Identity, Acceptance, and Performance: Why We Self-Sabotage on the Course

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello and welcome to another edition of the Flag
Hunters Golf Podcast.
This is Jesse Perryman, yourhost, along with my co-host from
the Tanamera Golf Club inSingapore.
His name is Justin Tang.
Justin is a very renowned golfinstructor, a very deep,
holistic coach that will tackleyour game from every single

(00:24):
angle to help you become aplayer that you've always wanted
to be, and you can reach him atthe Tanamera Golf Club also,
along with the show notes andall that.
But I wanted to give Justin aspecial shout out because I love
him and he's a brother fromanother mother and a
well-studied man in this game,somebody that I trust with my
information and I believe thatyou should too.

(00:48):
So, on to hopefully not makingthis a long-winded intro, I
wanted to give a specialcongratulations to Rory McIlroy.
I was there.
It was very special, one of themost special situations I've
ever been a part of.
The air in Augusta was magicaland the stars aligned and he did

(01:09):
it and it's well deserving andit perfectly segues into the
conversation this week with aman 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 myopinions when I'm in this way to

(01:30):
be the most important golf bookwritten in decades.
And where that segues with Roryis if you think long and hard
about Rory's shortcomings andhis victories, his triumphs.
He never gave up, and Raymondtalks about this in the book, of
having emotional resiliencealong with stable confidence.

(01:53):
And what is that Emotionalresilience?
What is stable confidence?
Well, to me it's a foundationalpiece that one acquires through
blood, sweat and tears, doingdeep inner work, and which is
beautifully outlined in the book.
And I also got a chance tospend some time with Raymond and

(02:14):
Augusta, and he is everythingthat he has written in the book.
So the book, so the book GolfBeneath the Surface is what it's
called.
It may be, if you have aspiredto do deep inner work in regards
to this game, it's nothing thatyou haven't heard before.

(02:36):
But the way Raymond frames itand words it, the process, the
work, it's very palpable, it'svery understandable, logical,
practical, simple and, as acouple of friends of mine always

(02:58):
say, simple is simple, butsimple is not always easy.
So doing this work will allowyou to have a level of
detachment.
So you do your job and theresults are they're not up to
you and the faster you cansurrender to that irrefutable
truth, the better you're goingto be, the more joy you're going
to play with, the happieryou're going to be on the golf

(03:21):
course and you're going to beable to take the good with the
bad.
You know what would it be, howgreat would it be to be able to
go out and play in a tournamentand be completely comfortable in
your own skin, in spite of anynerves, in spite of any anxiety.
So when you do the work that'soutlined in the book, you create
a precious second or twobetween stimulus and response.

(03:44):
That is part of the journey.
If you continue to get caughtup 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 bemiserable.
And, believe me, I was there.
I was 100% there, attaching myself-worth to my score, and it's

(04:09):
not easy to depart from that.
But the work is worth it.
It's just like working on yourgolf swing.
When you make changes in yourgolf swing and you see the
fruits of your labor, it's verysatisfying and you look back and
you say it was worth it.
This work is absolutely worthit.
I believe that the book.

(04:29):
The title of the book, allBeneath the Surface really
details this journey, and it isa journey.
I'm on it.
I'm studying the book deeplyand following the principles
deeply and following theprinciples and I can already

(04:51):
tell that my nervous system isstarting to acquiesce to it.
It's starting to change Again.
Acceptance of things that areout of your control is when you
have a deep body acceptance ofit, there's something magical
that happens.
There's something that shiftsin your whole being and it's

(05:12):
going to preemptively get youinto what we call flow, the zone
, a state of being where you arecompletely aware and yet you
don't care about anything, andyet you're trying.
It's very hard to put intowords, we've all experienced it
at some point in our lives, butdoing this framework is going to

(05:35):
stack the deck in your favor tocome 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 themain body of this conversation,
ask yourself the last time youwere in the zone if you hit it
perfectly.

(05:56):
Just ask yourself that.
Contemplate on that.
Enjoy this episode.
We're going to have Raymond onagain and a special shout out to
him for taking the time out ofhis busy schedule and his
workload to spend an hour or sowith Justin and myself.
I'll make sure to leave all ofthe pertinent information in the
show notes.

(06:16):
Again, the title of the book iscalled 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 yourbook streaming service is.
Cheers everyone.
Once again, a bigcongratulations to roy mcelroy
for completing the career grindslam and and taking his rightful

(06:39):
place, uh in the annals and thelegends of the greats.
Cheers everybody and have agreat week.
Hello, this is Jesse Perrymanfrom the Flag Hunters Golf
Podcast, along with my co-hostand my friend, justin Tang.

(07:03):
We welcome you to anotherepisode and we have a very great
guest on today.
His name is Dr Raymond Pryor.
He is a psychologist, aperformance expert.
He has a book called GolfBeneath the Surface and I've
read the book several times.
It's an excellent, excellent,excellent book, along with a

(07:23):
great podcast with the same name, golf Beneath the Surface.
So, doc, welcome.
Thank you for coming.

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah, thanks, guys, Appreciate you having me I mean
great guest.
It might be a little bithyperbole, but I'll see if we
can't provide a little bit of gojuice for the listeners.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
Thanks so much, doc, for gracing us with your
presence.
I've read almost all the golfpsychology books out there.
Golf Beneath the Surface isdestined for the pantheon of
great golf sports psychologybooks and even beyond that right
.
It's one of the great books inlife that you pick up and there

(08:04):
will be a fork in the road aheadof you.
Do you want to go down thispath 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 wroteBull's Eye in Mind.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:22):
Were you a shooter before?

Speaker 3 (08:24):
No, I wasn't a shooter.
I have some history with sportsshooting.
I went to graduate school atWest Virginia University and
they have a historically goodrifle team which actually just
this last week won its 20thnational championship.
So shout out to them.
But when I was in graduateschool I got connected with that

(08:47):
team and, like golf, there's abit of a?
Um, a lack of what I woulddescribe as like high quality
psychology available to that.
It's a bit of a smaller.
It's a global sport but it'ssmaller in general just in how
many people are in it andtherefore fewer resources and
and fewer um, kind of fewer highquality resources, especially

(09:11):
psychologically to them.
So I've been working in sportsshooting now for about 15 years
and about halfway through I waslike you know.
I think this group needs alittle bit of something more
than what is currently notavailable to them and and pump
that one out, that book's alittle bit outdated now.
Golf beneath the surface iscertainly more in tune with what
more modern research shows us,but that's the history in sport

(09:34):
shooting you could, you couldfollow up with uh life beneath
the surface there's.
The cool thing about ourpsychology is that, even though
it might be, we might say, moreclinical psychology or more
performance psychology, a lot ofoverlap in those, because our
psychology generalizes.
So by that it means the more Ido something here, the more I

(09:56):
start to see where that overlapsin other areas of my life, and
our brain is designed to do thaton purpose.
Try to help us navigate.
If I'm successful in this, I'mwondering what also could be
successful for me over here, orcreate certain types of pursuits
or benefits for me in theseareas too.
And so oftentimes, you know, ifwe bring anxiety to golf, for
example, we might also startbringing that to other areas in

(10:18):
our life At the same time.
If I bring more stableconfidence to golf or somewhere
else, we can see where thesethings might also start to apply
overall.
So just one of the many facetsof our brain that is very
helpful at times, hurtful attimes, but if you're intentional
with it, it can be really goodfor us.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
You know you talk about the similarity between
shooting and golf and I supposethere's a lot of time to think
in those two activities.
But let's talk a little bitabout your past as an elite
soccer player.
In soccer there's not much timeto think.
When you've got the ball,you're running down the right

(10:55):
flank trying to cross it in.
But that changes when the gamegoes into penalty shootouts.
Then it becomes like golf.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
Yeah, well, I would um push back a little bit on
that, in that our brain thinksway faster than we can
physically move even the fastestof games, whether it's hot.
So you could be running downthe right flank thinking or
focusing on things that are notrelevant for anybody who's
played, you know, soccer orrugby or baseball like you can

(11:27):
be in the middle of an actionand be worried about what's
going to happen.
That would be anxiety or inflow state where you're only
focusing on what's going on.
So our brain thinks faster thanwe.
Any of our current sports canphysically move, and so in a
sport like shooting or golf, theaction in between it's very
proactive.
I move on my own pace.
So certainly we can get in ourown way psychologically or

(11:51):
facilitate our performance, butour brain is fast enough to move
around.
A shootout in soccer or hockeyor a similar sport very much
like golf, In fact it's kind oflike shooting free throws in
basketball.
It's like a 10 foot uphillstraight putt.
First one to miss is out.
It's a very similar situation.
So there's a very wide windowto think.

(12:11):
But every sport providesopportunity for us, for our
psychology, to either facilitateperformance or impede it.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Every sportsman would have this framework.
Every sportsman would have thisframework.
There's the capacity, or what Icall the potential of the
sportsperson, then his currentability, then you've got things
like confidence, you've gotexpectations and then the actual
outcome.
After reading your book, Irealized that acceptance is the

(12:46):
key that holds all these othertraits together.
Would it be fair to say thatyour book, if I could summarize
it in a nutshell, it's aboutstable confidence.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
Yeah, to a degree.
You know.
By definition for thoselistening stable confidence is
self given permission to performfreely, without a guarantee.
So what makes confidence stableis that I'm not relying on
something else to tell me tooperate freely, right?
So the opposite of that wouldbe I need an outcome to go a

(13:21):
certain way for me to feel acertain way, to then perform a
certain way, which is how mostpeople develop confidence, which
, again, isn't wrong or bad, butit's very limiting because I'm
relying on something that Ican't quite control to tell me
how to feel and then ultimately,tell me how to operate.
So, needless to say, when Ican't check those boxes, by

(13:43):
definition that means it's lessstable.
So the self-given permission wehave to learn how to start
giving ourselves permission toperform freely.
And then the without aguarantee to your point, that's
acceptance.
Acceptance doesn't mean that wedon't care.
It doesn't mean that we'recomfortable or that we are
certain.
It doesn't mean that we'resettling for less.

(14:03):
It doesn't mean that we're notmotivated.
It doesn't mean that we're nottrying to be successful.
What it means is I'm willing toexperience my past for what it
was, my present for what it isand my future for all that it
might be and from a neurologicalstandpoint, what happens is our
brain is essentially just atask.
It's an association making anda task making machine and any

(14:27):
task that goes under theunacceptable category.
It is unacceptable to hit thisball left, it is unacceptable to
feel a certain way,unacceptable to think in a
certain way or unacceptable tofail.
It's not that these arenegative thoughts or feelings.
They go into the avoidancebased task category.
So if I tell myself it isunacceptable to go left or don't

(14:47):
hit it here, it's not thatthat's a negative thought, but
it's an avoidance-based taskthat is in competition with me
actually playing the shot that Iwant.
And our brain has a veryspecific system for how it
prioritizes tasks, which anybodywho you hear, who's gotten to
the top of their backswing andwhat's really been at the top of
the priority list is don't youdare and then fill in whatever

(15:10):
blank, knows that that's plentyof time for your brain to
prioritize an avoidance-basedtask like dear God, don't get
this thing left over.
Actually start this thing here,try to finish it here.
So acceptance of the things thatwe don't want to experience,
both internally and externally.
What it does is it takes theseavoidance-based tasks off the

(15:30):
priority list, which means nowthere's runway for me to go.
Well, what do I want to do andhow do I want to do this thing
right now?
So, for example, something likeanxiety, which by definition is
worry about the future.
It is a psychological statecharacterized by the priority is
avoiding a future that I don'twant to play out or I don't want
to experience.

(15:51):
If I'm unwilling to experiencecertain things in the future,
that means my present is nowdevoted to trying to avoid those
things at all costs, whichmeans now I'm not really in
thriving mode, I'm in survivingmode, based on what I've asked
my brain to do.
So, to your point, what we'refinding more and more through
research is that the highestperformers in the world they are

(16:11):
not trying to avoid the worstcase scenarios.
They are accepting of the factthat that is part of the risk
that comes with trying toperform at a high level.
Therefore, it's easier for themto be present.
So we used to think a long timeago, maybe 20 years ago the way
to be present more often wasjust to hammer focus, training,
but, as it really turns out, theopening for how easy it is or

(16:33):
how much room we have to bepresent in the moments that
we're in depends very much onour psychological framework, as
whether we have a window toactually be present.
So, really, what it turns out,if you want to be present more
often, you have to have a moreaccepting relationship of your
past and of your future andanything that is discomfort and
uncertain that you might befeeling right now, which

(16:53):
essentially what that does is itallows the priority to pursue
what you want right now toremain the priority, instead of
being superseded by somethingelse.

Speaker 2 (17:04):
There is a lot to unpack in that last couple
minutes.
So what we're saying is thisAcceptance is not fatalistic
resignation or being nonchalant.
It's really about beingobjective about the past, the
present and the future, but itmust be genuine acceptance.
It must be genuine acceptance.

(17:25):
It must be like you can't.
You can't say, hey, let's putthe cake in the oven and start
peeping, oh, is it cooking ornot?
You've got to be genuine aboutit and not like, oh, let's try
and, oops, let's see, is itworking or it's not we might
acknowledge that it is difficultfor us at times to accept
things that we don't like.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
You know, if you had a history with certain let's say
it's a certain golf course or acertain hole, or just perhaps a
situation like being incontention, where you have some
pretty painful memories of those, our brain is designed to
resist those types of thingsplaying out against.
So it is difficult for us toaccept a lot of the experiences
that we don't want.
What we start to see is thatwhen we start to train
acceptance and wrap ourselvesaround that, that it gives us

(18:11):
more room to operate in thepresent, which means it's not
that these things will neverhappen again, but we have more
autonomy.
Autonomy means I have aninfluence 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 theactual risks involved which is
I might feel the similarheartbreak that I did in my past

(18:32):
what happens is we're doingthings.
We're just always playingdefense right, and really what
we're not playing defensestrategically on the golf course
, what we're playing defenseagainst is our emotions right,
and it's really difficult to dothat and play golf at the same
time, in which case, then, theexperience itself gets worse.
We tend to operate well belowour capacities, particularly our

(18:56):
skill levels.
We tend to start makingdecisions and doing things in a
way to try to protect ourfeelings, rather than try to
pursue the things that we want,and it doesn't take a
psychologist to figure out thisis not exactly human beings
being happy, healthy and highfunctioning right.
So, while acceptance ischallenging for us, we have
literally centuries of researchall the way back to like
Buddhist texts saying that whenwe work with the world as it is

(19:19):
and we're willing to accept eventhe scratchy and suffering
elements of life, we operate inways that are more authentic,
that are more free and morealigned with our authentic
pursuits, and that, essentially,is the formula for being a
happy, healthy human being, atleast from a psychological
standpoint.

Speaker 2 (19:37):
You know, you mentioned something that's quite
topical scar tissue.
There was an incident last weekwhere a junior golfer heckled
Rory McIlroy and he shouted justlike 2011.
Now, I don't know if you coachRory McIlroy, I'm not going to
ask you about it but do youthink that in a scenario like

(20:02):
that, that there was scar tissuethat caused said player to
react in that fashion againstthe heckler?

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Scar tissue is probably not the best term for
that.
A better analogy is somethinglike thinking about it like
quicksand.
So let's think again.
We'll use Rory as an example.
You know not to try to, he'sjust famous enough that people
will be able to understand whatwe're talking about.
So many years ago, I meanalmost 15 or so years ago, rory

(20:35):
had a bit of a collapse, youmight say at Augusta 2011.
Understandably, right, you know.
His own accounting is that heshowed up at the course trying
to be a different version ofhimself and ultimately,
essentially, he played a finalround just trying to not screw
up instead of trying to go outand try to win For whatever
reasons.
Again, I'm not going to guessat Rory's psychology, I'm only

(20:56):
saying the words that we knoware public, like that he shared,
right?
It's probably a safe guess tosay that that was a pretty
heartbreaking experience for him, pretty painful, right.
So it's really not about scartissue for us in that case, in
that, like a physical injurywraps scar tissue around an
injury to try to help replacewhat might be lost in terms of

(21:18):
structural or tissue damage, orto try to protect the joint.
What our brain does for theseis it tries, you know.
Essentially it creates aresponse where, well, you were
in quicksand and you gotswallowed up, for whatever
reasons.
Oftentimes it's us operatingout of anxiety, but then also
certain situations thatquicksand is nasty, right, he

(21:39):
got both of those.
Well, our brain is designed togo.
Well, next time you're inquicksand, we're going to panic
our way out of that, right.
And so what happens is you geta response when I get to the
same quicksand, I start flailingaround and it should try to
panic my way out of it.
Basically, like my brain isassociating this location

(22:00):
experience with pain andheartbreak.
That must be avoided.
So we might see, as our levelof acceptance for that goes, and
then what happens in thatquicksand, and then we start
doing things that make it morelikely for us to see, and then
we get an experience that playsout in the same way over and
over again.
So it's more of a you mighteven classify this closer to

(22:21):
what we would not say scartissue, but more a trauma-based
experience.
Trauma is what happens to us andwithin us when you mix intense
fear and anxiety with immobility, meaning I can't escape, right.
So you can think about thislike if you get hit by a car, a
lot of fear, a lot of pain, andyour body starts to tighten up

(22:43):
because you're injured, youcan't move or something like a
physical assault, like intensearousal based fear and anxiety
plus immobility and, for Rory,intense anxiety through that and
kind of watching yourself, kindof crash and burn and flail
your way and you're sinking intothis quicksand and you can't
escape unless you're willing towithdraw which he's, which he's
not right and so our brain isdesigned to go whoa, we got to

(23:05):
avoid that experience at allcosts, in which case, then, it
is designed to meet thoughtsabout that, words about that,
showing up at the same placewith more anxiety.
So the challenge here is can Ibe accepting of this experience,
maybe understand it and processit a little bit?
Processing means I'm looking atit from different angles so I
can understand what happenedmore than just this collapsed

(23:29):
and there was nothing I couldpossibly 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 tothose.
That's probably more.
My guess is what happened in theexperience that you're talking
about, where someone's hecklingrory about that is he's probably

(23:50):
heard it enough times wherehe's just probably really sick
of it.
You know, and we can allprobably um, relate with rory a
little bit, not maybe to thelevel of golf that he plays, but
if you, if I, took a verypublic, embarrassing, painful
failure for anybody and remindedyou of it in a jesting or,
quite frankly, like anobnoxiously rude way, at some

(24:12):
point you're going to hit theend of your rope and you're
going to get pissed about it.
Now we might give Rory creditwhere he experienced that on a
Monday or Tuesday or whateverday that was, and in whatever
way, reset himself in a waywhere he was going and playing
the players and play great, endup winning.
So scar tissue is not the bestanalogy.
It's probably a term thatpeople described it with a while

(24:34):
ago that they were just tryingto describe something they
didn't quite understandunderneath, and so it's not the
worst analogy.
It's just not the most accurate.
It's probably something closerto I'm in quicksand again and
our default response is swim outof here as fast as possible
instead of be still in this andprobably closer not to scar
tissue but to a trauma basedresponse, which there's degrees

(24:58):
and types of trauma, but thegeneral framework is the same,
which is this was awful and Ihave learned very quickly.
Please don't let this happenagain.
And our primary mechanism fortrying to avoid our past playing
out in our future is anxiety.
But then when I go do somethingthriving based through anxiety,
I'm going to get the same typeof experience over and over

(25:18):
again.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
I mean, the centerpiece of this would be our
emotions, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yeah, our emotions are a really important part of
the human experience.
They're signals to us tellingus.
They're not always accurate norrelevant, but there's no
situation where we would want toturn off human emotion or our
feelings, Like they arefunctional feedback for us if we
learn to experience withouttrying to avoid them and to see

(25:46):
them without judgment.
So, even if I'm feelingsomething like panic, that's not
a bad feeling.
Matter of fact, if I'm beingchased 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 veryrelevant response.
I have to learn to tune intothat in a nonjudgmental way so

(26:07):
that I can make a shift in focus, a shift in actions.
Or, by the way, at times maybeI do need to exit physically
from something based on whatthat is.
So it'd be like you ignoringphysical pain over and over
again, like you might end upwrecking a joint or hurting your
back in a way that now youcan't play golf at all.
Instead of tuning into the factthat, man, I'm kind of feeling

(26:27):
this pain, I'm wondering whereit's coming from and getting
curious about that.
So our emotions are, uh,feedback for us.
They're oftentimes energizingfor us, but they're not always
aligned with what it is thatwe're trying to do the way that
we want to do it.
So learning to react orinteract with them in a more
fluid and flexible mindful wayallows us to be able to show up

(26:49):
for them and use themfunctionally, rather than being
at the whips end of them.
So, needless to say, it'sreally hard to be a happy,
healthy, high functioning humanIf you feel something and you
have to act on it just becauseyou're, I'd be like okay, I feel
like I have to pee a little bitand then I run to the bathroom,
no matter what.
Well, this might not be thetime or place that is the best
for that Not that I won't getthere eventually but those are

(27:12):
the types of situations that wetypically do with our own
emotions we either smother themand 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 themwhich, again, very difficult to
be consistent in a highperforming way.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
You used a great word there, a four letter word that
starts with F feel.
A lot of people can'tdistinguish that.
I am not angry, I'm notpersonifying anger.
I feel angry.
And if I feel anger thatdoesn't mean I need to act on
anger.
We are not our emotions.
Emotions, as you say, could bethe best and worst of life.

(27:53):
Could you talk a little bitabout the role of emotions and
by understanding that emotionsare a signal to us but we need
not act on it.
And you mentioned the word panic.
Sometimes it's not panic, itcould be excitement, and I guess

(28:15):
if you have a diversevocabulary then you could
practice what I call emotionalgranularity.
I'm actually not anxiousgetting on the plane.
I'm actually excited becausethe couple of hours time I'll be
in Hawaii by Kapalua enjoyingthe waves.
Actually, that's not anxiety,it's excitement.

(28:37):
And I think when players startto misunderstand or misinterpret
what they are feeling, theiractions kind of follow suit.
Would that be a fair assessment?
And then, when you startcorrupting what you feel, your
actions follow that and it'sreally hard to be objective,

(28:59):
isn't it?

Speaker 3 (29:01):
It can.
Our feelings are not objective.
They are oftentimes supersubjective.
We can interact with themobjectively, to your point.
One of the things we see withpeople who are really
emotionally intelligent is thatthey develop an expanded,
layered vocabulary for beingable to label their feelings and
sensations and emotions, right.
So instead of me, I'm eitherfeeling fear or relaxed, it's

(29:24):
I'm feeling slightly agitated,or I'm feeling a little bit of
angst or I'm feeling nervous allthe way.
So basically, like there's agradient scale for speeds in
between, and in those differentspeeds, it's a lot easier to

(29:47):
change, to slow up, or to speedup or slow down going from 25 to
30 than it is trying to getfrom 100 back to 30, right, or
from 100 to zero.
So if we learn to, as youpointed, not take our emotions
and thoughts and feelingspersonally, it's something I'm
experiencing rather thansomething I am.
So there's a difference betweenI'm feeling anxiety versus I am

(30:11):
anxious, and oftentimes whatthat tends to lead to is us
starting to build our identityaround our feelings, like I'm an
anxious person, which istechnically not true, but if you
identify with it, then everytime you're feeling anxious,
you're going to feel a sense ofidentity, and now you are
reinforcing anxiety over time,right?
So if I can learn to feelanxiety without judging that as

(30:33):
good or bad, right or wrong, butjust a current experience, then
perhaps put some gradient to it.
Even if it's not differentwords but a different scale of
zero to 100, a hot to cold, nowI've got a little bit more room
where I'm not just going fromzero to 100.
And then what that usuallytranslates to for us,
performance wise, is well, ifI'm feeling that and I'm at 100,

(30:55):
I'm in big trouble because Ineed to be at zero to perform
well, instead of if I've gotgradients in between.
Let's say I go from I'm at afive instead of where I'd like
to be, which is a three.
Well one, I can work to closethis gap a little bit easier.
Or if I told you look, can youhit a functional golf shot being
at a five instead of a three?

(31:16):
You go like, yeah, I think Icould do that, provided I'm
focused on the right thing andmoving at the right pace.
Versus told you you like to beat a three and you're at a 10,
can you hit a functional golfshot there, like that's a big
gap to try to close right.
So emotional intelligence forus isn't I don't feel emotions
or I'm always in control of them, which is a myth, anyway it's.

(31:39):
I feel it interact with it in amore fluid and flexible way,
with gradients in between.
And then, to your point, askthe question well, do I want to
focus and act based on how I'mfeeling right now, or do I want?
to just feel this, but actuallyact and focus in a way that is
more aligned with my we mightsay your pursuits now, when you

(32:02):
say focus and act on feelings, Iguess the role of the ego comes
into play.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
Uh, I want to bring the point of about road rage.
So, at least in an asiancontext, like when someone cuts
in front of you without uh,signaling like we feel, we feel
something and but some peopleact on it.
They start chasing the car infront and then they try to do
the same thing.
But that's really pandering tothe ego or a sense of self-worth

(32:32):
.
When you start tying unrelatedthings like oh, he cut his car
in front of me, that makes mefeel less of a man, like I need
to gain back that sense ofself-worth.
And then when we do that, we'rekind of time-traveling, aren't
we?
The body is in one place, butthe mind is extrapolating many,

(32:52):
many things, and then we dothings often to our own
detriment.

Speaker 3 (33:01):
Yeah, we as humans.
The larger context of this islike nature versus nurture
versus actually what's mostnarrative.
Narrative are the explanationsand the stories we tell
ourselves.
So someone cuts us off and wego that person is disrespecting
me as if it's a personalindictment of I.
You know, they think less of meor they're disrespectful.

(33:23):
And then again, well, I need tobe somebody who's respected by
strangers, or, and it kind ofgoes on.
And then, needless to say, I'mfueling anger based on an event
that was, yes, inconvenient andunwanted, but not nearly as
disruptive.
Similar in golf Well, I hit ashot, well, I'm a good golfer,
and good golfers don't hit shotslike that.
And if they do, they have toget angry, and they have to get

(33:45):
angry enough for everyone elseto know that they're a good
golfer and that they don't hitshots like that, because that's
an unacceptable thing.
Then, surprise, surprise, we gonow on this emotional
rollercoaster, because thenarrative and the explanation I
have given myself for something,essentially the event is the
event, but the story I tellmyself then creates an emotional
response, ultimately abehavioral response.

(34:06):
That again may or may not bealigned with what it is that I'm
actually trying to do and howI'm actually trying to do it.

Speaker 2 (34:14):
That usually becomes a death spiral when emotions do
not equate to the outcome, andthen we do something to try to
right the ship.
And then we do something to tryto right the ship.
I suppose in so many ways it'slike being out in the sea in a
vessel and then you startlooking at, I guess, the waves

(34:37):
in front of you and it's easy toget seasick, but when you look
out yonder you kind of stabilizeyourself in that sense and I
suppose in that same way, whenwe start looking at poor sources
of confidence, that causes alot of seasickness on the golf

(34:59):
course, so to speak.
I want to talk a little bitabout commonly accepted things
that are taught when people talkabout oh, you know what, you're
not playing well because you'renot doing these things.

(35:19):
So it could be things like notstaying the present.
Oh, you didn't pick a specifictarget for the shot.
Your pre-shot routine was not27 and a quarter second on that
particular hole.
When you all beat the thing.
You're not talking to yourselflike a friend.
You didn't use visualization.
Yeah, oh, you didn't go through.

(35:43):
Your practicing wasn't great.
You didn't visualize that fadeoff the team.
Yeah, oh, you didn't go throughyour practice thing wasn't
great.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
You didn't visualize that fade off the team.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
Yeah, these are like surface level type things that
you talk against in your book.

Speaker 3 (36:00):
Well, some of them as a note.
What I'm trying to get to inthe book is that we often attach
our confidence again,confidence defined as permission
to perform freely to a bunch ofthings that are not very stable
, for example, outcomes.
Again, even the best golfers inthe world have variation in
their outcomes.
If you've seen anyone even goshoot a great score, there's

(36:23):
going to be an unwanted outcomesomewhere in that round of golf,
even if you were to shootsomething in the fifties.
We often attach to otherpeople's opinions, we attach
them to comparison to otherpeople.
We often attach them to thingsthat might have some influence
over our performance, but notnearly as much as we give them
credit for.
So like, for example, there'sno research anywhere that says

(36:45):
your pre-shot routine needs tobe down to the second every
single time.
But then what happens is we go.
Well, if you want to beconfident, you got to win your
routine.
Well, now the routine hasbecome the priority over
actually executing a bulb shot,right?
So or there's a lot of thingswhere we say, like you need to,
you must talk to yourself in acertain way in order to be
confident, which isn isn'tnecessarily true.

(37:06):
Or you need to be positive oryou got to believe in yourself.
And again it's all these kindof pop psychology things that on
the surface you go, oh yeah,that makes sense.
But when you look at what'skind of happening underneath,
what you're doing is you'recreating a checklist that gets
longer and longer and less andless controllable, therefore
more and more unstable for youto be able to do something that

(37:27):
we all have the capacity to do,which is well, this thing's in
front of me.
I want to do it this way, andif I do it really freely, that's
going to feel really good or atleast satisfying to me and it's
going to give me the bestchance at an outcome no
guarantee, but the best chancewe can develop that capacity on
our own.
What makes confidence stable isthat it's self-governed, not

(37:48):
other governed.
But the bottom line is othergoverned things do provide us a
sense of confidence.
So I don't want to say that anyof these are bad or wrong.
They're just unstable becausethey are not always available to
us.
They are not alwayscontrollable.
If anything, some of them arenot controllable at all and
they're not actually required.
Right, there's nothing thatsays for you to hit a viable

(38:09):
golf shot Now you need to havehit one the day before.
There's no rule anywhere ingolf that says, in order for you
to be confident, everyonearound you needs to believe in
you.
There's no rule anywhere thatsays you even need to believe in
yourself.
What you need to do is applythe laws of physics in a way
that are functional for you.
Right, that permission can comefrom us and we know this to be
true because there are plenty ofpeople who many people think

(38:31):
they suck, so opinions are notin place.
Two, they don't necessarilybelieve in themselves.
Quote unquote they don't have ahistory of outcomes that would
tell you that their future ismore better outcomes, etc.
And yet find a way to performreally freely, right, or even,
if you think about the optimalstate of human functioning, flow
state.

(38:51):
Flow state is characterized byhigh acceptance for both past,
present and future.
Immersion in the task at hand,intrinsic motivation, meaning
I'm doing this thing for thesake of wanting to do it, not
because I need somethingexternal to tell me what to do,
how to do it or when to stop.
So, all that being said, themost high-functioning state for

(39:12):
us as human beings flow state.
There's no checklist.
The only checklist is I'm doingthis thing, I'm going to tell
myself how to do it and I'mgoing to go do it and I'm going
to be willing to see how itplays out it, and I'm going to
be willing to see how it playsout.
So, all that being said, if wewant our confidence to stabilize
, what that looks like is movingoff of a bunch of external
things and turning it moreinternal, meaning going what

(39:35):
would I do and how would I do itif 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 moreconfident because of that
outstanding, good for you.

(39:55):
But if those are the only orthe primary sources of
confidence, then we might notalso be surprised when those
things aren't there and you'rehaving a hard time operating
through.
Then we might not also besurprised when those things
aren't there and you're having ahard time operating through it.
What is the right answer?

Speaker 2 (40:10):
In martial arts I was taught this right he who has
nothing to lose has everythingto win.

Speaker 3 (40:17):
Yeah, Now the key becomes the what if you do have
something?

Speaker 2 (40:20):
to lose.
And I guess when there'ssomething there, there is no
pressure, when there is noexpected outcome.
But the thing is this you makeone birdie, you make two birdie,
then you start thinking 59.
And that's what happened to oneof my juniors.
He shot a 29 on the front nine,12 years old, and then on the

(40:41):
back nine he.
He shot a 37 one-over.
So he was only bothered aboutthe 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 makeanother 29.
I wanted to be the first juniorto shoot a 58.

(41:02):
There you go.

Speaker 3 (41:07):
So it's really really difficult, difficult, it's like
a dance it's and it requires usto really be aware of when we
are trying to force things thatcannot be forced or when our
focus has shifted.
So again, it's not that he hadnegative thought.
I'm trying to be the firstwhoever to shoot 59.
That's not a negative thought.
But we might notice about it.
It's an uncontrollable futureoutcome and my guess is he

(41:28):
started trying to force thingsto happen instead of.
My guess is that, front nine, hefelt like everything was
allowed, again educated guess hewas just allowing himself to
play freely, allowing himself toput freely and, by the way,
some good outcomes.
My guess is he looked at theback, got very future oriented,
very, very outcome oriented,which, again, not bad, but just
not very stable.

(41:49):
Tried to start forcing thingsinstead of allowing things,
which is another way of sayingdefending against something.
Level of acceptance foranything less than a 29 probably
decreased.
In which case, then, the tasklist that he was asking his
brain to operate on the backnine is a very different task
list, essentially a very longand competing task list versus a

(42:12):
very facilitating and probablyvery short task list coming from
you know, I heard you say thisbefore.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Everyone wants to get into a flow state, but you
mentioned that at very highlevels of performance the flow
state only happens like 20percent of the time yeah, it's
actually less than that, it's 10less 10.
So instead of trying to getinto the flow state, we we
should.
A better use of our time wouldbe learning how to operate

(42:40):
outside of the flow state yeah,or there are things we can do to
get closer to it.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
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 weare.
Essentially, the key to beingcloser to flow state is can I be
present in the moment that I'min and in pursuit mode, not
avoidance mode?
So avoidance mode is alwaysbuilt around.
I don't want my past to happenin my future, or I just don't

(43:06):
want my future to get there toosoon.
Could also be in a moreexciting way, like I'm playing
great and I'm thinking aboutwinning a golf tournament before
I get there, which again not anegative thought.
I'm just ahead of myself interms of time.
So when my level of acceptanceis really high, my window to be
present is also really wide.
Is really high, my window to bepresent is also really wide.

(43:29):
The more we get into that ashuman beings, the closer we're
going to be to flow state moreoften.
Okay, so that comes from ourpsychological framework, not
from necessarily focus training,although that focus training
can help, but only as much asour level of acceptance is
allowing for.
To that degree, if I have to bein flow state to perform well.
I'm probably going to be veryinconsistent because there are a
lot of external factors thatplay into uh flow state as well,

(43:52):
like you're playing in a pjtour event and there are people
yelling at you about yourprevious master's experience.
Good luck being in flow state.
What we really need to be ishigh level of acceptance and
present for small periods oftime at least, as it works for
golf, which is the amount oftime that I've made a decision
about what shot I want to playand how I want to play it.
Can I bring a high level ofacceptance, an open-ended future

(44:14):
, which means kind of be curioushow this plays out and be
present in that, in apursuit-based way, we can play
great golf there.
Now, the cool thing is is themore acceptance you bring to
things, the more often you'regoing to be present, the more
you're going to experience flowstate when we get to the highest
levels of performance, becausethe stakes are very high,

(44:35):
meaning future consequences,there are more people watching,
meaning opinions of us and, bythe way, the margins for error
get a whole lot smaller.
It is, it can sometimes that canbe very facilitating for flow
state, depending on what we'rebringing to it.
Other times it can make itharder, right, and so ultimately
, would we like to be in flow,stating it closer to there.

(44:57):
Yes, and there are many thingswe can do to do that.
But if I have to be there toperform well, I'm relying on
something that even the bestperformers 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, couldbe an entire round here, and I
don't see it for months, couldbe a couple minutes here, a

(45:19):
couple minutes there.
It can come and go, depending ona variety of factors.
So, ultimately, we don't wantto hitch our performance wagon
to the optimal state of humanfunctioning.
We want to be as close to it aswe can.
But relying on that is kind oflike, uh, relying on having an
even stance, an even lie, theclub you love in your hands, the

(45:41):
perfect yardage and the perfectwind all the time.
There are many things you cando to try to get closer to those
with your swing, change yourstance, 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 playwell with all conditions being
ideal.
You're going to have a hardtime um playing when things are
anything less than ideal I thinkbruce lee summed it up quite

(46:03):
well.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
He said be like water .

Speaker 3 (46:06):
Be like water Move with the ocean, not against it.

Speaker 1 (46:10):
And by the way.

Speaker 3 (46:12):
Hydration is important.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
You talk about acceptance and really, as this
conversation progresses, it'salmost as if they say if you can
detach your ego, your sense ofself-worth, from what's going on
, it becomes easier.
But of course, it's never thatsimple, isn't it?

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Well, it's probably that simple, but it's not that
easy.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
But there is a particular group of people in
this world that are actuallyvery accepting before they
partake of a certain task, andeven when they lose they're
happy.
These are gamblers, day traders, because they've gone into this
activity knowing that the oddsare stacked against them.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
Yeah, and that's an expectation as well.
You know it's not uncommon thatplayers say why do I play great
when it's like the worstpossible conditions?
And usually the answer is youprobably suspended your
expectations about what the dayshould be or must be or what
score could come out and youwent.
Man, I got no idea how this isgoing to go because things

(47:18):
became far less predictable andthen you went out without
feeling the need to fill in thefuture before you got there and,
surprise, surprise, you weremore present more often during
it.
And we know that there arecertain professions where the
expectation is failure first,which can oftentimes facilitate
more presence.
Because why would I createexpectations about a

(47:40):
failure-oriented thing?
But it's not for sure.
For example, a lot of baseballplayers.
If you're a batter, 70%-ishagain, just round numbers, 70%
failure rate for batters.
But there's a lot of anxietybecause the difference between
being a major leaguer and aminor leaguer is probably a hit
and a half a week.
So we can wrap expectationsaround anything.

(48:02):
There are some circumstanceswhere it's easy for us to let go
of them To your point before.
When we wrap our identityaround our performance,
particularly the outcomes of ourperformance, there are very few
things for us as human beingsmore worth protecting than our
identity.
And again, just as a thoughtexercise here for anyone
listening, let's say youidentify very strongly with

(48:24):
being a Republican or a Democrator a Christian or an atheist or
whatever, and I start sayingthings about those things that
you don't like.
What you start to feel.
That's us feeling the need toprotect our identity, right.
So, that being said, it's not abad thing that we identify with
stuff, but what we identify andhow strongly determines how

(48:46):
much our brain is designed totry to protect that while we're
doing it.
So the most dangerous identityin 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 nowmy brain is designed to give me
anxiety to be able to do,because anxiety is our brain's
best psychological method forprotection.
And then, which case it meanxiety to be able to do because
anxiety is our brain's bestpsychological method for

(49:07):
protection, and then, which case, it's going to be very hard for
me to operate freely.
So for anyone here who'slistening I know there are a lot
of higher level golferslistening to this podcast
Chances are many of them haveexperienced well, if I play well
, then I can feel good, and if Idon't, then I'm not, in which
case then they know what thatanxiety is like, playing under a
lot of competitive conditions.

(49:28):
Essentially, the remedy to thatis either a you detach your ego
and identity from your outcomesof your performance, or, b you
have to play awful for longenough for no one to expect you
to do well, and your identity isalready getting crushed.
And then you go out and playwell, but then the cycle starts
all over again.
Well, and your identity isalready getting crushed.
And then you go out and playwell, but then the cycle starts

(49:51):
all over again, right.
What we attach our identity todepends on how much we're going
to need to protect that.
So the limitation to doing thatto our golf performances.
Now I have to perform a certainway 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 anidentity label.
It counts for nothing.
Playing good golf is an actionand a focus.

(50:14):
It counts for everything right.
So when we become very ego andidentity oriented toward our
performance, the priority isprotecting a label that I've
wrapped meaning around withoutcomes that I can't control,
versus trying to play as well asI can in the environment that
I'm currently in, which is anaction-oriented thing, that when

(50:36):
you do that you tend to performbetter and, by the way, it also
feels a whole lot better nothaving to protect your identity
the whole time.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
So in that case, though, should we train to not
protect our identity or labelsum, yeah, or change your labels.

Speaker 3 (50:54):
So here we might even get to some like foundational
research on ego and identityformation.
You've heard of fixed mindsetand a growth mindset carol dweck
yeah, fixed mindset is a corebelief that I either have it or
I don't, which is essentially Iam 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'snegative.

(51:15):
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 Igo perform, I need to verify my
identity, which means there'salso the possibility that
whatever I've attached that to,which is usually our outcomes,
can also tell me that I'm notwhat I think I am.
And then we also add years ofother people's opinions to this.

(51:36):
That often, well, if thisperson 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 Iam in the film of special,
talented, good, have potential,whatever that might be.
Versus.
In a growth mindset, it's likeyo, I'm a work in progress, I'm

(51:57):
just trying to get better andplay well Again.
What happens with a growthmindset is that my identity
starts to pair toaction-oriented labels I am
competitive, I am hardworking,I'm curious, things we can do,
focus on, engage with, which isanother way of saying they're
always available to us.
I'm off to the worst start I'veever had, through two holes.

(52:18):
Well, I'm competitive and I'mcurious and I'm hardworking.
I can flex those things to tryto improve my experience.
Or I'm off to the best startthat I've ever had, through
three holes.
Well, I'm competitive, I'mcurious and I'm hardworking.
Guess what's really helpful fortrying to make the best of a
great round and also trying tomake the best of a crappy round,
all of those things Versus inthe other side.

(52:41):
Well, if I'm off to a terriblestart, well, good golfers don't
get off to bad starts.
So, uh-oh, identity crisis.
Here comes my anxiety, andusually what that looks like for
us is we start to employ abunch of um or deploy a bunch of
behaviors to protect ouridentity, like I give up or I
start blaming, complaining,making excuses, all kinds of

(53:03):
stuff to protect my identity,which, again, it's not that
they're bad, they're just notvery conducive to good
performance, or what happens.
I'm off to a great start, butyou know what good golfers don't
do?
They don't ruin a great start.
So, again, the better I do, themore threatening my identity
could possibly be, and we cansee how this loop starts to play
out, because my identity is notbuilt on anything actionable.

(53:24):
So so the means by which wedecouple ourselves from our
identity, from our performance,is to start building an identity
around more action-orientedthings, things I can focus on,
things I can do, things that areauthentic values to me, instead
of outcomes, opinions and, wemight say, these more adjective
based labels that I can't reallyflex unless I start to

(53:48):
manipulate my experience, which,again, if you're trying to be a
high performer, you can'tmanipulate your experience.
You can only control the actionsand the focus you take.
So, that being said, you mightalso pay attention to well, the
more you attach your identity,to your performance, like what
does it feel like and what doyou get?
And nobody has ever told me itfeels awesome.
Protecting my identity all thetime, with all that anxiety or

(54:11):
be, what you get is veryinconsistent, predictably
inconsistent performance, andoftentimes, when outcomes matter
most to us, we feel what wecall, in psychology, gated
access to our skills, meaning Iknow my skills are here, but I
can't get to them.
And the reason you can't get tothem is because getting to them
is not the priority.
Priority is protect youridentity, and protecting your

(54:33):
identity means don't embarrassyourself.
Not go try to win this golf.
turn right so that was amazing,and it's again.
The most dangerous identity ingolf is I'm a good golfer,
because what that means isyou've got to play great to know
who you are, which meansanything less than that is
identity crisis, and it doesn'ttake a psychologist to figure

(54:55):
out.
Trying to perform freelythrough identity crisis is
really difficult to do.

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Well, that was an amazing segment.
You talk about identity crisis.
I think I read something abouta mental thermostat many, many
years ago and I'm pretty sureit's the wrong label.
You know a lot of people whenthey have a very, very poor
front nine, they almost seem todo exceptionally well.

(55:22):
On the back nine Pros who areout of contention for the
tournament, they complete theirround in record time with a low
score, but when they're incontention, it's quite often the
opposite, and I like how youtalk about learning to decouple.
Yeah, and then you also talkabout gated access.

(55:45):
Yeah, and then you also talkabout, uh, gated access that's,
that's something that I've readabout.
Uh, in terms of the prefrontalcortex versus the cerebellum,
could you elaborate a little biton how we could open the gates?
Yeah, are there any practicalexercises that our listeners
could do?

Speaker 3 (56:03):
well, let's just take the example you gave, where I
have a terrible front nine andthen a tremendous back nine.
The shift there is a change inacceptance levels.
So in the front nine I'mresisting playing a poor round
of golf at all costs, or maybeit gets off to a rough start and
then I start resisting a poorround of golf.
But then by the back nine I gowell, I'm having a poor round of

(56:24):
golf.
I have accepted the time.
I go well, I'm having a poorround of golf.
I have accepted my currentexperience as it was and as it
is, and accepted the fact that Imight have just a terrible
round in totality, right.
So again, on the surface itseems like, well, you're
resigning yourself to less.
No, actually, what's happenedis your brain has gone.
Well, I guess I don't need tosave you from a poor round of
golf anymore because it'shappening.

(56:46):
We are accepting it.
Here we go and then, surprise,surprise, my level of acceptance
goes way up for having a poorround of golf, which means all
those avoidance-based tasks comeoff the neurological task list,
which means my prefrontalcortex is now not only online,
it is oriented toward.
Well, I might as well play thisshot in the way that I would
play it if I was trying to playwell anyway.

(57:07):
And so, essentially because mylevel of acceptance for what I
don't want to happen and hashappened and might actually be
happening goes way up, myprefrontal 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 feelinganything.
It just means I'm in where I'min, and then, surprise, surprise

(57:27):
, we get a whole bunch of reallygood golf after that.
So that's a shift, apsychological shift that creates
a neurological shift, thatcreates a shift in freedom of
performance to the same degree.
Players time out time, fiveshots 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 sayingyou stop protecting yourself

(57:47):
from a bad score and when Imight as well go for it because
you feel like you have nothingto lose.
Now, again, not a bad thingthat if you feel like you have
nothing to lose, that I might aswell go for it.
The problem is well, what ifyou're one shot outside the cut
line or one shot inside of itand you do have something to
lose?
You've got to be able togenerate that freedom on your
own, and that comes from uslearning to pay attention to

(58:10):
when I resist the things I don'twant.
What does my actual feltexperience feel like, which is
usually not anything that I wantto feel.
It's usually constriction based.
Constriction is a protectivemechanism.
So that's anxiety, frustration,tension, all the things that
our brain and body does to tryto resist the things we don't
want.
Well, that doesn't feel verygood.

(58:35):
It's meant to be agitating.
So if I pay attention to everytime I'm around the cut line and
I have something to lose and Iresist missing the cut at all
costs, I get a bunch of anxietyand I hate that experience.
That matters because now itmakes the case for maybe stop
resisting.
Then also asking the questionwhat do you actually get?
What are the naturalconsequences of you resisting
all the things you don't want tohappen?

(58:56):
Well, the natural consequencesagain are my felt direct
experience gets worse and Idon't like it.
My physical skills tend to bedisrupted.
One of the things we know aboutanxiety, frustration,
resistance is there is aphysical disruption skills.
Back swings get shorter,downswings get faster, more
rapid, more jerky.

(59:16):
We rush decisions.
There's a series of things thatplay out natural,
consequence-wise, that areclearly disruptive to
performance, that play outnatural, consequence-wise, that
are clearly disruptive toperformance.
Then also, do you score betteror do you score worse when you
are resisting the outcomes youdon't want?
I score worse, okay.

(59:38):
Now again, if, instead ofacceptance and resistance, I
offered you golf ball A and golfball B, with the same
consequences attached to it andthe same experience, it would
not be a difficult decision foryou.
You would choose the golf ballthat is more facilitated and
feels better.
So, us paying attention to theway I show up to something and
the way I engage with it, whatdoes it feel like for me?
Which, by the way, is thelanguage of, like, the deeper
parts of our brain, and thenalso, what are the consequences?

(01:00:01):
Which is the language of therational, conscious thinking
part of our brain, and we getthose two speaking on the same
page, that clearly this is notthe best in our best interest.
And clearly, this is whileletting go of the idea that
there's a guarantee from eitherthat can start to shape things a
little bit different, and thenwhat happens is we have tend to
have a different experience.
So if, in a situation where younormally resist failure at all

(01:00:24):
costs, you go all right.
I'm going to lean into thepossibility of that this week
and I won't like it, but I willstop.
I will accept that.
That's part of the experience.
Chances are you're going tooperate more freely, which means
it's going to feel better.
You're probably going toperform better and even if you
don't perform better, outcomewise, you're going to have a
subjective experience.

(01:00:44):
Where you go, I like how Iexecute differently, and that is
essentially stable confidence.
Where I go, yo, when I operatefreely, I like how I execute,
more Chances are I'm going toget better outcomes, and this
was way more enjoyable.
That cycle starts to play out.
Essentially, you reverseengineering, resistance, Right

(01:01:05):
right.
And, by the way, this can bechallenging for us because,
again, our brain is resist stuffthat we tell it is unacceptable
.
So there's a psychologicalcomponent of I've got to be open
to experiencing things that Idon't want, which there's some
work with that.
Then also, I've got to stickwith that, even when my brain
and my body are telling me nored.
There's a four fire, a fouralarm, fire alarm going off in

(01:01:29):
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 adifferent experience here and,
by the way, give myself actuallythe chance to pursue what I
want, actually the chance topursue what I want.
Then what we get are we at theend of that and during it we get

(01:01:51):
rewarded both psychologicallyby going.
I like how I operated whenthings got hard for me or there
was risk and I did havesomething to lose.
I like how I operated.
We also get rewardedneurologically with dopamine.
Dopamine is the neuromodulatorthat makes effort feel good for
us.
But the key is it makes effortfeel good for us not just when
things are calm, but whenthere's vulnerability, when
there's risk, when there'ssacrifice, when there's stuff

(01:02:13):
about to hit the fan, we getrewarded with dopamine.
We do that, which is a fancyway of saying that response by
us, meaning I'm going to acceptthe things I don't want, operate
freely, see what happens.
It becomes a reinforcedresponse for us, which now means
it starts to be as we do thatmore often, starts to become
more of a default setting for us.

(01:02:34):
Now again, I don't want topretend that that's a snap of a
finger, but that's the process.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
It's really tough, Doc.
I describe it as trying tocatch a cat that you really want
to cuddle yeah, I describe itlike think about you had like a,
like a baseball just covered inlike vaseline like don't catch
it by squeezing it more.

Speaker 3 (01:02:57):
Yeah, I like you know telling it right.
So it's that it's our.
Our brain feels the need toconstrict, to be safe and to be
in control, but control for usin high performance settings is
an illusion it's like likeholding 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

(01:03:19):
experience that, not justconceptually, but in our direct
experience as well.
But to do that, it requires usto let go of the things that we
tend to resist.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
You know that segment that you were on before.
You really answered the nextquestion that I wanted to ask
you about momentum, like what dowe do?
We're leaking oil, just tryinghard.
Well, you kind of answered allof that, yeah.
The next question I wanted toask is can the brain be tricked?
Let's say I'm leading back nineon sunday.

(01:03:53):
How do you calm the brain down?
Can you trick yourself?
Can the brain be tricked aboutthis?
There's a social realm.

Speaker 3 (01:04:02):
I don't think so yeah , not, um, very easily, nor over
time.
So our brain is designedspecifically to sniff out being
fooled.
Um, because, again, like thinkmany, many thousands of years
ago you could trick your braininto there's no saber-toothed
tigers over there.
You only had to be wrong once,right.

(01:04:24):
So it is designed to be all ofbeing tricked, right.
So that's why, if I tell you,hey, you're in back nine, like
this is no big deal, justpretend you don't care about the
outcome.
Or, like you know, you'retrying to pretend that you're
not where you are.
Like your brain is designed tosniff through that, which is why
we feel what we feel and oureyes are moving around and our

(01:04:44):
visual focus starts to go towardthings.
Like it's designed to not tryto be fooled.
Because if you are easily fooled, that means you are also easily
killed.
So this is also why, forexample, if you're experiencing
a lot of anxiety putting whichwe typically describe as the
yips, changing your putter,changing your putter the

(01:05:06):
research basically shows usyou've got anywhere from three
minutes to 30 days for vastmajority of people before your
brain figures out.
This is the same thing, just adifferent tool, right?
Same stakes are involved, sameprocesses are involved.
You just put a different thingin my hands.
You tricked me into this beingdifferent, but it's not right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
And it's payback time .

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
It's basically one out of a hundred people where,
if you change their putter, theyactually have an ongoing
decrease in anxiety.
Right, so it's very rare.
Now it doesn't mean you can'timprove your putting with by
changing putter, but saying ifyou're trying to eliminate
anxiety by tricking yourselfinto thinking a certain way or
feeling a certain way, orchanging your tools, your brain

(01:05:44):
is designed to sniff rightthrough that right.
What is more valuable for us isreconciling with the fact that
you're going into somesignificant risk and, to be fair
, playing competitive golf evengolf in general, it's a social
sport.
There's always some social riskinvolved.
But you're going to play on thehighest tours.
There's significant riskinvolved.

(01:06:05):
There's competitive risk.
There's financial risk.
On the highest tours, there'ssignificant risk involved.
There's competitive risk,there's financial risk.
There's physical risk.
There's social risk.
There's personal risk andinvestment.
And if I haven't reconciledwith the fact that that is a
baked in part of the experienceand make the choice to come into
that, then it's going to be anoverload-ish type situation for
me when I get there most of thetime, because I'll be trying to

(01:06:27):
look for these short-termdistraction strategies to try to
help cope with that instead ofno, this is something that I've
decided to move into and I'vethen put some things in place,
for example, maybe some skillsor some strategies to help
navigate that.
But the bottom line is likewe're not going to trick our way
into convincing ourselves thatthere aren't stakes involved,
when they're clearly are.

(01:06:48):
So all that, you know, we kindof have to reconcile with the
fact that if we're going tochoose to do something, there
are risks that cannot be avoided.
Right, we can try to minimizethem 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 progolf, you are going to
embarrass yourself at some point.
Doesn't matter who you are, youare going to miss short putts

(01:07:11):
from time to time.
You are going to try and youare going to fail.
People are going to judge you.
Your livelihood is going to beat stake.
And if I haven't reconciled withthat's what I'm signing up for
and make the conscious choice tomove into that, I'm going to be
fighting against those risksall the time, which is another
way of saying my level ofacceptance is going to be very

(01:07:31):
low for them, which means I'mgoing to meet them with anxiety
and typically the things we doto try to alleviate anxiety are
the things that then disrupt ourperformance.
Right, because now I'm trying tofeel a certain way, to perform
a certain way.
Well, the way I have enteredthis thing is creating the

(01:07:52):
anxiety, or at leastcontributing to it, and the
things that I'm doing are tryingto distract me from feeling
anxious, which now are alsodistracting me from my
performance it's almost as if tosay we need to accept the risk,
like how a gambler or a daytrader accepts the risk that
they're going into and then,once you accept it, whatever,
you'll be free from all theseshackles of pressure, because I

(01:08:16):
think would it be fair to saythere is no pressure when there
is no expected outcome, whenyou're open to all the various
outcomes that could potentiallyplay out.
We might say that there's notnecessarily less pressure, but
there's probably less anxiety.
So if you think about the humanexperience, we experience three
types of regret, which reallymeans there's levels of risk.

(01:08:36):
Type one regret for us is Itried 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 ashumans is I did my best, I did
this thing freely and it didn'twork out and there was a series

(01:08:58):
of consequences with that that.
We don't have to pretend thatthat doesn't suck.
Sometimes it does, but there'sno way anybody in the world can
avoid that.
Nobody plays well enough toavoid all the risks that come
with that.
Type two regret for us is Ioperate in a way where I'm
always trying to avoid type oneregret and because of that I

(01:09:19):
operate out of anxiety,frustration, ego protection,
comparison to other people.
And now not only do I regrettype one, type one regret.
I get this type two regretbecause I'm never doing anything
in a very free or authentic way.
So for anyone who's played around of golf where not only did
you hate your score, but alsoyou're like I hated how I played

(01:09:39):
today, which is I played out ofanxiety, I didn't play freely,
or you're on the cut line andthen you missed it because I
wasn't willing to take the riskto try to hit this thing close
at the time.
That was the like.
I played it safe.
Essentially, that's type tworegret.
Nobody in the world really ishaunted by type one regret.

(01:09:59):
We are almost always haunted bytype two regret.
That's the type of stuff thatwe carry with us, often for a
long time.
We have to do some work to letgo of.
Or if you look at people whoare on their deathbed, the
research around them is theynever regret type one when they
get to their deathbed.
They always have regrets typetwo style.
Type three regret is I'm notwilling to make a change.

(01:10:22):
So I get type one and type tworegret over and over and over
and over and over again.
So, that being said, when we arewilling to accept type one
regret, which is we're going totry, we're going to fail, things
are going to get crappysometimes, but I'm going to
operate in a way that isauthentic and free, as I'm
defining it Then what we get isreally happy, healthy human

(01:10:42):
beings doing stuff.
Now, it's not always going towork out for us and you might
find out, maybe I wasn't goodenough to compete at a certain
level, but you're not going toregret how you do it.
The case in point for this oneis go to Q school.
At the end of every year youmiss Q school and you go why
didn't I play freely enough toactually make it?
That's the type two regret thatgets people.

(01:11:06):
Or I had an opportunity to playthis but I missed it.
But I missed it because I triedto force it in the hole.
That's the type of stuff thatreally gets to us.
So the to your point, the moreaccepting we are of type one
regret and type one risk, themore we operate in ways where we
don't get a whole lot of typetwo regret.
In that case, I missed Q school.
That sucks and I regret that Ididn't get through.

(01:11:26):
But I'm not regretful of how Iactually tried to make my way
through that experience, which,again, not necessarily easy, but
it's a relatively simple modelto understand.

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
We're into the last five minutes.
I would like to talk a littlebit about dual tasking.
There is this school of thoughtI'm feeling pressure on a golf
course, let's distract theworking memory, so on my
backswing I will say I willstart counting backwards, for
example.
Does that work?

Speaker 3 (01:12:03):
No, not very well.
Like I said, it might work in asmall time against a bit.
Just another version of adistraction technique.
So we don't actually multitaskas humans.
Like many years ago, we used tothink that if I gave you three
different tasks, our focus andour cognitive capacities would
be evenly distributed betweenthe three.
Like one third of my focus goesto each one, turns out.

(01:12:27):
That's not the case.
What's happening is what wecall task switching, which is my
focus and my orientations arebouncing from task to task as my
brain is identifying them,right.
The challenge with this is, if Iask you to balance your focus
around from task to task, allthree of them are going to
become compromised, right?

(01:12:47):
So again, a classic example ofmultitasking golf is well, I
want to hit it here, but I'mtelling myself don't hit it
there Again.
It's not that this is anegative thought.
It is another task that iscompeting and oppositional to
the one that I actually reallywant to do, and our brain, again

(01:13:11):
, is designed to prioritizetasks, which means avoidance
based tasks go first, in whichcase then, if I'm going dear god
, don't hit this left.
I really don't have a lot ofrunway to be able to hit it
where I want it to, because mybrain at the top of my backswing
has to prioritize one of those,and its default setting is to
prioritize dear god, don't hitit left, which is why research
shows 90.
Some percent of the time whenplayers have the thought don't
hit it here, it goes a thousandmiles in the opposite direction,
right.

(01:13:31):
So, all that being said,there's a reason texting and
driving is illegal, and it'sbecause you can't divide your
focus 50% on your phone and 50%on the road.
What happens is it's bouncingback and forth, but anyone here
would acknowledge well, when I'mtexting and driving, I'm a

(01:13:52):
worse driver and a worse texter,in which case, then, that
becomes very dangerous fordriving.
Well, instead of driving a car,what if you're driving a golf
ball and your other task issomething that is not actually
related to doing that?
We can see why that would startto disrupt performance.
That being said, well, if I'mfeeling anxiety, or if I find
myself thinking about an outcome, or essentially, what happens

(01:14:13):
is we feel uncertain oruncomfortable in a certain way,
and I don't want to feel that.
So I try to distract myselffrom feeling that way.
Well, now, what I've done isI've added another task to the
list, and so two things happenwith this One.
If I asked you how enjoyableare the experiences that you're
in when you're distractingyourself?
And the answer is lessenjoyable, right, because you're

(01:14:35):
not really in the experienceenough to get all the good
richness from it, even if it'san experience that is
challenging, uncomfortable anduncertain, right?
So, again, imagine how muchyou'd enjoy a movie if you were
texting through it.
Now you might say I enjoytexting, but you didn't enjoy
the movie for all it was.
In the same way when we'replaying golf, it's not as

(01:14:56):
enjoyable experience when we'redistracting ourselves with
something else, right.
Also, now you're compromisingyour performance because, again,
you're giving yourself morethings to do than just being in
it.
So, one of the things about flowstate there's nothing in flow
state that has anything aboutcomfort and certainty.
Right.
When we're in flow state, weare immersed in the task at hand

(01:15:17):
.
We can also feel uncomfortable.
We can feel uncertain.
Things can be really challenging.
We used to think a long time agothat the challenge had to be in
this very small window in orderfor us to get into flow state.
Turns out not true.
It's actually our appraisal, orwhat we might say what we tell
ourselves about.
If a task is way too hard for usor way too easy and I tell

(01:15:40):
myself, well, this is beneath me, it's not exciting enough, well
then, good luck being presentin it.
Or if it's way too hard and Igo, oh, if I fail at this, that
means it's an unacceptableoutcome, or you're a bad golfer
Also, good luck being present init.
So, really, what happens iswhen we have a task that we're
trying to do, regardless of howdifficult it is, the more

(01:16:01):
distraction I'm applying totrying to not feel or not deal
with the challenges within thetask, the worse my experience
becomes, the less proficient Ibecome, and if you do that over
and over again, it's not asurprise why we would feel the
need to jump from taskdistraction to distraction to
distraction, but all the while,they're not really actually
working.
So you're going well.

(01:16:21):
In my pre-shot routine, I countback from 100 by threes or
whatever.
I'm just distracting myself notjust from what I'm feeling, but
also from what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
Okay very clear.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
Jesse any closing questions for the doctor well,
we'll have to have the doctorback on at some point yeah, this
is like a university levellecture I do do want to make a
comment and I'm sure that thelisteners can identify with this
and I'm going to be a littlebit vulnerable, but just to
comment on earlier in theconversation and to plant

(01:16:57):
another seed in the listeners'head.
You know I am radically moreaccepting when I play by myself.
You know I am radically moreaccepting when I play by myself.
And I noticed, if I play withfriends or fellow members at my

(01:17:17):
club and I hit a bad shot, ifI'm not careful, I'll go back
into default mode, egoprotection, where the identity
crisis becomes evident, at leastfor me, is my reaction to said
poor shot, whereas before, if Ihit a poor shot playing by
myself, I might even get curiousas to why, in a nonjudgmental

(01:17:37):
way.
So just a little food forthought.

Speaker 3 (01:17:42):
Yeah, turns out.
One of the things that reallyexposes where our identities are
attached is when other peopleare watching, right?
because, again, when people arewatching, we are vulnerable to
their defense.
And so if I go, if people judgeme as what kind of shot was
that?
That's not a very good golfershot.
And then I go, uh-oh, I'm not agood golfer, I'm not surprised.

(01:18:02):
It's going to be harder for meto just be objectively curious
in my performance, and so wemight say that's just a pattern
to pay attention to that.
Oh, when people are watching, Itend to get more protective.
That's interesting.
Also, I tend to get morejudgmental of my performance,
trying to avoid judgments fromother people.
That's interesting that I'msmothering two layers of

(01:18:23):
judgment on something.
What does that typically feellike for me?
What do I typically get fromthat, and is that aligned with
what?
It is the type of golf that I'dlike to play, and does it make
it enjoyable for me to play withother people?
Then again, instead of youtelling yourself just be
positive or just go play better,you're getting.
You're making a case foryourself and for your brain to

(01:18:43):
go.
What if I was willing to bejudged by other people?
And what if I was just willingto be curious about my
performance as it plays out,without judging it?
And now you're open to adifferent experience.
A different experience showsyou, 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 tobegin with.
Yeah, so.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
So in closing.
Doc, I'd like to ask you whatis the one product you pay for
and would recommend to ourlisteners?

Speaker 3 (01:19:12):
Oh, I don't think I pay for it.
I'd be struggling to find.
No, I take that I don't knowany any, not any specific brand,
but um, good, golf shoes.
Is it for me and my work?

(01:19:33):
I don't play a lot, but I'm ongolf courses.
They better be waterproof andthey better be comfortable.
Uh, if I'm playing golf, thenthey also need to have a sole
that is firm enough that you canpush off of the ground with.
That would be probably a greatplace to start.
What I pay for a lot Books,same, yeah, and I would

(01:19:55):
recommend reading to everybodyeven if you're not on or just
read more Hard copies please.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
You have the book, the podcast.
How do our listeners find outmore about you?

Speaker 3 (01:20:09):
My website is wwwbtsmindsetcom.
Beneath the surface is BTS cohost a podcast with my friend
Chase called the golf beneaththe surface podcast.
You can find that whereverpodcasts are available and my
book, golf beneath the surfaceis available wherever podcasts
are available and my book GolfBeneath the Surface is available
wherever books are sold, andyou can typically catch me

(01:20:31):
usually on the back of a drivingrange, at tour events or
college events or on wonderfulpodcasts like this one.

Speaker 2 (01:20:39):
Thank you, any socials.

Speaker 3 (01:20:41):
No socials for me.

Speaker 2 (01:20:44):
Cool.
Thank you Again, Dr RaymondPryor.
Thanks guys Appreciate it.
Thank you, Doc.
No socials for me cool.
Thank you again, Dr RaymondPryor.
Thanks guys appreciate it.

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