that on our own, absolutely I'd say that's even more dangerous and more likely that we will get kind of some conflicting ideas there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, great answer. Great answer, you know, this is, this is as much for me as it is for for anybody out there. I mean, you know we're as much for me as it is for anybody out there. I mean, you know, we're very human and we do want to play well, and especially in a competitive environment. But I'll tell you, you know, what we haven't trained my goodness does it show up and what we have trained my goodness does it show up. How trained, my goodness does it show up and to take a step back and remove the positive or negative or black and white charge of the situation and to go into observation mode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I was actually just sharing this with some athletes the other day I work with. There's a great, though not a golfer. There's a great, kobe Bryant.
Speaker 2:Little kind of excerpt from an interview he did once before and he kind of talks about this that you know, performance is not really that black and white and if we're making it just that, it's going to be a bumpy and kind of long and probably not as enjoyable road and instead we want to tap into this mentality of we're a problem solver, we're an observer, we're a watcher, we're just trying to figure it out. We're trying to, of course you hear this all the time just get a percent or two better each day. But if we can embrace that sort of way of looking at things, it's not about being perfect, it's not about the win or the loss, it's about just evolving as a human being, but then as a competitor as well, and in all these different identities that are within ourselves, 100 agree yeah, yeah, that's well said and it's you know, look at things as they are and not with a with a certain expectation and or attachment.
Speaker 1:And this is kind of you know, I feel that here in the U? S we're starting to shift, we're starting to agree, you know, agreed, agreed, and I think that these conversations are at the forefront of that shift. Yeah, because it's you and I grew up in kind of a different era where you know, it's it's hustle culture, it's performance, and if you and if you, you know, if you don't do well, you suck, or you know, there isn't a lot of problem solving, observational skills, problem solving, until now, thankfully. So you know, changing the paradigm is a big, a big thing that I'm inspired by, or at least, at least helping it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely we seem to have this and perhaps historically we have, and I agree this 100% is starting to shift in a lot of ways. In the West we have this kind of mentality where, well, I just got to work harder, I just got to force more, I just got to grip it tighter and it's like, well, realistically, in a lot of cases things would be much better if we just let go for a second, if we just took a step back and did nothing. What do you know, things might actually settle out. The clarity reappears when we stop trying or efforting quite so hard. I will, in different terms or different ways, talk a lot about with athletes this idea of effort versus ease, where we don't always need to be pushing and trying and training more. Sometimes it is better just to sit back, observe, be the watcher, not speak, and just kind of take in and then through that, well, we understand and we learn how to relate to it all a little bit better, which is awareness and insight and wisdom, all kind of working together at that point.
Speaker 1:How can we pivot there, trevor? How can we awaken this observational skill, trevor? How can we awaken this observational skill, you know? How can we detach from the positive and negative, or at least the charge that we associate that with? How can we take a step back and look at the whole picture as it is and then take the parts that we need to work on and have the wisdom to be able to pull back and let go and observe.
Speaker 2:So yeah, sir, great question. There's surely there's a plethora of ways, right Again, with different practices and ways about going through things to that really come to mind off the bat is one idea, obviously not brand new by any concept, especially in areas such as the East and such but mindfulness, right, I mean just the practice of observing, without attaching, without judging, without critiquing, I mean just immensely beneficial. What I find, unfortunately, when it comes to ideas like this mindfulness, meditation and obviously there's a plethora of different ways we can meditate We've done a really, really poor job of displaying the variety, so I actually even did this one day. If you Google search like meditate or mindfulness, you get one photo and it's the person sitting cross-legged with their hands, like this, and that's going to work for maybe 10% of people, but the other 90%, our brains don't function that way, so we need to do it in other manners. So we'll work with folks on, you know, movement based meditation or mindfulness. Right, let's go I'm here in Mexico Currently let's go walk down the beach and let's just notice what the sand feels like, and when our mind drifts off to other places, we just bring it back to the same. Sit there and you listen to music, listen to a song or something along these lines, and when the mind starts drifting off to oh shoot, did I like turn off the toaster, or whatever random thought it is, we come back to that piece. So that would be, I think, a practice that people can embody.
Speaker 2:For a more specific strategy that allows us to kind of zoom out, I will talk a lot with folks about taking the 30,000 foot approach, meaning I'll oftentimes try to ask what's the biggest city you've ever been in. Let's take New York, for example. If you're in New York City and you look around and you're standing on a certain street or intersection, all you see is these massive buildings. You can't see out, you can't see the sky, you can't see anything. That can feel incredibly overwhelming, much like our golf game can at points when this feels like all that there is.
Speaker 2:But what then I'll challenge folks to do is say well, what happens when you're in an airplane and you're flying above New York City at 20,000, 30,000 feet? Well, now, all of a sudden, you can see the much larger picture, you can see how things fit in and you can see how those buildings were actually just part of this neighborhood or whatever it may be. I think that's a very useful skill for life, but certainly golf as well. It might feel like everything is closing in around us, but let's actually zoom out, let's take a look at what's really been happening here. Maybe let's look at the past, let's look at all the variables and aspects involved, and this oftentimes will help us kind of widen that lens a little bit, get a better perspective and then understand okay, maybe I was making too big of a deal out of this or maybe I'm not making a big deal out of this. Gives us better direction, better clarity, and from there we can proceed onward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it requires a little bit of the ego to take a backseat.
Speaker 2:Certainly.
Speaker 1:Certainly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely Absolutely, and, and, and, and though I think that can be I'll use the word scary at times, because we are live in a world where, like ego is, you know, that's who we are, it's who I am. What do you mean? When we're able to sit with that feeling for a bit and explore that space a bit more, actually life gets incredibly better. You know, it's easier to work through frustrating situations, things that maybe really got under our skin beforehand. They don't quite do it the same as they once did. It just allows so much more freedom, autonomy and just kind of just more alignment, I would say, with folks, actual values and what they care about and what they actually go do in life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well said, well said, trevor. I mean it bears repeating too that, as, as we've discussed this, I still keep going back to we we've analyzed the golf swing. We we've we've created tylos performance institute has created a great program to help golfers get better, get more mobile, uh, create more power and and uh to to look at it legitimately as a sport. And it is um. But the observations of the greats, um, and you could just take golf for an example, or any sport. They like Tiger Woods, tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus, bobby Jones, ben Hogan they had to have been the greatest at not allowing distractions to enter their consciousness, or if it did, there's literally no energetic charge to it.
Speaker 2:False flat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, kobe, you know just these great people that they don't let things happen, penetrate, whatever it is that their mission is.
Speaker 2:And I think a big key there is the last piece. You said what their mission is and I feel like oftentimes we work from a space of Ooh, just don't let the distraction, don't let the distractions in, don't let them in, but we don't ever give ourselves something to then focus on instead. So incredibly helpful to say, all right, well, what really is my purpose with today? What really is the goal, the intention? Like, let's find something. Sure, we don't want to get sucked into all these things, but what do we actually want to get focused on? And when we have that, it becomes far easier again, almost like this mindfulness muscle, to say, oh, there's that distracting thought, no worries, let me come back to what actually matters. Without that, you know, you're kind of, you're kind of in the dark. They're just kind of floating around like yeah, keep this all the way, but I don't know what to actually pay attention to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that goes back to practicing something before we actually get into in a situation where these thoughts will arise Certainly.
Speaker 2:Certainly you got to get comfortable first will arise, certainly, certainly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you gotta get comfortable first. Yeah, uh, cam smith said something after he won the british open in 22 at st andrews. He said you know, a reporter asked him a question and I've said this several times, but it bears repeating because I think it's so incredibly powerful, and that is somebody asked him what the difference was this week and he had a couple of of moments during 72 holes that went a little sideways and he said you know what? What works for me is I'm very good at being comfortable while being uncomfortable, and I think that that there, for the majority of us myself included we don't want to be uncomfortable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, certainly, you know, and if you get yourself out in position more than once or twice, you're going to feel those feelings, you're going to have anxiety, things are going to come up, the brain's going to want to be into prediction mode. You're going to start time traveling. Sure, well, if I do this and do this, do this, I can shoot 66, or if only if I didn't miss that three foot or two holes ago, I'd be. You know, whatever, whatever the threshold is, you're trying to ascend through, uh, or just getting yourself in these positions where your nervous system starts to go. Okay, danger, will Robinson. So all of these thoughts are incredibly huge, like an anchor thought, like something to anchor you, keep you grounded. And then the here and now.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly, I could not agree more. And that can change from day to day, right, I mean, depending on what the objective is or what the adversity or situations you're dealing with. That, honestly, probably should change majority of days because it's got to be relevant to as you mentioned here and now and the more familiar we are with that. Again, yes, takes practice. We got to build the strength to stay connected with it, but it gives us almost a bit of freedom say, well, I don't really need to be concerned with that because this is actually what matters. Now. There's a analogy. We'll say, uh, in sports, psych, space, a lot of when, what's important now and like, let's just keep coming back to that. It can be a simple way of kind of honestly, probably the biggest piece, keeping it simple and just saying this is all I care about, this is what's going to kind of drive me through today and just staying close to that.
Speaker 1:Well said. One of the all-time greats had he had such a simple thing, walter Hagen. He said that he didn't allow himself to get upset during the course of a round until he's hit seven bad shots. How about that? It's like one of the greatest players of all time. So for him to hit seven bad shots, it's got to be a really, really bad day. Like a really bad day. It'd be like Tiger or Jack or Ben Hogan saying I'm not going to get pissed off until I hit seven bad shots. I think that's kind of boy. You want to talk about freedom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of room in that. Yeah, absolutely, there's space in that, right. And and we're not. I've seen this with athletes, I mean, countless times when we feel as if our back is up against the wall, we have nowhere to go, there's no room to breathe. Well, then we start acting out of fear. Right where we start acting from a scarcity type mentality, I mean, the nervous system, quite literally, is pinged over to the more sympathetic side, where we can't perform our best at that point. So, whichever way we need to frame it, so that we feel as if I got a little space and a little room to move here Fantastic, let's do it, let's lean into that, because it's probably going to pay off and it's going to allow us to handle that first punch and that second punch with a little more grace, which is probably going to then boost confidence, keep us more motivated and give us more momentum as we continue to play the round or the tournament, whatever it may be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a powerful conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have to agree.
Speaker 1:This is pretty good stuff, you know, I Trevor. I hope that in the years to come, and starting now with this paradigm shift, that this is actually being taught in elementary schools.
Speaker 2:Oh, I surely hope so too. Interesting enough, I actually, about a year or so ago, did some work for a micro school actually, as you mentioned, elementary school down out of Austin, texas, and then they're based in Miami and Denver as well of Austin Texas and then they're based in Miami and Denver as well and my whole role was building out curriculum for grit and grit and growth, mindset, creating challenges and and and and exercises and and um workshops, et cetera, that were quite literally focused on these exact topics. And I think if we can get those seeds planted, then I mean we, we do, we do potentially do so much good for folks, not only in that time, because if a young man or a woman or a young boy or girl can handle those growing situations with this sort of ideology or wisdom, then my goodness, by the time they're a bit older and then, as life continues on, they're going to be in a completely different place, and it really is important. So I'm right there with you. I think it should be interjected into just about everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, one thing that I found too from the greats they know how to take the good with the bad. It's a part of the process, it's a part of the journey. You know it's there. They appreciate the good and they also appreciate the bad, from learning perspective. And, uh, and, and neither are either, uh, the what, what's the word I'm looking for? Uh, the bad isn't demonized and the good isn't, uh, idolized, right, right, you know they are.
Speaker 1:We have our preferences, of course, but there's a certain you've got to train the nervous system and you have to have a mindset to be able to accept that, you know. But if you talk about, I mean ultimately, what would it be like if somebody is on the golf course under duress, you know, and their nervous system is starting to freak out a little bit, but they have the tools and the resources internally to be able to reground themselves and reek and to recreate that room, that space, that freedom. You know, I, I think that tiger is such a great example of this because he had, he never lost sight of the freedom to be himself out there, no matter what, no matter what was happening. Yeah, you know, and, and that's like you have to, it's like one of the intentions. If you, if, if, if someone is setting an intention for around you, this is your grounding point. Point, no matter what happens.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think massively important, right? This is the space I want to operate from today and I'm going to stay in this box in a sense. And it does not mean and I think people get this confused sometimes when it comes to the mental performance training or mindset work is that this doesn't mean bad things aren't going to happen. This doesn't mean you're not going to get hit with all sorts of adversity, like that is still going to show up and will show up every single round and every single day of your life perhaps. But what it does change is, as you're mentioning, the space.
Speaker 2:We have to work with it, and what we really start to see is the more times you do that well, do that well. This is, I mean, you can have confidence in your ability to do this, just like anything else. So you take tiger in from a very young age I would imagine he got fairly decent at this. Well, then you start to have that belief that, well, I, if I could do this, then why can't I do this? Now? Right, and and now it's almost like that threshold you're mentioning. Well, now it continues to grow, because what used to set us off right here, well, over time, that doesn't really mean that much or matter that much anymore. And now it's all the way up here that we got to get to, until anything actually causes uh, you know some some wrinkles in the plan.
Speaker 1:So yeah, 100 agreed yeah, yeah, I think, uh, the expectation should be that at some point you are going to face adversity, like that's being very realistic, absolutely, and and and I find it sad actually that there's a lot of guys, like in my handicap genre, that do go out and they play a high level of amateur golf but they still surprised if they hit it like shit. It's just wild to me, it's like their egos won't let them. And then I'm thinking to myself. You know, I'm going to continue to go back to Tiger. I know that he had days where he only hit like six, seven, maybe eight greens in regulation and he still found a way to stay in it.
Speaker 1:You know, he still found a way, and that's that's mindset 100% agreed. 100% agreed you know, probably the greatest winner of all time, you know, or at least one of them. Um, and and the the thing is is that we, uh, I idealize these players as people that don't make a lot of mistakes, right, right, and yet they do. They just absolutely handle them a lot differently than the rest of us. Right, right, right, and that's why we're having this conversation.
Speaker 2:Absolutely the ability to roll with it when it. When it pops up, right, ok, this happens, yes, this sucks. And now what do I get to do about it? This was actually a big piece of the gentleman I first interned under, trevor Moad before he passed away. This idea of neutral thinking was like the essence of what he was really teaching is yes, it doesn't matter if you're tired or you just picked up clubs for the first time, like you're going to run into something that wasn't quite what you had in your plan, and that can be true, while at the same time, it can also be true that you can do something about it. You can, you can, you know, you can make it work, you can work your way through it, whatever way you want to frame that.
Speaker 2:But being able to hold both those side by side, I think, is key, because if we don't live in a black and white world, it's not that straightforward. There's always an opportunity in any sort of challenge and training ourselves to be able to see that and not just instantly get pulled over. Oh my goodness, this sucks, there goes my round. Can't believe I made that mistake again. Well, if we can get both to show up, then again, this word freedom and space and room to breathe and move keeps coming up, but I think it really does start to deliver it.
Speaker 2:What would it be like Trevor, if you can have one of your students be 100% comfortable on his or her own skin under duress? Fantastic. And to be quite frank, while obviously I care deeply about how they perform at golf in this case, or whatever sport it may be playing for me this is a sliver of our identity. It might make up. It might take up a ton of the time and a ton of our energy and resource, and if we can do it out there, there's a very good chance we can translate that to other areas in life. And that's what really gets me going, because we might not walk off is a great game.
Speaker 2:You can play almost forever, um, but nonetheless you're going to have relationship situations, you're going to have career situations, you're going to have, you know, check out line at the grocery store situations, and if you can do it in one spot, we can usually start to bring it into the others. And now life just is a little bit lighter. You know it's more enjoyable, it's easier to be happy, it's easier to be, you know, gracious for what you do have, and I feel like that is the way to live. Otherwise, I mean, I don't personally want to have to suffer and be annoyed and frustrated all the time. That's just not that fun. Yeah, why not have some fun while we're here?
Speaker 1:Wow, 100%. How can people get a hold of you, trevor?
Speaker 2:The best way is probably through Instagram. At the moment, Mindset Coach Trev is my username there. I'm on there just about every day. Try to really prioritize getting back with folks quite quickly and if not that they're always welcome to shoot me an email. It's just trevertaleen at gmailcom. So straightforward, nice and simple.
Speaker 1:And I'll make sure to put all that information in the show notes. And you know, trevor, I really appreciate you, thank you, thank you Appreciate you. Uh, thanks for saying yes, thanks for coming on and, uh, and giving us your hard fought wisdom. I really appreciate it, hope, hopefully, we'll have you on again sometime. And and uh, you know, those who listen to this, uh, this is part of you know really my effort to help bring to you people like Trevor, to identify the intangibles and what to do, how to work with them, how to make them a part of who we are in a strength Because the mind, my goodness, trevor, left unchecked. It's like an out-of-control water hose Just pouring water all over the place. Yes, indeed, you're trying to wrap your hands around it to catch it, especially coming down the stretch, and I really appreciate you coming on, trevor, and please reach out Whoever's listening. Reach out to Trevor. There are people out there that are going to help you get over the hump, the mental, emotional hump, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I'll just say briefly as well, just thank you, because, for myself, something I've realized over this last decade or so of doing this work is I can only meet so many people. I can only have so many conversations in a day. So, realistically, for these ideas to really spread, we need bigger platforms, we need different stages to be able to stand on so that the words and the ideas can spread at a greater scale, and conversations like this, podcasts like yours, do that. So I mean this evolution, this change, this growth that we hope to see, and the way folks think and relate to their performance. It can't happen without all of these pieces together. So thank you for the time and thank you for doing what you do.