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
Identity, Acceptance, and Performance: Why We Self-Sabotage on the Course
Discover why your mental approach might be sabotaging your golf game with renowned sports psychologist Dr. Raymond Pryor. In this profound exploration of golf psychology, we uncover the concept of "stable confidence" – self-given permission to perform freely without guarantees – and how it transforms performance under pressure.
Dr. Pryor, author of “Golf Beneath the Surface”, challenges conventional wisdom about golf psychology, explaining why common practices like distraction techniques and positive self-talk often fail long-term. Instead, he reveals how acceptance of uncertainty and potential failure actually creates the psychological space needed to access your best skills when it matters most. This counterintuitive approach explains why you might play brilliantly after a terrible front nine – you've finally accepted your situation instead of resisting it.
One of the most powerful insights concerns the relationship between identity and performance. When we attach our self-worth to being "a good golfer," we create an unsustainable psychological burden that manifests as anxiety during important rounds. Dr. Pryor offers a more sustainable alternative: building identity around action-oriented traits rather than outcomes we can't fully control.
Whether you're struggling with performance anxiety, inconsistency, or simply want to enjoy golf more deeply, this episode provides practical wisdom for transforming your relationship with the game. Dr. Pryor's approach isn't just about shooting lower scores – it's about finding freedom, authenticity and joy in the process, regardless of outcomes.
What would it feel like to step onto the first tee completely comfortable in your own skin, accepting all possible outcomes while still fully committed to playing your best? That's the question at the heart of this conversation – and the answer might change your game forever.
Thank you to Mizzuno Golf and JumboMax Grips.
To reach us,
Justin@elitegolfswing.com
Jesse@flaghuntersgolf.com OR (831)275-8804
Raymond, www.golfbeneththesurface.com
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast. This is Jesse Perryman, your host, along with my co-host from the Tanamera Golf Club in Singapore. His name is Justin Tang. Justin is a very renowned golf instructor, a very deep, holistic coach that will tackle your game from every single angle to help you become a player that you've always wanted to be, and you can reach him at the Tanamera Golf Club also, along with the show notes and all that. But I wanted to give Justin a special shout out because I love him and he's a brother from another mother and a well-studied man in this game, somebody that I trust with my information and I believe that you should too.
Speaker 1:So, on to hopefully not making this a long-winded intro, I wanted to give a special congratulations to Rory McIlroy. I was there. It was very special, one of the most special situations I've ever been a part of. The air in Augusta was magical and the stars aligned and he did it and it's well deserving and it perfectly segues into the conversation this week with a man by the name of Dr Raymond Pryor. He is a sports psychologist, author of a book, in my opinion to be and I'm strong with my opinions when I'm in this way to be the most important golf book written in decades. And where that segues with Rory is if you think long and hard about Rory's shortcomings and his victories, his triumphs. He never gave up, and Raymond talks about this in the book, of having emotional resilience along with stable confidence. And what is that Emotional resilience? What is stable confidence? Well, to me it's a foundational piece that one acquires through blood, sweat and tears, doing deep inner work, and which is beautifully outlined in the book. And I also got a chance to spend some time with Raymond and Augusta, and he is everything that he has written in the book. So the book, so the book Golf Beneath the Surface is what it's called. It may be, if you have aspired to do deep inner work in regards to this game, it's nothing that you haven't heard before. But the way Raymond frames it and words it, the process, the work, it's very palpable, it's very understandable, logical, practical, simple and, as a couple of friends of mine always say, simple is simple, but simple is not always easy.
Speaker 1:So doing this work will allow you to have a level of detachment. So you do your job and the results are they're not up to you and the faster you can surrender to that irrefutable truth, the better you're going to be, the more joy you're going to play with, the happier you're going to be on the golf course and you're going to be able to take the good with the bad. You know what would it be, how great would it be to be able to go out and play in a tournament and be completely comfortable in your own skin, in spite of any nerves, in spite of any anxiety. So when you do the work that's outlined in the book, you create a precious second or two between stimulus and response. That is part of the journey. If you continue to get caught up in the results and then you attach your identity to it, you're going to be in for a long, long road and it's going to be miserable. And, believe me, I was there. I was 100% there, attaching my self-worth to my score, and it's not easy to depart from that. But the work is worth it. It's just like working on your golf swing. When you make changes in your golf swing and you see the fruits of your labor, it's very satisfying and you look back and you say it was worth it. This work is absolutely worth it.
Speaker 1:I believe that the book. The title of the book, all Beneath the Surface really details this journey, and it is a journey. I'm on it. I'm studying the book deeply and following the principles deeply and following the principles and I can already tell that my nervous system is starting to acquiesce to it. It's starting to change Again.
Speaker 1:Acceptance of things that are out of your control is when you have a deep body acceptance of it, there's something magical that happens. There's something that shifts in your whole being and it's going to preemptively get you into what we call flow, the zone, a state of being where you are completely aware and yet you don't care about anything, and yet you're trying. It's very hard to put into words, we've all experienced it at some point in our lives, but doing this framework is going to stack the deck in your favor to come into this vaulted state of being on the golf course. And when we are in the zone, magic happens. And as I leave you with the main body of this conversation, ask yourself the last time you were in the zone if you hit it perfectly. Just ask yourself that. Contemplate on that. Enjoy this episode.
Speaker 1:We're going to have Raymond on again and a special shout out to him for taking the time out of his busy schedule and his workload to spend an hour or so with Justin and myself. I'll make sure to leave all of the pertinent information in the show notes. Again, the title of the book is called Golf Beneath the Surface. Get it. It's available on Amazon. You can go to I I have, uh, both the hard copy and the audio book on apple or whatever your book streaming service is.
Speaker 1:Cheers everyone. Once again, a big congratulations to roy mcelroy for completing the career grind slam and and taking his rightful place, uh in the annals and the legends of the greats. Cheers everybody and have a great week. Hello, this is Jesse Perryman from the Flag Hunters Golf Podcast, along with my co-host and my friend, justin Tang. We welcome you to another episode and we have a very great guest on today. His name is Dr Raymond Pryor. He is a psychologist, a performance expert. He has a book called Golf Beneath the Surface and I've read the book several times. It's an excellent, excellent, excellent book, along with a great podcast with the same name, golf Beneath the Surface. So, doc, welcome. Thank you for coming.
Speaker 3:Yeah, thanks, guys, Appreciate you having me I mean great guest. It might be a little bit hyperbole, but I'll see if we can't provide a little bit of go juice for the listeners.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, doc, for gracing us with your presence. I've read almost all the golf psychology books out there. Golf Beneath the Surface is destined for the pantheon of great golf sports psychology books and even beyond that right. It's one of the great books in life that you pick up and there will be a fork in the road ahead of you. Do you want to go down this path or down the same old path that you've been walking? It is that influential. Well, I appreciate that. Thank you. Before that you also wrote Bull's Eye in Mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Were you a shooter before?
Speaker 3:No, I wasn't a shooter. I have some history with sports shooting. I went to graduate school at West Virginia University and they have a historically good rifle team which actually just this last week won its 20th national championship. So shout out to them.
Speaker 3:But when I was in graduate school I got connected with that team and, like golf, there's a bit of a? Um, a lack of what I would describe as like high quality psychology available to that. It's a bit of a smaller. It's a global sport but it's smaller in general just in how many people are in it and therefore fewer resources and and fewer um, kind of fewer high quality resources, especially psychologically to them. So I've been working in sports shooting now for about 15 years and about halfway through I was like you know. I think this group needs a little bit of something more than what is currently not available to them and and pump that one out, that book's a little bit outdated now. Golf beneath the surface is certainly more in tune with what more modern research shows us, but that's the history in sport shooting you could, you could follow up with uh life beneath the surface there's.
Speaker 3:The cool thing about our psychology is that, even though it might be, we might say, more clinical psychology or more performance psychology, a lot of overlap in those, because our psychology generalizes. So by that it means the more I do something here, the more I start to see where that overlaps in other areas of my life, and our brain is designed to do that on purpose. Try to help us navigate. If I'm successful in this, I'm wondering what also could be successful for me over here, or create certain types of pursuits or benefits for me in these areas too. And so oftentimes, you know, if we bring anxiety to golf, for example, we might also start bringing that to other areas in our life At the same time. If I bring more stable confidence to golf or somewhere else, we can see where these things might also start to apply overall. So just one of the many facets of our brain that is very helpful at times, hurtful at times, but if you're intentional with it, it can be really good for us.
Speaker 2:You know you talk about the similarity between shooting and golf and I suppose there's a lot of time to think in those two activities. But let's talk a little bit about your past as an elite soccer player. In soccer there's not much time to think. When you've got the ball, you're running down the right flank trying to cross it in. But that changes when the game goes into penalty shootouts. Then it becomes like golf.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I would um push back a little bit on that, in that our brain thinks way faster than we can physically move even the fastest of games, whether it's hot. So you could be running down the right flank thinking or focusing on things that are not relevant for anybody who's played, you know, soccer or rugby or baseball like you can be in the middle of an action and be worried about what's going to happen. That would be anxiety or in flow state where you're only focusing on what's going on. So our brain thinks faster than we. Any of our current sports can physically move, and so in a sport like shooting or golf, the action in between it's very proactive. I move on my own pace. So certainly we can get in our own way psychologically or facilitate our performance, but our brain is fast enough to move around.
Speaker 3:A shootout in soccer or hockey or a similar sport very much like golf, In fact it's kind of like shooting free throws in basketball. It's like a 10 foot uphill straight putt. First one to miss is out. It's a very similar situation. So there's a very wide window to think. But every sport provides opportunity for us, for our psychology, to either facilitate performance or impede it.
Speaker 2:Every sportsman would have this framework. Every sportsman would have this framework. There's the capacity, or what I call the potential of the sportsperson, then his current ability, then you've got things like confidence, you've got expectations and then the actual outcome. After reading your book, I realized that acceptance is the key that holds all these other traits together. Would it be fair to say that your book, if I could summarize it in a nutshell, it's about stable confidence.
Speaker 3:Yeah, to a degree. You know. By definition for those listening stable confidence is self given permission to perform freely, without a guarantee. So what makes confidence stable is that I'm not relying on something else to tell me to operate freely, right? So the opposite of that would be I need an outcome to go a certain way for me to feel a certain way, to then perform a certain way, which is how most people develop confidence, which, again, isn't wrong or bad, but it's very limiting because I'm relying on something that I can't quite control to tell me how to feel and then ultimately, tell me how to operate. So, needless to say, when I can't check those boxes, by definition that means it's less stable. So the self-given permission we have to learn how to start giving ourselves permission to perform freely. And then the without a guarantee to your point, that's acceptance.
Speaker 3:Acceptance doesn't mean that we don't care. It doesn't mean that we're comfortable or that we are certain. It doesn't mean that we're settling for less. It doesn't mean that we're not motivated. It doesn't mean that we're not trying to be successful. What it means is I'm willing to experience my past for what it was, my present for what it is and my future for all that it might be and from a neurological standpoint, what happens is our brain is essentially just a task. It's an association making and a task making machine and any task that goes under the unacceptable category. It is unacceptable to hit this ball left, it is unacceptable to feel a certain way, unacceptable to think in a certain way or unacceptable to fail. It's not that these are negative thoughts or feelings. They go into the avoidance based task category. So if I tell myself it is unacceptable to go left or don't hit it here, it's not that that's a negative thought, but it's an avoidance-based task that is in competition with me actually playing the shot that I want. And our brain has a very specific system for how it prioritizes tasks, which anybody who you hear, who's gotten to the top of their backswing and what's really been at the top of the priority list is don't you dare and then fill in whatever blank, knows that that's plenty of time for your brain to prioritize an avoidance-based task like dear God, don't get this thing left over. Actually start this thing here, try to finish it here.
Speaker 3:So acceptance of the things that we don't want to experience, both internally and externally. What it does is it takes these avoidance-based tasks off the priority list, which means now there's runway for me to go. Well, what do I want to do and how do I want to do this thing right now? So, for example, something like anxiety, which by definition is worry about the future. It is a psychological state characterized by the priority is avoiding a future that I don't want to play out or I don't want to experience. If I'm unwilling to experience certain things in the future, that means my present is now devoted to trying to avoid those things at all costs, which means now I'm not really in thriving mode, I'm in surviving mode, based on what I've asked my brain to do.
Speaker 3:So, to your point, what we're finding more and more through research is that the highest performers in the world they are not trying to avoid the worst case scenarios.
Speaker 3:They are accepting of the fact that that is part of the risk that comes with trying to perform at a high level. Therefore, it's easier for them to be present. So we used to think a long time ago, maybe 20 years ago the way to be present more often was just to hammer focus, training, but, as it really turns out, the opening for how easy it is or how much room we have to be present in the moments that we're in depends very much on our psychological framework, as whether we have a window to actually be present. So, really, what it turns out, if you want to be present more often, you have to have a more accepting relationship of your past and of your future and anything that is discomfort and uncertain that you might be feeling right now, which essentially what that does is it allows the priority to pursue what you want right now to remain the priority, instead of being superseded by something else.
Speaker 2:There is a lot to unpack in that last couple minutes. So what we're saying is this Acceptance is not fatalistic resignation or being nonchalant. It's really about being objective about the past, the present and the future, but it must be genuine acceptance. It must be genuine acceptance. It must be like you can't. You can't say, hey, let's put the cake in the oven and start peeping, oh, is it cooking or not? You've got to be genuine about it and not like, oh, let's try and, oops, let's see, is it working or it's not we might acknowledge that it is difficult for us at times to accept things that we don't like.
Speaker 3:You know, if you had a history with certain let's say it's a certain golf course or a certain hole, or just perhaps a situation like being in contention, where you have some pretty painful memories of those, our brain is designed to resist those types of things playing out against. So it is difficult for us to accept a lot of the experiences that we don't want. What we start to see is that when we start to train acceptance and wrap ourselves around that, that it gives us more room to operate in the present, which means it's not that these things will never happen again, but we have more autonomy. Autonomy means I have an influence over what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. It's a sense of control for us, whereas when we're unwilling to accept reality as it is and the actual risks involved which is I might feel the similar heartbreak that I did in my past what happens is we're doing things.
Speaker 3:We're just always playing defense right, and really what we're not playing defense strategically on the golf course, what we're playing defense against is our emotions right, and it's really difficult to do that and play golf at the same time, in which case, then, the experience itself gets worse. We tend to operate well below our capacities, particularly our skill levels. We tend to start making decisions and doing things in a way to try to protect our feelings, rather than try to pursue the things that we want, and it doesn't take a psychologist to figure out this is not exactly human beings being happy, healthy and high functioning right. So, while acceptance is challenging for us, we have literally centuries of research all the way back to like Buddhist texts saying that when we work with the world as it is and we're willing to accept even the scratchy and suffering elements of life, we operate in ways that are more authentic, that are more free and more aligned with our authentic pursuits, and that, essentially, is the formula for being a happy, healthy human being, at least from a psychological standpoint.
Speaker 2:You know, you mentioned something that's quite topical scar tissue. There was an incident last week where a junior golfer heckled Rory McIlroy and he shouted just like 2011. Now, I don't know if you coach Rory McIlroy, I'm not going to ask you about it but do you think that in a scenario like that, that there was scar tissue that caused said player to react in that fashion against the heckler?
Speaker 3:Scar tissue is probably not the best term for that. A better analogy is something like thinking about it like quicksand. So let's think again. We'll use Rory as an example. You know not to try to, he's just famous enough that people will be able to understand what we're talking about. So many years ago, I mean almost 15 or so years ago, rory had a bit of a collapse, you might say at Augusta 2011.
Speaker 3:Understandably, right, you know. His own accounting is that he showed up at the course trying to be a different version of himself and ultimately, essentially, he played a final round just trying to not screw up instead of trying to go out and try to win For whatever reasons. Again, I'm not going to guess at Rory's psychology, I'm only saying the words that we know are public, like that he shared, right? It's probably a safe guess to say that that was a pretty heartbreaking experience for him, pretty painful, right. So it's really not about scar tissue for us in that case, in that, like a physical injury wraps scar tissue around an injury to try to help replace what might be lost in terms of structural or tissue damage, or to try to protect the joint. What our brain does for these is it tries, you know. Essentially it creates a response where, well, you were in quicksand and you got swallowed up, for whatever reasons. Oftentimes it's us operating out of anxiety, but then also certain situations that quicksand is nasty, right, he got both of those. Well, our brain is designed to go. Well, next time you're in quicksand, we're going to panic our way out of that, right. And so what happens is you get a response when I get to the same quicksand, I start flailing around and it should try to panic my way out of it. Basically, like my brain is associating this location experience with pain and heartbreak. That must be avoided. So we might see, as our level of acceptance for that goes, and then what happens in that quicksand, and then we start doing things that make it more likely for us to see, and then we get an experience that plays out in the same way over and over again. So it's more of a you might even classify this closer to what we would not say scar tissue, but more a trauma-based experience.
Speaker 3:Trauma is what happens to us and within us when you mix intense fear and anxiety with immobility, meaning I can't escape, right. So you can think about this like if you get hit by a car, a lot of fear, a lot of pain, and your body starts to tighten up because you're injured, you can't move or something like a physical assault, like intense arousal based fear and anxiety plus immobility and, for Rory, intense anxiety through that and kind of watching yourself, kind of crash and burn and flail your way and you're sinking into this quicksand and you can't escape unless you're willing to withdraw which he's, which he's not right and so our brain is designed to go whoa, we got to avoid that experience at all costs, in which case, then, it is designed to meet thoughts about that, words about that, showing up at the same place with more anxiety. So the challenge here is can I be accepting of this experience, maybe understand it and process it a little bit? Processing means I'm looking at it from different angles so I can understand what happened more than just this collapsed and there was nothing I could possibly do about it or understand about it. Also, getting into our physical, like somatic, experience, as we still experience those events, understand the psychological framework we're bringing to those. That's probably more.
Speaker 3:My guess is what happened in the experience that you're talking about, where someone's heckling rory about that is he's probably heard it enough times where he's just probably really sick of it.
Speaker 3:You know, and we can all probably um, relate with rory a little bit, not maybe to the level of golf that he plays, but if you, if I, took a very public, embarrassing, painful failure for anybody and reminded you of it in a jesting or, quite frankly, like an obnoxiously rude way, at some point you're going to hit the end of your rope and you're going to get pissed about it.
Speaker 3:Now we might give Rory credit where he experienced that on a Monday or Tuesday or whatever day that was, and in whatever way, reset himself in a way where he was going and playing the players and play great, end up winning.
Speaker 3:So scar tissue is not the best analogy. It's probably a term that people described it with a while ago that they were just trying to describe something they didn't quite understand underneath, and so it's not the worst analogy. It's just not the most accurate. It's probably something closer to I'm in quicksand again and our default response is swim out of here as fast as possible instead of be still in this and probably closer not to scar tissue but to a trauma based response, which there's degrees and types of trauma, but the general framework is the same, which is this was awful and I have learned very quickly. Please don't let this happen again. And our primary mechanism for trying to avoid our past playing out in our future is anxiety. But then when I go do something thriving based through anxiety, I'm going to get the same type of experience over and over again.
Speaker 2:I mean, the centerpiece of this would be our emotions, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, our emotions are a really important part of the human experience. They're signals to us telling us. They're not always accurate nor relevant, but there's no situation where we would want to turn off human emotion or our feelings, Like they are functional feedback for us if we learn to experience without trying to avoid them and to see them without judgment.
Speaker 3:So, even if I'm feeling something like panic, that's not a bad feeling. Matter of fact, if I'm being chased by a bear, it might save my life. However, in certain situations, that may not be functional for me and it may not be a very relevant response. I have to learn to tune into that in a nonjudgmental way so that I can make a shift in focus, a shift in actions. Or, by the way, at times maybe I do need to exit physically from something based on what that is. So it'd be like you ignoring physical pain over and over again, like you might end up wrecking a joint or hurting your back in a way that now you can't play golf at all. Instead of tuning into the fact that, man, I'm kind of feeling this pain, I'm wondering where it's coming from and getting curious about that.
Speaker 3:So our emotions are, uh, feedback for us.
Speaker 3:They're oftentimes energizing for us, but they're not always aligned with what it is that we're trying to do the way that we want to do it. So learning to react or interact with them in a more fluid and flexible mindful way allows us to be able to show up for them and use them functionally, rather than being at the whips end of them. So, needless to say, it's really hard to be a happy, healthy, high functioning human If you feel something and you have to act on it just because you're, I'd be like okay, I feel like I have to pee a little bit and then I run to the bathroom, no matter what. Well, this might not be the time or place that is the best for that Not that I won't get there eventually but those are the types of situations that we typically do with our own emotions we either smother them and ignore them, or we act on them simply because they exist, in which case then now you're a bit at the whips end of them which, again, very difficult to be consistent in a high performing way.
Speaker 2:You used a great word there, a four letter word that starts with F feel. A lot of people can't distinguish that. I am not angry, I'm not personifying anger. I feel angry. And if I feel anger that doesn't mean I need to act on anger. We are not our emotions. Emotions, as you say, could be the best and worst of life. Could you talk a little bit about the role of emotions and by understanding that emotions are a signal to us but we need not act on it.
Speaker 2:And you mentioned the word panic. Sometimes it's not panic, it could be excitement, and I guess if you have a diverse vocabulary then you could practice what I call emotional granularity. I'm actually not anxious getting on the plane. I'm actually excited because the couple of hours time I'll be in Hawaii by Kapalua enjoying the waves. Actually, that's not anxiety, it's excitement. And I think when players start to misunderstand or misinterpret what they are feeling, their actions kind of follow suit. Would that be a fair assessment? And then, when you start corrupting what you feel, your actions follow that and it's really hard to be objective, isn't it?
Speaker 3:It can. Our feelings are not objective. They are oftentimes super subjective. We can interact with them objectively, to your point. One of the things we see with people who are really emotionally intelligent is that they develop an expanded, layered vocabulary for being able to label their feelings and sensations and emotions, right. So instead of me, I'm either feeling fear or relaxed, it's I'm feeling slightly agitated, or I'm feeling a little bit of angst or I'm feeling nervous all the way. So basically, like there's a gradient scale for speeds in between, and in those different speeds, it's a lot easier to change, to slow up, or to speed up or slow down going from 25 to 30 than it is trying to get from 100 back to 30, right, or from 100 to zero.
Speaker 3:So if we learn to, as you pointed, not take our emotions and thoughts and feelings personally, it's something I'm experiencing rather than something I am. So there's a difference between I'm feeling anxiety versus I am anxious, and oftentimes what that tends to lead to is us starting to build our identity around our feelings, like I'm an anxious person, which is technically not true, but if you identify with it, then every time you're feeling anxious, you're going to feel a sense of identity, and now you are reinforcing anxiety over time, right? So if I can learn to feel anxiety without judging that as good or bad, right or wrong, but just a current experience, then perhaps put some gradient to it. Even if it's not different words but a different scale of zero to 100, a hot to cold, now I've got a little bit more room where I'm not just going from zero to 100. And then what that usually translates to for us, performance wise, is well, if I'm feeling that and I'm at 100, I'm in big trouble because I need to be at zero to perform well, instead of if I've got gradients in between.
Speaker 3:Let's say I go from I'm at a five instead of where I'd like to be, which is a three. Well one, I can work to close this gap a little bit easier. Or if I told you look, can you hit a functional golf shot being at a five instead of a three? You go like, yeah, I think I could do that, provided I'm focused on the right thing and moving at the right pace. Versus told you you like to be at a three and you're at a 10, can you hit a functional golf shot there, like that's a big gap to try to close right. So emotional intelligence for us isn't I don't feel emotions or I'm always in control of them, which is a myth, anyway it's. I feel it interact with it in a more fluid and flexible way, with gradients in between. And then, to your point, ask the question well, do I want to focus and act based on how I'm feeling right now, or do I want?
Speaker 3:to just feel this, but actually act and focus in a way that is more aligned with my we might say your pursuits now, when you say focus and act on feelings, I guess the role of the ego comes into play.
Speaker 2:Uh, I want to bring the point of about road rage. So, at least in an asian context, like when someone cuts in front of you without uh, signaling like we feel, we feel something and but some people act on it. They start chasing the car in front and then they try to do the same thing. But that's really pandering to the ego or a sense of self-worth. When you start tying unrelated things like oh, he cut his car in front of me, that makes me feel less of a man, like I need to gain back that sense of self-worth. And then when we do that, we're kind of time-traveling, aren't we? The body is in one place, but the mind is extrapolating many, many things, and then we do things often to our own detriment.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we as humans. The larger context of this is like nature versus nurture versus actually what's most narrative. Narrative are the explanations and the stories we tell ourselves. So someone cuts us off and we go that person is disrespecting me as if it's a personal indictment of I. You know, they think less of me or they're disrespectful. And then again, well, I need to be somebody who's respected by strangers, or, and it kind of goes on. And then, needless to say, I'm fueling anger based on an event that was, yes, inconvenient and unwanted, but not nearly as disruptive.
Speaker 3:Similar in golf Well, I hit a shot, well, I'm a good golfer, and good golfers don't hit shots like that. And if they do, they have to get angry, and they have to get angry enough for everyone else to know that they're a good golfer and that they don't hit shots like that, because that's an unacceptable thing. Then, surprise, surprise, we go now on this emotional rollercoaster, because the narrative and the explanation I have given myself for something, essentially the event is the event, but the story I tell myself then creates an emotional response, ultimately a behavioral response.
Speaker 3:That again may or may not be aligned with what it is that I'm actually trying to do and how I'm actually trying to do it.
Speaker 2:That usually becomes a death spiral when emotions do not equate to the outcome, and then we do something to try to right the ship. And then we do something to try to right the ship. I suppose in so many ways it's like being out in the sea in a vessel and then you start looking at, I guess, the waves in front of you and it's easy to get seasick, but when you look out yonder you kind of stabilize yourself in that sense and I suppose in that same way, when we start looking at poor sources of confidence, that causes a lot of seasickness on the golf course, so to speak. I want to talk a little bit about commonly accepted things that are taught when people talk about oh, you know what, you're not playing well because you're not doing these things. So it could be things like not staying the present.
Speaker 2:Oh, you didn't pick a specific target for the shot. Your pre-shot routine was not 27 and a quarter second on that particular hole. When you all beat the thing. You're not talking to yourself like a friend. You didn't use visualization. Yeah, oh, you didn't go through. Your practicing wasn't great. You didn't visualize that fade off the team. Yeah, oh, you didn't go through your practice thing wasn't great.
Speaker 3:You didn't visualize that fade off the team.
Speaker 2:Yeah, these are like surface level type things that you talk against in your book.
Speaker 3:Well, some of them as a note. What I'm trying to get to in the book is that we often attach our confidence again, confidence defined as permission to perform freely to a bunch of things that are not very stable, for example, outcomes. Again, even the best golfers in the world have variation in their outcomes. If you've seen anyone even go shoot a great score, there's going to be an unwanted outcome somewhere in that round of golf, even if you were to shoot something in the fifties. We often attach to other people's opinions, we attach them to comparison to other people. We often attach them to things that might have some influence over our performance, but not nearly as much as we give them credit for. So like, for example, there's no research anywhere that says your pre-shot routine needs to be down to the second every single time. But then what happens is we go. Well, if you want to be confident, you got to win your routine. Well, now the routine has become the priority over actually executing a bulb shot, right? So or there's a lot of things where we say, like you need to, you must talk to yourself in a certain way in order to be confident, which isn isn't necessarily true. Or you need to be positive or you got to believe in yourself. And again it's all these kind of pop psychology things that on the surface you go, oh yeah, that makes sense. But when you look at what's kind of happening underneath, what you're doing is you're creating a checklist that gets longer and longer and less and less controllable, therefore more and more unstable for you to be able to do something that we all have the capacity to do, which is well, this thing's in front of me. I want to do it this way, and if I do it really freely, that's going to feel really good or at least satisfying to me and it's going to give me the best chance at an outcome no guarantee, but the best chance we can develop that capacity on our own. What makes confidence stable is that it's self-governed, not other governed. But the bottom line is other governed things do provide us a sense of confidence.
Speaker 3:So I don't want to say that any of these are bad or wrong. They're just unstable because they are not always available to us. They are not always controllable. If anything, some of them are not controllable at all and they're not actually required. Right, there's nothing that says for you to hit a viable golf shot Now you need to have hit one the day before. There's no rule anywhere in golf that says, in order for you to be confident, everyone around you needs to believe in you. There's no rule anywhere that says you even need to believe in yourself. What you need to do is apply the laws of physics in a way that are functional for you. Right, that permission can come from us and we know this to be true because there are plenty of people who many people think they suck, so opinions are not in place.
Speaker 3:Two, they don't necessarily believe in themselves. Quote unquote they don't have a history of outcomes that would tell you that their future is more better outcomes, etc. And yet find a way to perform really freely, right, or even, if you think about the optimal state of human functioning, flow state. Flow state is characterized by high acceptance for both past, present and future.
Speaker 3:Immersion in the task at hand, intrinsic motivation, meaning I'm doing this thing for the sake of wanting to do it, not because I need something external to tell me what to do, how to do it or when to stop. So, all that being said, the most high-functioning state for us as human beings flow state. There's no checklist. The only checklist is I'm doing this thing, I'm going to tell myself how to do it and I'm going to go do it and I'm going to be willing to see how it plays out it, and I'm going to be willing to see how it plays out.
Speaker 3:So, all that being said, if we want our confidence to stabilize, what that looks like is moving off of a bunch of external things and turning it more internal, meaning going what would I do and how would I do it if I didn't wasn't requiring any of those things? And then the more you do that, the more you learn to self-govern your performance, rather than leaving it Now. By the way, if you play great, get a bunch of awesome outcomes, hit a bunch of wonderful shots, and everyone tells you how great you are and you feel more confident because of that outstanding, good for you. But if those are the only or the primary sources of confidence, then we might not also be surprised when those things aren't there and you're having a hard time operating through. Then we might not also be surprised when those things aren't there and you're having a hard time operating through it. What is the right answer?
Speaker 2:In martial arts I was taught this right he who has nothing to lose has everything to win.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Now the key becomes the what if you do have something?
Speaker 2:to lose.
Speaker 2:And I guess when there's something there, there is no pressure, when there is no expected outcome. But the thing is this you make one birdie, you make two birdie, then you start thinking 59. And that's what happened to one of my juniors. He shot a 29 on the front nine, 12 years old, and then on the back nine he. He shot a 37 one-over. So he was only bothered about the 37. He was not celebrating the 29. Never did it in his life. And then I said what happened? He's like oh, I tried to make another 29. I wanted to be the first junior to shoot a 58. There you go.
Speaker 3:So it's really really difficult, difficult, it's like a dance it's and it requires us to really be aware of when we are trying to force things that cannot be forced or when our focus has shifted. So again, it's not that he had negative thought. I'm trying to be the first whoever to shoot 59. That's not a negative thought. But we might notice about it. It's an uncontrollable future outcome and my guess is he started trying to force things to happen instead of.
Speaker 3:My guess is that, front nine, he felt like everything was allowed, again educated guess he was just allowing himself to play freely, allowing himself to put freely and, by the way, some good outcomes. My guess is he looked at the back, got very future oriented, very, very outcome oriented, which, again, not bad, but just not very stable. Tried to start forcing things instead of allowing things, which is another way of saying defending against something. Level of acceptance for anything less than a 29 probably decreased. In which case, then, the task list that he was asking his brain to operate on the back nine is a very different task list, essentially a very long and competing task list versus a very facilitating and probably very short task list coming from you know, I heard you say this before.
Speaker 2:Everyone wants to get into a flow state, but you mentioned that at very high levels of performance the flow state only happens like 20 percent of the time yeah, it's actually less than that, it's 10 less 10. So instead of trying to get into the flow state, we we should. A better use of our time would be learning how to operate outside of the flow state yeah, or there are things we can do to get closer to it.
Speaker 3:For example, if your level of acceptance for the things you don't want goes up, your window to be present gets a lot wider, the more present we are. Essentially, the key to being closer to flow state is can I be present in the moment that I'm in and in pursuit mode, not avoidance mode? So avoidance mode is always built around. I don't want my past to happen in my future, or I just don't want my future to get there too soon. Could also be in a more exciting way, like I'm playing great and I'm thinking about winning a golf tournament before I get there, which again not a negative thought. I'm just ahead of myself in terms of time. So when my level of acceptance is really high, my window to be present is also really wide. Is really high, my window to be present is also really wide. The more we get into that as human beings, the closer we're going to be to flow state more often. Okay, so that comes from our psychological framework, not from necessarily focus training, although that focus training can help, but only as much as our level of acceptance is allowing for. To that degree, if I have to be in flow state to perform well. I'm probably going to be very inconsistent because there are a lot of external factors that play into uh flow state as well, like you're playing in a pj tour event and there are people yelling at you about your previous master's experience. Good luck being in flow state. What we really need to be is high level of acceptance and present for small periods of time at least, as it works for golf, which is the amount of time that I've made a decision about what shot I want to play and how I want to play it. Can I bring a high level of acceptance, an open-ended future, which means kind of be curious how this plays out and be present in that, in a pursuit-based way, we can play great golf there. Now, the cool thing is is the more acceptance you bring to things, the more often you're going to be present, the more you're going to experience flow state when we get to the highest levels of performance, because the stakes are very high, meaning future consequences, there are more people watching, meaning opinions of us and, by the way, the margins for error get a whole lot smaller.
Speaker 3:It is, it can sometimes that can be very facilitating for flow state, depending on what we're bringing to it. Other times it can make it harder, right, and so ultimately, would we like to be in flow, stating it closer to there. Yes, and there are many things we can do to do that. But if I have to be there to perform well, I'm relying on something that even the best performers in the world get, not just the minority of the time, but also that minority is difficult to predict. It could be an hour here, could be an entire round here, and I don't see it for months, could be a couple minutes here, a couple minutes there.
Speaker 3:It can come and go, depending on a variety of factors. So, ultimately, we don't want to hitch our performance wagon to the optimal state of human functioning. We want to be as close to it as we can. But relying on that is kind of like, uh, relying on having an even stance, an even lie, the club you love in your hands, the perfect yardage and the perfect wind all the time. There are many things you can do to try to get closer to those with your swing, change your stance, change the club, whatever, but ultimately, like, we do need a couple of things to go our way. So, if you're only able to play well with all conditions being ideal. You're going to have a hard time um playing when things are anything less than ideal I think bruce lee summed it up quite well.
Speaker 2:He said be like water.
Speaker 3:Be like water Move with the ocean, not against it.
Speaker 1:And by the way.
Speaker 3:Hydration is important.
Speaker 2:You talk about acceptance and really, as this conversation progresses, it's almost as if they say if you can detach your ego, your sense of self-worth, from what's going on, it becomes easier. But of course, it's never that simple, isn't it?
Speaker 3:Well, it's probably that simple, but it's not that easy.
Speaker 2:But there is a particular group of people in this world that are actually very accepting before they partake of a certain task, and even when they lose they're happy. These are gamblers, day traders, because they've gone into this activity knowing that the odds are stacked against them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's an expectation as well. You know it's not uncommon that players say why do I play great when it's like the worst possible conditions? And usually the answer is you probably suspended your expectations about what the day should be or must be or what score could come out and you went. Man, I got no idea how this is going to go because things became far less predictable and then you went out without feeling the need to fill in the future before you got there and, surprise, surprise, you were more present more often during it. And we know that there are certain professions where the expectation is failure first, which can oftentimes facilitate more presence.
Speaker 3:Because why would I create expectations about a failure-oriented thing? But it's not for sure. For example, a lot of baseball players. If you're a batter, 70%-ish again, just round numbers, 70% failure rate for batters. But there's a lot of anxiety because the difference between being a major leaguer and a minor leaguer is probably a hit and a half a week. So we can wrap expectations around anything. There are some circumstances where it's easy for us to let go of them To your point before. When we wrap our identity around our performance, particularly the outcomes of our performance, there are very few things for us as human beings more worth protecting than our identity. And again, just as a thought exercise here for anyone listening, let's say you identify very strongly with being a Republican or a Democrat or a Christian or an atheist or whatever, and I start saying things about those things that you don't like.
Speaker 3:What you start to feel. That's us feeling the need to protect our identity, right. So, that being said, it's not a bad thing that we identify with stuff, but what we identify and how strongly determines how much our brain is designed to try to protect that while we're doing it. So the most dangerous identity in golf is I'm a good golfer, because now, when I go perform, I have to perform in a way to protect my identity, which now my brain is designed to give me anxiety to be able to do, because anxiety is our brain's best psychological method for protection. And then, which case it me anxiety to be able to do because anxiety is our brain's best psychological method for protection, and then, which case, it's going to be very hard for me to operate freely. So for anyone here who's listening I know there are a lot of higher level golfers listening to this podcast Chances are many of them have experienced well, if I play well, then I can feel good, and if I don't, then I'm not, in which case then they know what that anxiety is like, playing under a lot of competitive conditions. Essentially, the remedy to that is either a you detach your ego and identity from your outcomes of your performance, or, b you have to play awful for long enough for no one to expect you to do well, and your identity is already getting crushed. And then you go out and play well, but then the cycle starts all over again. Well, and your identity is already getting crushed. And then you go out and play well, but then the cycle starts all over again, right.
Speaker 3:What we attach our identity to depends on how much we're going to need to protect that. So the limitation to doing that to our golf performances. Now I have to perform a certain way to know who I am, in which case, then, when I go play golf, the priority is not play golf well, it's be good golfer. Being a good golfer is an identity label. It counts for nothing. Playing good golf is an action and a focus. It counts for everything right. So when we become very ego and identity oriented toward our performance, the priority is protecting a label that I've wrapped meaning around with outcomes that I can't control, versus trying to play as well as I can in the environment that I'm currently in, which is an action-oriented thing, that when you do that you tend to perform better and, by the way, it also feels a whole lot better not having to protect your identity the whole time.
Speaker 2:So in that case, though, should we train to not protect our identity or labels um, yeah, or change your labels.
Speaker 3:So here we might even get to some like foundational research on ego and identity formation.
Speaker 3:You've heard of fixed mindset and a growth mindset carol dweck yeah, fixed mindset is a core belief that I either have it or I don't, which is essentially I am good enough or I'm not good enough, right. So what we might notice here is, even if I believe I am a good golfer, it's not that it's negative. If anything, it's positive. Problem is it's fixed. I either do have it or I don't. But what that means is when I go perform, I need to verify my identity, which means there's also the possibility that whatever I've attached that to, which is usually our outcomes, can also tell me that I'm not what I think I am. And then we also add years of other people's opinions to this. That often, well, if this person thinks I'm good, well, they must be right. If these people don't that like, so it becomes this constant loop of I have to verify that I am in the film of special, talented, good, have potential, whatever that might be. Versus. In a growth mindset, it's like yo, I'm a work in progress, I'm just trying to get better and play well Again. What happens with a growth mindset is that my identity starts to pair to action-oriented labels I am competitive, I am hardworking, I'm curious, things we can do, focus on, engage with, which is another way of saying they're always available to us. I'm off to the worst start I've ever had, through two holes. Well, I'm competitive and I'm curious and I'm hardworking. I can flex those things to try to improve my experience. Or I'm off to the best start that I've ever had, through three holes. Well, I'm competitive, I'm curious and I'm hardworking. Guess what's really helpful for trying to make the best of a great round and also trying to make the best of a crappy round, all of those things Versus in the other side. Well, if I'm off to a terrible start, well, good golfers don't get off to bad starts.
Speaker 3:So, uh-oh, identity crisis. Here comes my anxiety, and usually what that looks like for us is we start to employ a bunch of um or deploy a bunch of behaviors to protect our identity, like I give up or I start blaming, complaining, making excuses, all kinds of stuff to protect my identity, which, again, it's not that they're bad, they're just not very conducive to good performance, or what happens. I'm off to a great start, but you know what good golfers don't do? They don't ruin a great start. So, again, the better I do, the more threatening my identity could possibly be, and we can see how this loop starts to play out, because my identity is not built on anything actionable.
Speaker 3:So so the means by which we decouple ourselves from our identity, from our performance, is to start building an identity around more action-oriented things, things I can focus on, things I can do, things that are authentic values to me, instead of outcomes, opinions and, we might say, these more adjective based labels that I can't really flex unless I start to manipulate my experience, which, again, if you're trying to be a high performer, you can't manipulate your experience.
Speaker 3:You can only control the actions and the focus you take. So, that being said, you might also pay attention to well, the more you attach your identity, to your performance, like what does it feel like and what do you get? And nobody has ever told me it feels awesome. Protecting my identity all the time, with all that anxiety or be, what you get is very inconsistent, predictably inconsistent performance, and oftentimes, when outcomes matter most to us, we feel what we call, in psychology, gated access to our skills, meaning I know my skills are here, but I can't get to them. And the reason you can't get to them is because getting to them is not the priority. Priority is protect your identity, and protecting your identity means don't embarrass yourself. Not go try to win this golf.
Speaker 3:turn right so that was amazing, and it's again. The most dangerous identity in golf is I'm a good golfer, because what that means is you've got to play great to know who you are, which means anything less than that is identity crisis, and it doesn't take a psychologist to figure out. Trying to perform freely through identity crisis is really difficult to do.
Speaker 2:Well, that was an amazing segment. You talk about identity crisis. I think I read something about a mental thermostat many, many years ago and I'm pretty sure it's the wrong label. You know a lot of people when they have a very, very poor front nine, they almost seem to do exceptionally well. On the back nine Pros who are out of contention for the tournament, they complete their round in record time with a low score, but when they're in contention, it's quite often the opposite, and I like how you talk about learning to decouple.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you also talk about gated access. Yeah, and then you also talk about, uh, gated access that's, that's something that I've read about. Uh, in terms of the prefrontal cortex versus the cerebellum, could you elaborate a little bit on how we could open the gates? Yeah, are there any practical exercises that our listeners could do?
Speaker 3:well, let's just take the example you gave, where I have a terrible front nine and then a tremendous back nine. The shift there is a change in acceptance levels. So in the front nine I'm resisting playing a poor round of golf at all costs, or maybe it gets off to a rough start and then I start resisting a poor round of golf. But then by the back nine I go well, I'm having a poor round of golf. I have accepted the time. I go well, I'm having a poor round of golf. I have accepted my current experience as it was and as it is, and accepted the fact that I might have just a terrible round in totality, right. So again, on the surface it seems like, well, you're resigning yourself to less. No, actually, what's happened is your brain has gone. Well, I guess I don't need to save you from a poor round of golf anymore because it's happening. We are accepting it. Here we go and then, surprise, surprise, my level of acceptance goes way up for having a poor round of golf, which means all those avoidance-based tasks come off the neurological task list, which means my prefrontal cortex is now not only online, it is oriented toward. Well, I might as well play this shot in the way that I would play it if I was trying to play well anyway. And so, essentially because my level of acceptance for what I don't want to happen and has happened and might actually be happening goes way up, my prefrontal cortex engages in a pursuit based manner. I'm more present, which, again, it's not it's a Zen state or state where I'm not feeling anything. It just means I'm in where I'm in, and then, surprise, surprise, we get a whole bunch of really good golf after that. So that's a shift, a psychological shift that creates a neurological shift, that creates a shift in freedom of performance to the same degree. Players time out time, five shots outside of the cut with 12 holes left, and I go, screw it, might as well go for it, which is just another way of saying you stop protecting yourself from a bad score and when I might as well go for it because you feel like you have nothing to lose. Now, again, not a bad thing that if you feel like you have nothing to lose, that I might as well go for it.
Speaker 3:The problem is well, what if you're one shot outside the cut line or one shot inside of it and you do have something to lose? You've got to be able to generate that freedom on your own, and that comes from us learning to pay attention to when I resist the things I don't want. What does my actual felt experience feel like, which is usually not anything that I want to feel. It's usually constriction based. Constriction is a protective mechanism. So that's anxiety, frustration, tension, all the things that our brain and body does to try to resist the things we don't want. Well, that doesn't feel very good. It's meant to be agitating. So if I pay attention to every time I'm around the cut line and I have something to lose and I resist missing the cut at all costs, I get a bunch of anxiety and I hate that experience. That matters because now it makes the case for maybe stop resisting.
Speaker 3:Then also asking the question what do you actually get? What are the natural consequences of you resisting all the things you don't want to happen? Well, the natural consequences again are my felt direct experience gets worse and I don't like it. My physical skills tend to be disrupted. One of the things we know about anxiety, frustration, resistance is there is a physical disruption skills. Back swings get shorter, downswings get faster, more rapid, more jerky. We rush decisions. There's a series of things that play out natural, consequence-wise, that are clearly disruptive to performance, that play out natural, consequence-wise, that are clearly disruptive to performance. Then also, do you score better or do you score worse when you are resisting the outcomes you don't want? I score worse, okay.
Speaker 3:Now again, if, instead of acceptance and resistance, I offered you golf ball A and golf ball B, with the same consequences attached to it and the same experience, it would not be a difficult decision for you. You would choose the golf ball that is more facilitated and feels better. So, us paying attention to the way I show up to something and the way I engage with it, what does it feel like for me? Which, by the way, is the language of, like, the deeper parts of our brain, and then also, what are the consequences? Which is the language of the rational, conscious thinking part of our brain, and we get those two speaking on the same page, that clearly this is not the best in our best interest. And clearly, this is while letting go of the idea that there's a guarantee from either that can start to shape things a little bit different, and then what happens is we have tend to have a different experience.
Speaker 3:So if, in a situation where you normally resist failure at all costs, you go all right. I'm going to lean into the possibility of that this week and I won't like it, but I will stop. I will accept that. That's part of the experience. Chances are you're going to operate more freely, which means it's going to feel better. You're probably going to perform better and even if you don't perform better, outcome wise, you're going to have a subjective experience. Where you go, I like how I execute differently, and that is essentially stable confidence. Where I go, yo, when I operate freely, I like how I execute, more Chances are I'm going to get better outcomes, and this was way more enjoyable. That cycle starts to play out.
Speaker 3:Essentially, you reverse engineering, resistance, Right right. And, by the way, this can be challenging for us because, again, our brain is resist stuff that we tell it is unacceptable. So there's a psychological component of I've got to be open to experiencing things that I don't want, which there's some work with that. Then also, I've got to stick with that, even when my brain and my body are telling me no red. There's a four fire, a four alarm, fire alarm going off in my brain right now. To be able to meet that with, also with acceptance and go okay, that's happening. But also I would really like a different experience here and, by the way, give myself actually the chance to pursue what I want, actually the chance to pursue what I want. Then what we get are we at the end of that and during it we get rewarded both psychologically by going.
Speaker 3:I like how I operated when things got hard for me or there was risk and I did have something to lose. I like how I operated. We also get rewarded neurologically with dopamine. Dopamine is the neuromodulator that makes effort feel good for us. But the key is it makes effort feel good for us not just when things are calm, but when there's vulnerability, when there's risk, when there's sacrifice, when there's stuff about to hit the fan, we get rewarded with dopamine. We do that, which is a fancy way of saying that response by us, meaning I'm going to accept the things I don't want, operate freely, see what happens. It becomes a reinforced response for us, which now means it starts to be as we do that more often, starts to become more of a default setting for us. Now again, I don't want to pretend that that's a snap of a finger, but that's the process.
Speaker 2:It's really tough, Doc. I describe it as trying to catch a cat that you really want to cuddle yeah, I describe it like think about you had like a, like a baseball just covered in like vaseline like don't catch it by squeezing it more.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I like you know telling it right. So it's that it's our. Our brain feels the need to constrict, to be safe and to be in control, but control for us in high performance settings is an illusion it's like like holding on to sand as well, I guess exactly right, like it's. Just it's not going to happen, and so, ultimately, we have to experience that, not just conceptually, but in our direct experience as well. But to do that, it requires us to let go of the things that we tend to resist.
Speaker 2:You know that segment that you were on before. You really answered the next question that I wanted to ask you about momentum, like what do we do? We're leaking oil, just trying hard. Well, you kind of answered all of that, yeah. The next question I wanted to ask is can the brain be tricked? Let's say I'm leading back nine on sunday. How do you calm the brain down? Can you trick yourself? Can the brain be tricked about this? There's a social realm.
Speaker 3:I don't think so yeah, not, um, very easily, nor over time. So our brain is designed specifically to sniff out being fooled. Um, because, again, like think many, many thousands of years ago you could trick your brain into there's no saber-toothed tigers over there. You only had to be wrong once, right. So it is designed to be all of being tricked, right. So that's why, if I tell you, hey, you're in back nine, like this is no big deal, just pretend you don't care about the outcome. Or, like you know, you're trying to pretend that you're not where you are. Like your brain is designed to sniff through that, which is why we feel what we feel and our eyes are moving around and our visual focus starts to go toward things. Like it's designed to not try to be fooled.
Speaker 3:Because if you are easily fooled, that means you are also easily killed. So this is also why, for example, if you're experiencing a lot of anxiety putting which we typically describe as the yips, changing your putter, changing your putter the research basically shows us you've got anywhere from three minutes to 30 days for vast majority of people before your brain figures out. This is the same thing, just a different tool, right? Same stakes are involved, same processes are involved. You just put a different thing in my hands. You tricked me into this being different, but it's not right.
Speaker 2:And it's payback time.
Speaker 3:It's basically one out of a hundred people where, if you change their putter, they actually have an ongoing decrease in anxiety. Right, so it's very rare. Now it doesn't mean you can't improve your putting with by changing putter, but saying if you're trying to eliminate anxiety by tricking yourself into thinking a certain way or feeling a certain way, or changing your tools, your brain is designed to sniff right through that right. What is more valuable for us is reconciling with the fact that you're going into some significant risk and, to be fair, playing competitive golf even golf in general, it's a social sport. There's always some social risk involved. But you're going to play on the highest tours. There's significant risk involved. There's competitive risk. There's financial risk. On the highest tours, there's significant risk involved. There's competitive risk, there's financial risk. There's physical risk. There's social risk. There's personal risk and investment. And if I haven't reconciled with the fact that that is a baked in part of the experience and make the choice to come into that, then it's going to be an overload-ish type situation for me when I get there most of the time, because I'll be trying to look for these short-term distraction strategies to try to help cope with that instead of no, this is something that I've decided to move into and I've then put some things in place, for example, maybe some skills or some strategies to help navigate that.
Speaker 3:But the bottom line is like we're not going to trick our way into convincing ourselves that there aren't stakes involved, when they're clearly are. So all that, you know, we kind of have to reconcile with the fact that if we're going to choose to do something, there are risks that cannot be avoided. Right, we can try to minimize them to certain degrees, we can hope that they're timely and, when we do, and don't experience in them. But if you're going to play pro golf, you are going to embarrass yourself at some point. Doesn't matter who you are, you are going to miss short putts from time to time. You are going to try and you are going to fail. People are going to judge you. Your livelihood is going to be at stake.
Speaker 3:And if I haven't reconciled with that's what I'm signing up for and make the conscious choice to move into that, I'm going to be fighting against those risks all the time, which is another way of saying my level of acceptance is going to be very low for them, which means I'm going to meet them with anxiety and typically the things we do to try to alleviate anxiety are the things that then disrupt our performance.
Speaker 3:Right, because now I'm trying to feel a certain way, to perform a certain way. Well, the way I have entered this thing is creating the anxiety, or at least contributing to it, and the things that I'm doing are trying to distract me from feeling anxious, which now are also distracting me from my performance it's almost as if to say we need to accept the risk, like how a gambler or a day trader accepts the risk that they're going into and then, once you accept it, whatever, you'll be free from all these shackles of pressure, because I think would it be fair to say there is no pressure when there is no expected outcome, when you're open to all the various outcomes that could potentially play out.
Speaker 3:We might say that there's not necessarily less pressure, but there's probably less anxiety. So if you think about the human experience, we experience three types of regret, which really means there's levels of risk. Type one regret for us is I tried my best at something and it didn't work out. And there's stuff involved, like again playing pro golf, all the things that are that are, uh, involved with that, all the risks. That's type one regret. So type one regret for us as humans is I did my best, I did this thing freely and it didn't work out and there was a series of consequences with that that. We don't have to pretend that that doesn't suck. Sometimes it does, but there's no way anybody in the world can avoid that. Nobody plays well enough to avoid all the risks that come with that. Type two regret for us is I operate in a way where I'm always trying to avoid type one regret and because of that I operate out of anxiety, frustration, ego protection, comparison to other people. And now not only do I regret type one, type one regret. I get this type two regret because I'm never doing anything in a very free or authentic way. So for anyone who's played a round of golf where not only did you hate your score, but also you're like I hated how I played today, which is I played out of anxiety, I didn't play freely, or you're on the cut line and then you missed it because I wasn't willing to take the risk to try to hit this thing close at the time. That was the like. I played it safe. Essentially, that's type two regret.
Speaker 3:Nobody in the world really is haunted by type one regret. We are almost always haunted by type two regret. That's the type of stuff that we carry with us, often for a long time. We have to do some work to let go of. Or if you look at people who are on their deathbed, the research around them is they never regret type one when they get to their deathbed. They always have regrets type two style. Type three regret is I'm not willing to make a change. So I get type one and type two regret over and over and over and over and over again.
Speaker 3:So, that being said, when we are willing to accept type one regret, which is we're going to try, we're going to fail, things are going to get crappy sometimes, but I'm going to operate in a way that is authentic and free, as I'm defining it Then what we get is really happy, healthy human beings doing stuff. Now, it's not always going to work out for us and you might find out, maybe I wasn't good enough to compete at a certain level, but you're not going to regret how you do it. The case in point for this one is go to Q school. At the end of every year you miss Q school and you go why didn't I play freely enough to actually make it? That's the type two regret that gets people.
Speaker 3:Or I had an opportunity to play this but I missed it. But I missed it because I tried to force it in the hole. That's the type of stuff that really gets to us. So the to your point, the more accepting we are of type one regret and type one risk, the more we operate in ways where we don't get a whole lot of type two regret. In that case, I missed Q school. That sucks and I regret that I didn't get through. But I'm not regretful of how I actually tried to make my way through that experience, which, again, not necessarily easy, but it's a relatively simple model to understand.
Speaker 2:We're into the last five minutes. I would like to talk a little bit about dual tasking. There is this school of thought I'm feeling pressure on a golf course, let's distract the working memory, so on my backswing I will say I will start counting backwards, for example. Does that work?
Speaker 3:No, not very well. Like I said, it might work in a small time against a bit. Just another version of a distraction technique. So we don't actually multitask as humans. Like many years ago, we used to think that if I gave you three different tasks, our focus and our cognitive capacities would be evenly distributed between the three. Like one third of my focus goes to each one, turns out. That's not the case. What's happening is what we call task switching, which is my focus and my orientations are bouncing from task to task as my brain is identifying them, right.
Speaker 3:The challenge with this is, if I ask you to balance your focus around from task to task, all three of them are going to become compromised, right? So again, a classic example of multitasking golf is well, I want to hit it here, but I'm telling myself don't hit it there Again. It's not that this is a negative thought. It is another task that is competing and oppositional to the one that I actually really want to do, and our brain, again, is designed to prioritize tasks, which means avoidance based tasks go first, in which case then, if I'm going dear god, don't hit this left. I really don't have a lot of runway to be able to hit it where I want it to, because my brain at the top of my backswing has to prioritize one of those, and its default setting is to prioritize dear god, don't hit it left, which is why research shows 90. Some percent of the time when players have the thought don't hit it here, it goes a thousand miles in the opposite direction, right. So, all that being said, there's a reason texting and driving is illegal, and it's because you can't divide your focus 50% on your phone and 50% on the road. What happens is it's bouncing back and forth, but anyone here would acknowledge well, when I'm texting and driving, I'm a worse driver and a worse texter, in which case, then, that becomes very dangerous for driving. Well, instead of driving a car, what if you're driving a golf ball and your other task is something that is not actually related to doing that? We can see why that would start to disrupt performance.
Speaker 3:That being said, well, if I'm feeling anxiety, or if I find myself thinking about an outcome, or essentially, what happens is we feel uncertain or uncomfortable in a certain way, and I don't want to feel that. So I try to distract myself from feeling that way. Well, now, what I've done is I've added another task to the list, and so two things happen with this One. If I asked you how enjoyable are the experiences that you're in when you're distracting yourself? And the answer is less enjoyable, right, because you're not really in the experience enough to get all the good richness from it, even if it's an experience that is challenging, uncomfortable and uncertain, right? So, again, imagine how much you'd enjoy a movie if you were texting through it. Now you might say I enjoy texting, but you didn't enjoy the movie for all it was. In the same way when we're playing golf, it's not as enjoyable experience when we're distracting ourselves with something else, right. Also, now you're compromising your performance because, again, you're giving yourself more things to do than just being in it.
Speaker 3:So, one of the things about flow state there's nothing in flow state that has anything about comfort and certainty. Right. When we're in flow state, we are immersed in the task at hand. We can also feel uncomfortable. We can feel uncertain.
Speaker 3:Things can be really challenging.
Speaker 3:We used to think a long time ago that the challenge had to be in this very small window in order for us to get into flow state.
Speaker 3:Turns out not true.
Speaker 3:It's actually our appraisal, or what we might say what we tell ourselves about.
Speaker 3:If a task is way too hard for us or way too easy and I tell myself, well, this is beneath me, it's not exciting enough, well then, good luck being present in it. Or if it's way too hard and I go, oh, if I fail at this, that means it's an unacceptable outcome, or you're a bad golfer Also, good luck being present in it. So, really, what happens is when we have a task that we're trying to do, regardless of how difficult it is, the more distraction I'm applying to trying to not feel or not deal with the challenges within the task, the worse my experience becomes, the less proficient I become, and if you do that over and over again, it's not a surprise why we would feel the need to jump from task distraction to distraction to distraction, but all the while, they're not really actually working. So you're going well. In my pre-shot routine, I count back from 100 by threes or whatever. I'm just distracting myself not just from what I'm feeling, but also from what I'm doing.
Speaker 2:Okay very clear.
Speaker 1:Jesse any closing questions for the doctor well, we'll have to have the doctor back on at some point yeah, this is like a university level lecture I do do want to make a comment and I'm sure that the listeners can identify with this and I'm going to be a little bit vulnerable, but just to comment on earlier in the conversation and to plant another seed in the listeners' head. You know I am radically more accepting when I play by myself. You know I am radically more accepting when I play by myself. And I noticed, if I play with friends or fellow members at my club and I hit a bad shot, if I'm not careful, I'll go back into default mode, ego protection, where the identity crisis becomes evident, at least for me, is my reaction to said poor shot, whereas before, if I hit a poor shot playing by myself, I might even get curious as to why, in a nonjudgmental way. So just a little food for thought.
Speaker 3:Yeah, turns out. One of the things that really exposes where our identities are attached is when other people are watching, right?
Speaker 3:because, again, when people are watching, we are vulnerable to their defense. And so if I go, if people judge me as what kind of shot was that? That's not a very good golfer shot. And then I go, uh-oh, I'm not a good golfer, I'm not surprised. It's going to be harder for me to just be objectively curious in my performance, and so we might say that's just a pattern to pay attention to that. Oh, when people are watching, I tend to get more protective. That's interesting.
Speaker 3:Also, I tend to get more judgmental of my performance, trying to avoid judgments from other people. That's interesting that I'm smothering two layers of judgment on something. What does that typically feel like for me? What do I typically get from that, and is that aligned with what? It is the type of golf that I'd like to play, and does it make it enjoyable for me to play with other people? Then again, instead of you telling yourself just be positive or just go play better, you're getting. You're making a case for yourself and for your brain to go. What if I was willing to be judged by other people? And what if I was just willing to be curious about my performance as it plays out, without judging it? And now you're open to a different experience. A different experience shows you, oh, maybe I don't have to worry about people's opinions, but it's hard to do that if you don't open the window for it to begin with. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2:So in closing. Doc, I'd like to ask you what is the one product you pay for and would recommend to our listeners?
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't think I pay for it. I'd be struggling to find. No, I take that I don't know any any, not any specific brand, but um, good, golf shoes. Is it for me and my work? I don't play a lot, but I'm on golf courses. They better be waterproof and they better be comfortable. Uh, if I'm playing golf, then they also need to have a sole that is firm enough that you can push off of the ground with. That would be probably a great place to start. What I pay for a lot Books, same, yeah, and I would recommend reading to everybody even if you're not on or just read more Hard copies please.
Speaker 2:You have the book, the podcast. How do our listeners find out more about you?
Speaker 3:My website is wwwbtsmindsetcom. Beneath the surface is BTS co host a podcast with my friend Chase called the golf beneath the surface podcast. You can find that wherever podcasts are available and my book, golf beneath the surface is available wherever podcasts are available and my book Golf Beneath the Surface is available wherever books are sold, and you can typically catch me usually on the back of a driving range, at tour events or college events or on wonderful podcasts like this one.
Speaker 2:Thank you, any socials.
Speaker 3:No socials for me.
Speaker 2:Cool. Thank you Again, Dr Raymond Pryor. Thanks guys Appreciate it. Thank you, Doc. No socials for me cool. Thank you again, Dr Raymond Pryor. Thanks guys appreciate it.