Dr. Raymond Prior - CPGA Webinar

It's not what you know, it's what you can prove. You know how to cut to the core of me, Baxter. You're so wise. But like a miniature Buddha, covered in hair. I want to become a guru so girls will like me, then I will like myself. Now before we do this, let's go over the ground rules. Rule number one, no touching of the hair or face. Of course. And that's it. Now let's do this. Are you not in detain? Is this not what you were here? What's up everybody and welcome to another episode of the Golf Guru Show. I'm your host Jason Sutton. I've got a special episode for you today. So I'm going to keep this intro very short. It is a webinar that I hosted for our Carolina section. I am the teaching committee chair. So we were honored to have Dr Raymond prior back. And if you want to hear his bio and his accolades, you can go back to the previous episode a few months ago, which was fantastic. But this was a great opportunity for him to share with the group. I think we had 40 or 50 PGA professionals from the section join us. And also get some questions from the audience, which was super cool. So this was an amazing conversation as always. We love Dr. Pryor's information. Go check out his podcast with Chase Cooper, golf beneath the surface. And also check out his book, Golf beneath the surface as well, which is a must read. So let's get to our webinar with Dr Raymond prior. Enjoy. Thanks for everybody. You're in for a treat today. For those of you that don't know who Dr Raymond prior is, he is one of the most sought after names in performance psychology. His clients include major champions, world champions, Olympic gold medalists, individual and team national team national coach board winners, individual team conference champions and countless NCAA, all all America. He also works with corporate executives, non sport performers like Grammy winner Oscar winners, Tony winners, and Emmy winning performing on stage and on screen. He is a certified mental performance consultant by the association applied sports psychology. He is also an author and researcher. If you haven't got his book golf beneath the surface, you definitely need to go get that. He's contributed to several performance psychology textbooks and published research in the journal of applied sports psychology. So it is absolute honor to have Dr. Pryor with us today. So thanks for taking the time, Doc. Thank you guys. It's great to be here. Sorry we couldn't get it in person, but I have it blocked off the next year. I'll look forward to that. Awesome. Once you just start with just a short. Biow of your journey and how you got into the golf space. The very long story made short is that I was a pretty high level soccer player for a while. And while injured, I was wondering why there's one guy on my team who's really, really good at soccer and a freak of an athlete and one guy on my team who is not such a great soccer player and not super athletic. And yet there's a massive disparity in how they perform and the person you expect to perform well didn't. And just starting to understand that confidence doesn't really come from being good at something or if it does, there's a real short shelf life to it. Many, many, many decades or well, maybe not decades, but many, many degrees later over the course of a couple of decades. Every way into golf was I started working with some college golfers pretty early and graduate school. And they ended up a couple of them being just really, really good. One of them won a major championship and said my name on TV, which didn't mean anything about the work that I was doing for him, but you know, engulfed everybody once the secret sauce, even if that sauce is not so secret and not a sauce. And that was kind of the entry way to golf and the then it was up to me to actually be good at my job if I was going to use some of the opportunities that weren't front of me and sometimes I didn't, sometimes I didn't, but as I become more knowledgeable and better at working with people, then now golfers in space where I tend to have quite a bit of work. So that is the long and the short of it. That's great. So let's kind of into it. And because I love your stuff because it's not what I call the normal fluff that we sort of hear a lot of top sports psychologists talk about. So can you share with the group a few of your the myths that you've found in the middle side of golf? Well, there are many I will say this about performance psychology in general, not just engulf, but in general that there have been many times in its history where it has not done a very good job for the people that it has been serving. So basically this 80s 90s and early 2000s where some of the worst errors in performance psychology, we get a lot of the you just got to see a feel of trusted type of a stuff you got to just believe in yourself, you got to relax, you got to just be confident and kind of this what I would call surface level psychology, which is well, if you were actually your brain was actually trying to facilitate what it is that you were trying to do. This is what you would be experiencing kind of the performance psychology equivalent of you telling a player just square the face, but like, duh, what does it you think I'm trying to do here. So I think probably what might be different for people working with me or listening to me speak anywhere is so I have a large amount of education and performance psychology in a way that is much more updated than we've had in past decades. And also really rooted in what is the research really tell us about our psychology also paired with an extensive amount of education in neuroscience, meaning how is the brain actually working for us while we're doing something or not doing something. And the bottom line is a really good psychological intervention has to work with how our brain is actually designed to work otherwise you're fighting your brain in the same way that you know good golf instruction is oftentimes working with how your body and your joints are designed to move not really fighting against them, you know, the we're just going to wind people up and push their joints to full on and range of motion as soon and as hard as possible like you kind of break people down doing that and it's also actually pretty difficult to be consistent. With striking a golf ball in that way, similar with performance psychology interventions or even understanding like if you're not working with how our brain is actually designed you're going to be fighting it the whole time is very difficult to do something well and do it freely and find motivation to do it over time when you're actually doing that. So that might be what's a little bit different for people who are hearing me for the first time or different from some psychology that you may have been exposed to in other areas of not the only person who takes this approach, but probably one of the more prominent in golf anyway. I think that's a good segue into your sort of cycle framework that you talk about in order to build what you call stable confidence and you share sort of what that looks like and like avoiding the trap loop and how to how to break that I think that's the interesting how you how you describe that piece. I'll start with the trap loop if you don't mind Jason so trap loop but trap loop of what I call unstable confidence is I need an outcome to tell me how freely to do the next thing right so any golfer or anyone coaching golf has seen this where I think in past decades it's been the performance psychologist telling somebody hey you just need one good one to get things going or you just need a good shot to turn things around well. If you think about that is it is an if then type of relationship like if I get a good outcome then I can start being confident which is another way of saying do something really freely and in a pursuit based way well in which case then I'm using a non controlable outcome to create an internal space and decision making system for me so I am basically self imposed myself a barrier to my own operating system with an outcome. And let's we might say that when the outcomes are good I mean good shape but the problem is all I need is one poor outcome and now the whole system falls apart and it's the trap loop that's the best case scenario the worst case scenario is I really need an outcome now to tell me how freely to do something later or how freely to feel about it later which means I'm probably going to bring a bunch of anxiety to this current execution because I need a good outcome, which means I'm going to do it in a not-so-free way, maybe a scary swing or a jabby stroke, which then now I don't get the outcome that I need to do it freely, which means I need to really get the next one right, which means now I've got double the anxiety, and this loop just gets tighter and tighter and tighter. So for anyone of you who's coached somebody who is particularly beholden to outcomes for their confidence, this is that trap loop. And again, to be fair, performance psychology did a terrible job with this because in the last, we might say like three decades prior to the mid-2000s or mid-Auts, what we were trying to do is get people to feel comfortable to do what basically whatever this person's got to do internally to try to produce a good outcome to then open up their confidence, which we might acknowledge exacerbated this whole cycle. This is like just relax, just feel comfortable, just trust, just do whatever, just trying to clear out space for someone to get a good outcome to then feel confident that they can continue to do so. So like we're basically like it's like quick-sand underneath. It's like super fragile ground. So unstable confidence is not necessarily bad, but it is by definition built on unstable things, outcomes being one of them, how we feel about ourselves and our skills at any one moment is also super unstable, praise or criticism from other people. If you're working with really competitive players, this is rankings, comparison to other people, how far I hit the golf ball any given day, like all of these things are not bad sources of confidence, but they are by definition unstable, meaning they can be there. They might not be, and the more I need them, the tighter this trap will become. So stable confidence, what we're seeing as we're looking at really, really high performers, is by definition self-given permission to perform freely without requiring a guarantee. So what that means is I generate the freedom, which I'm doing something without requiring an outcome, my own feelings to be in a certain place, the situation for me to be facilitating or not, but it is self-generated freedom without requiring an unstable source. Now, by the way, I have one of those days where I feel like I can't miss. It's kind of frosting on the cake, but it's not the cake itself. And so what we see from really high performance is they're not leaving their level of freedom, or we might say how freely they operate from day in and day average shot to shot. They're not leaving that up to anything that isn't themselves. In which case, then that means you're psychological framework now Jason, which by definition is your core belief system, your value system, meaning you generate from anything needs to also not be attached to those things in attentional and emotional ways, because otherwise you can't ever get off of them. So what we see from people who are really, really high performers is that their psychological framework, that is their core belief system, their value, their operating systems you might say, are built on two psychological principles. The first is presence. Can I be present in the thing that I'm doing, which is not anything new. Everyone here knows this. But what opens up the doorway to being present isn't just trying to be present. It's I have a really the second portion of this is I have a really high level of acceptance for all the things that I don't want. Okay, so if I think about that trap loop, my level of acceptance for a foreshot is really low, meaning if it happens, I'm willing to live with that. My brain is always going to be fighting against the possibility of that outcome. And the primary mechanism for us to fight against things in the future that we don't want to happen is anxiety. An anxiety is a surefire method to disrupt somebody's skill execution. So what we see in our psychological framework from people is they have a really high value and intention on being present. And what opens the doorway for that is they actually don't fight against the things that they don't want to happen. So they have a really high level of acceptance for possibly making mistakes. High level of acceptance for maybe being criticized, for shooting sports scores. What we see from the best players in the world is their level of acceptance for a big costly miss is crazy high. They're not fighting against it. They don't like it, but they're not fighting against the possibility of it. And what we see with the best putters in the world, the best putters in the world, who three putt the least are fighting against three putst the least, meaning yeah, I'm going to three putt from time to time. Why? Because I'm playing on really difficult rains, putting is really hard and it's a make miss outcome. So those who three putt the least have the highest level of acceptance for the possibility of reputting. So we're going to define acceptance for the group for those who it's kind of a new word or in this context new acceptance doesn't mean that I'm necessarily going to like something. It doesn't mean that I'd be comfortable with it. Doesn't necessarily mean I'm certain. It doesn't mean that I would be satisfied with it. It doesn't mean that I'm stuck with it forever. It doesn't mean I'm not motivated and it doesn't mean I don't care. What it means is I am willing to possibly experience, experience it. Even if it was painful in my past, or there's something in my present that says maybe this might happen. And so the less I'm fighting against what I don't want, our brain is designed to then open the doorways for us to go pursue what we do. And so Jason, to your point with all of this, I cannot have stable confidence. If I've attached myself to unstable things, that if I'm fighting against the possibility of them happening, because now I've won, I'm not in control of my own level of freedom. And to my brain is going to be designed to try to prioritize avoiding all the things I don't want, which would be in layman's term saying, I'm trying to play, I'm trying to go play to not play poorly, rather than actually trying to go play well. Yeah, that's acceptance of the big, big deal. I'll share a little story that you don't know about Doc that we're, we're sharing a player. I won't mention his name. And the other day I was working with him. I was asking him sort of what you guys talk about, what would you guys were working on? I thought this was really interesting. He said, Doc wants me to end all my range sessions with a bad shot. And I said, wow, that's crazy. Like that wouldn't, that wouldn't work a lot of times in our lessons. But the reason was he put him to have that high level of acceptance. Like I've never heard that before. That was brilliant. Yeah, I mean, if you're just talking about if I need a good outcome, feel good about my practice or to feel like I can come back and it's going to be in a good place, then I have to end on a good one. I am by definition attaching myself to an outcome that doesn't actually have that level of influence. So another example, like imagine your basketball player, you have to finish on a mate. What are you going to, you're not going to get very good because anytime you miss a shot, you are now stuck on the fact that you missed a shot. And now I have to go fix it. In which case, then you get stuck, beholden to that thing. So if you again, look at the top performers in the world, they miss. They're not stuck on it. When it happens, it's over. They accept that it has happened. And they are on to the next thing. A lot of the ways that we practice get a stuck on stuff. It's a non-acceptance approach to a miss of horse drive or whatever. So it's a really good habit for us to get into that when something happens that we don't like, we just get into a habit of moving to the next thing without necessarily needing to fix or make up for the last thing, which by definition, I'm not present because I'm dwelling on what happened. And I'm in a state of low acceptance, which now makes it harder for me to do the next thing really freely. Yeah, I love that. So share with the group a little bit of maybe some training techniques to sort of stay on time and understand that the outcomes, we can't control the outcomes and the difference between eshaped and a shaped thinking. Sure. Well, we'll start with the thinking. So our brain thinks it doesn't think. So if anyone hears, probably read again, another way that performance psychology's done a really, really poor job in the last couple of decades, trying to get people to think positive. Our brain does not know positive or negative. That's a subjective valence that we label our thoughts. That would be like you labeling a golf shot positive or negative based on the shape. We'll hold on a second. Like what kind of hole was like? What's the shape of the hole? Where's the pin location? Like a superhealy chunk, something might actually be productive in a certain place versus somewhere else. So positive and negative is not how we think, at least not under neurological level. Our brain thinks in basically what kind of task are you asking? So it only wants to know is this a pursuit based task or an avoidance based task. And our brain is designed to prioritize avoidance based tasks. So we don't think positive or negative, but we think in ways that create or prioritize avoidance or prioritize is pursued. So the first type of thought is what I call an ashape thought. And ashape thought is a type of thought that will prioritize an avoidance based approach to doing something. And so that's basically a, oh, this better not go a certain way. What that means is we're looks at looking for the words that we speak to ourselves. So the language of an ashape thought to begin with is have to need to must or must not can't and don't. And again, these are not negative thoughts. They are avoidance based language for our brain. Don't let this happen. That basically means avoid that thing. Before it must go this way, also by definition means it must not go that way. And then should and shouldn't are the language of judgment. And judgment for our brain is an automatic. Get the walls up and just start playing defense language. So we might say that a nation thought the beginning of the thought already starts with a state of constriction. It has to go this way or it cannot go that way. Right. So my margin for error that my brain is perceiving that I can work within is getting smaller, not wider. Then the bottom half of that thought you might say the bottom half of that shape is the explanation. And whether we are aware of it or not as humans, we are going things need to go this way or not this way because. And then there's some type of explanation at the bottom. In an A shape thought that explanation is pessimistic. Now pessimistic is not, is the glass half full or half empty. It's why the glass would be half full or half empty. And a pessimistic explanatory style, meaning how I explain the events and experiences of my life, means that I'm explaining things in one of three ways or a combination thereof, which is I'm making things more long term than they really are, more widespread than they really are and more personal than they actually are. So if you want to think about anxiety, for example, anxiety, two things are happening in our brain. One, it is grossly underestimating the margin for error that we have to be able to operate within. And the second thing that it's doing is grossly overestimating the consequences of that. So for anyone here who's been on the first T and gone, I have to hit the first fairway or I'm not going to be able to play well today, not a negative thought. It is a very constricting approach to what you're doing. And a pessimistic explanation is that you have made a very long term and widespread conclusion from the possibility of that maybe happening. Or for anyone here who's seen a player like I missed the first three puts inside of five feet and they go, I guess I'm just not putting well today. Again, not a negative thought is a conclusion about some events that should have gone a certain way but didn't. And now I make a long term conclusion, I guess I'm just not putting well this far. That is telling my brain to avoid putting poorly for the rest of the day. Otherwise, you just are. Would basically create an avoidance-based priority system for my putting for the rest of the day. And I'm now be holding to the outcomes in an emotional and an intentional way that have already happened. So I'm using past outcomes that tell me how freely to approach the possibility of these feelings. And as we can see here, based on how our brain is designed, the really difficult way to play golf and try to do so and get full access to your show. That's an A-shaped thought. A B-shaped thought though, conversely, we might say there's a lot of space to begin with. What it begins with is just a very strong preference. I want to start this fall here and try to finish it here. Or I want to try to play really well today and score really low. So it is a preference without it becoming a necessity. It's not a judgment or an expectation. It's only a desire. And again, don't take my word for it for anyone here when you play your very best goal. Has it been you have to play well today? Or is it like, no, I'm going to really do my best to try to play well today. So there's a big difference in how much space the, ginsely, the perceived margin for error for me to be able to operate within. And then at the bottom, it's an optimistic explanatory style, which is the opposite of pessimistic, meaning I explain things as only as long term as only as widespread and as only as personal as they are, which by the way, golf is almost never personal, but we take it that way. In which case, then if I get something that is outside of my preferences, which can happen, it only lasts as long as it does and it's only as costly as it actually is. So if I hit a ball out of bounds, it's a ball out of bounds that costs me a retie and whatever penalty strokes. And that's it. Now again, I don't have to like that. I don't have to be satisfied with it. I'm not settling for it. But I'm also not making the conclusion, uh-oh, I must be in trouble. I need to guard against that miss the entire day. In which case then, now I'm definitely beholden to that outcome. And I'm stuck fighting against it the whole day. Instead of it was a thing that happened, it's a mutually exclusive event. I'm going to go play the next shot freely wherever I am. So you might notice a V-shaped thought. There's a lot more access to being present because if things happen, it's only outside of my preferences, not my needs. And also if something happens, it's only as costly as it really is. There's nothing else that I'm attaching to it that doesn't actually exist. So what we see from people who are really high performers, they have a very V-shaped psychological framework. Their core beliefs, their thought patterns, their value structures, give them more room to operate within. So it's not failure is unacceptable. It's failure sucks. Success is preferred. And when you don't, we're going to try again to see if we can't figure it out the next time. Not success is unacceptable. And if you do, why are you even doing this? This is the worst idea ever. So what we see from people who are really high performers who are more resilient, have more access to being present, confidence is more stable, a very V-shaped psychological framework. That's a fun to go on for people. So I imagine there might be some questions in talks with all of that. Let's open it up. Sean, if you have anything and then we can open up, put it in the chat bin. How's it? How's it work? Either way, if you want to put it in the chat or raise your hand and ask a person, we can take this either way. You got anything, Sean? First before we open it up to the floor? Yeah, I'll just asking, having success, kind of opening people up to more V-shaped thinking, at least in the lesson environment. But I'm not doing as well as helping keep that process on when they play. The outcome thing. It's just interesting to watch it change so fast too. I can almost see it physically. It's like, oh my gosh, they're back here. I've been trying to use breathing just to kind of keep people present, but that's not doing much. Yeah, it's by telling you to take a breath and be present, but in the backgrounds, there's a thought that's going, oh, we're on the course. This outcome better go a certain way. We're a lot of online. We attach. If we're really being honest in practice, it's very much a V-shaped experience. Okay, so I would prefer to hit really good shots, but I'm not requiring them because why I'm learning a new skill or I'm testing it out or maybe I'm just forming up. Now, we can, but it's less likely. And then also, the actual consequences of hitting a Porsche out on the driving range are very short term, very narrow, meaning they only cost me that if anything, and very rarely do we take them as personally. So practice looks like this. If we're being real about golf on the golf course, windscore matters, it's actually closer to an H like it's or like a narrow or B where the consequence is you hit a Porsche on the golf course, it is going to cost you strokes. So there is some length of time and it is a little bit more widespread. Again, it's very rarely as personal as we make it, but it's going to look more like this and the margins get a little bit narrow, meaning yeah, I kept it in bounds, but I'm also in a bunker and that's going to make it harder for me to play the next shot. So we're being real going from this in practice to this in the real course. It can be very easy for us to go, well, if that's the case on the course, well, I'll just slam it like this. In which case, then you're going to see some what you're going to observe as coaches is the byproducts of anxiety, where a person's going, oh, I'm on the course, if better, go really well or it can't go like this, and if it does, well, my coach will think this about me, why am I even taking lessons? Uh-oh, I've got this, if I can't fix it here, I'll never fix it and all kinds of explanations we put on top of this. So as coaches, what we can do is first get out ahead of this, like, hey, we're going to go to the course or you're going to play an internament and it's not this, I'm sorry, it's not this, it's closer to this. That's real. We need to bring the same level of acceptance to this as you do this, which this is very easy to bring acceptance, I'm sorry, this is very easy to bring acceptance to. This is a little bit harder, right? And what that looks like if we're getting into like general terms is you need permission to be able to try and yes, fail. Right? So again, based on how our brain is designed, if I'm constantly trying to avoid failure in whatever subjective terms I put that on, score my swing looking a certain way, my contact feeling a certain way, ball flight, whatever I would put into the category, or that would be a failed attempt. If I don't have permission for that, my brain will be guarding against all of these things and there's that ashape framework. So I can't fail in this way because if I do, and then whatever explanation. So what that looks like for coaches is if we're going to go try this, it might get worse before it gets better, but let's go find out. Or you have permission to go try this and yeah, you might screw it up. That may be okay. Is that kind of helping them talking them through that or? It's a good idea. It's an important conversation to have with people. Like, I'll just say this, in our Western culture, we typically crush and judge the shit out of people for trying and failing. And therefore, if I go and I'm going, I need to avoid trying and failing, trying meaning I did my best and it still wasn't enough and everything that we attached to that. If my level of acceptance for that is too low, I won't go do the thing freely. For two reasons, one, my brain will always be trying to avoid whatever I deem a failure. And two, it's a built in safety net for us. So this will probably resonate with a lot of coaches where you have a player practice rounds, they play crazy freely, but as soon as you throw them into a tournament with high enough stakes, there's some level of threshold where, if I try my best and it still ended up in failure, the only thing I could point to is I wasn't good enough, they will guard against that. Like, that is the ultimate existential crisis for humans. What if my best effort, freely done, is not enough? And we throw so many safeguards on top of that. Why? Because we typically crush people for that being the case. In which case, then as coaches, we kind of have conversations with people of like, that's the risk you are set up for it every time you go play tournament golf or golf where score counts enough to you. There's always the possibility that you might try your best whatever that looks like today. Do this thing crazy freely and it not add up to what you think it was. If you're guarding against that possibility and whatever labels you throw on that, you're gonna get anxiety. And you're gonna have the actual competitive experience is gonna be this and you will slam this on top of it, try to avoid all of that and you'll get the same cycle over and over again. So to that, Jason and Sean, like, that's a conversation about someone's relationship with failure. And is it a shaped or is it a big? Because in bottom line is with practice and practice rounds, failure is not really a thing. So when everyone's like, oh, I remember I play practice rounds freely. I'm like, yeah, because there's no failure involved. Like, oh, I hit some poor shots. Nobody cares. Yeah. But if you go, oh, if you get an 80, people care. And you're gonna hear about it. Your coach shares your parents' care. And if you're gonna get anxiety, you're gonna get anxiety, you're gonna get anxiety. And if you're gonna get anxiety, you're gonna get anxiety. There's two things I do with pros. One is like, all the things you usually do to try to feel good about your swing, can we start removing those? So that's, can I finish on a bad shot, whatever my last ball might be, without going back and fixing it? It's, I'm only gonna hit a certain number of balls today because that's all I really need. And I'm not gonna hit any more trying to prove my swing and all these types of things they fall into. Or, I need to hit, the one that do a lot is, they have these short-cutting drills, and they just hit the same spot over and over. I just need to see a bunch falling. Like, no, you don't. That doesn't count for anything. Right. On the course, what that typically looks like is I'm encouraging players, particularly better players, meaning their skill level is higher, particularly pros. You going out and playing the course, middle of fairways, middle of greens, is of zero value to you psychologically whatsoever. Instead, I'm encouraging them, play it as strategically aggressive as you possibly can, because that will do a couple of things. The first is, it's gonna make you uncomfortable and make you uncertain, because you might execute well enough to meet that tiny margin for error, and you might not. In which case, then you are going to have a great freedom from a self-generated place, meaning, I'm gonna try to hit it in this tiny spot, and it may or may not work out, and I'm willing to accept that possibility before I hit this golf shot. Then the other thing is, you are going to miss that margin for error for time to time, in which case, then, you're going to be in places that you don't like, meaning you failed, and it is now costly to you, and learning to accept that, not being okay with it, not resigning yourself to it, not being comfortable in it, just being willing to experience it more often. It also gives them a great opportunity to practice a lot of shots that they're going to get in real life, that they don't typically practice very much, like recovery shots, being short-sighted, being dead, like whatever, like basically, having to be nine holes in this hyper-aggressive mode, and you aren't short-sighted somewhere, or miss a fairway from a certain place, or put yourself in trouble, you didn't play aggressively, and not regardless of how well you're hitting it. So that would be another way to be able to do it, or the other one I give them is like, three ball worst ball, and you're gonna take the worst one. So you could hit two amazing shots, and guess what, you're probably not getting any of them, which means you need to accept wherever this third one is probably going, and have three ball worst ball, you are going to play places that you don't want to, despite the fact that you think you should be somewhere else, also helps us kind of face failure. No more acceptance, not resistance. And again, accepting failure does not mean you like it, or you're not trying to be successful. It means you're not fighting the possibility of it. Right, so, I was gonna put it into a putting drill, it's, I'm gonna put really aggressively, and yeah, I might three putt from time to time, versus, where do I got a putt to never three putt, which anybody here who's done that know, that's a pretty miserable experience, you're gonna leave a lot of putt short, that you don't want to go long, and you're gonna bust a lot of them long, that you're just trying to not leave short. So, those would be some ways, but it's also, it's questions like, why do I feel the need to try to avoid failure at all costs? And it's usually because we've adopted some ideas that are miscalculations, that the more I fight against failure, the more that will push me toward success. Then we might also ask, is that the cause and effect that I'm actually getting? Like, it's kind of a bit of a problem, moment for a lot of the pro golfers I've worked with, it's like, you know, you've been trying to be perfect for like a decade. How's that working out for you? And they're like, it's not, because if it was you and I wouldn't be talking, right? And then kind of just, you know, well, the more I try to not three putt, the worse my cutting gets, or the more I try to avoid being short-sighted, the more I'm cutting from 50 feet, on the opposite side of a green, and never having a chance to make birdies. Like, you pay attention to that cause and effect. Oh, and by the way, the internal cause and effect of, it's just an anxious experience the whole time. And we kind of tune into that often enough. It starts to make the idea of fighting against failure, kind of like disenchanting, kind of like, well, kind of a nasty taste in our mouth. That's a good thing. That's our brain going like, oh, maybe it changes in order here. But we have to put ourselves in a situation where when we normally fight against failure, we actually kind of lean into that possibility. Otherwise, you don't give yourself a chance to do that. So avoid avoidance. Yeah. So what we might notice is avoidance is not a bad thing for us as human beings, right? There are things in our lives that are important to avoid. But if you are in a pursuit-based craft, or a pursuit-based endeavor, you do not have freedom to pursue if you are also trying to avoid. Our brain does not allow for it. So nobody really puts well trying to avoid 3-putting all the time, not because it's negative thinking, but because your brain is prioritizing, do not 3-putt, in which case then trying to actually like hit your line of speed and make it, from the backburner. It's not the main thing. So it's essentially the more I take trying to avoid, and put that into the acceptable category. Meaning if it happens, it happens. I will deal with it when it happens. Then my brain goes, well then what do you want to do? What do you want to do? And then you have room to do it. to do that, but the brain doesn't allow for it. Again, it's a survival mechanism that kept us from dying sooner. Way back when our brain was evolving, where now where it plays out in our modern world is it will keep you from pursuing what you want if the priority is avoid what you don't. - Thank you. - You got it. - Thanks, Matt, great question. Next up, Mickey Walker. - Yes, so if a golfer is on a, say a par three over water and then they go through their bag and pull out a water ball just in case they hit it in water, are they giving them self permission to just, it's okay if they hit it in water? - Potentially that or they're already assuming they're gonna hit it in the water. (laughing) Probably a bit, what we call in my field, we call forecasting where you go, well this happened in my past, therefore it's probably gonna happen in my future. And then we start offering our brain goes well, if that's the case, since you're making that conclusion before we get there, I will start assuming that's the case, the problem with this assumption is that you can basically get the same cycle of, well I'm assuming this is gonna happen and now you're trying to forecast the future instead of seeing what can happen this time. So the opposite of forecasting the future is leaving it open ended. Open ended future means, I don't know, let's see what happens this time. So if I'm going to a water ball, I'm already assuming this thing's probably gonna go in the water instead of, I don't know, I'm gonna try to hit it as well as I can this time. Let's see what happens. Now, depending on who you are and how expensive golf balls are for you and what not, that may or may not be a risky one to take, but I would say there's probably an assumption where I'm taking things that have happened in my past and I am applying them to my future before they have actually happened, which again, our brain is a bit of a prediction machine. It's trying to do this, but in a pursuit based realm where we see people operate the best is when the future is left open ending. I know what I want to do in it, but I'm willing to see what happens without making a conclusion before I get there. So again, this kind of goes contrary to previous models of performance psychology going like you just got a trust that you're gonna hit it over the water this time or be searching that this is the time that things are gonna change or just believe in yourself and that will get it over the water, which is again, you're just adding more things for your brain to do versus, I don't know, let's see what happens is actually removing something for your brain to do, which is figure out the future before I get there based on what's happened in my past. So if you have somebody who does that, you might ask like, you're assuming you're gonna hit in the water, how do you know this won't be different this time? I don't know, maybe let's give it a try and let's see what happens is oftentimes the counterbalance to that. - Thank you. - I got it. - Thanks, Becky, great question. A couple more in the chat here. I'll just read these out first from Kyle. What age would you start talking to someone about this if you're teaching juniors? - It really is possible. - Take that because so we are technically as human beings born as psychological blank slates, meaning we are not born with core beliefs and values and permissions to go do things. We learn them along the way from adults. So our brain is built with its capacities to basically pursue and avoid, but the core beliefs that we develop through our experiences as children start right away and we are adopting them, whether we're paying attention or not. So any of the children you work with, whether they are paying attention to it or not, usually it's through their sensing from adults, you are teaching them it's okay to try and fail or it's not or you should be careful here or you should do it freely in these types of scenarios. So the sooner you can be like, "Hey, this is a really good full shot." I don't know what's gonna try, let's see what happens or I'm worried that it might not work out or you're even sensing that from them. It's like, I don't know what to try and let's see, and all those little messages are telling them either, "A, it's okay to try and fail or B, no way it is not." Which again, doesn't mean you don't have behavioral standards. If you have a student telling them that trying and failing is okay, doesn't mean that they don't get to study for tests or to try to take them well or do sitting class and take notes. But what it means is if you've done everything you can to try to be successful and you try it and it doesn't, we're gonna figure out what we can learn and we're gonna try to do it better next time. But more often than not as adults, we teach young people, I don't know, be careful what if that doesn't work out and in these subtle ways it starts to stack up. And then that certainly doesn't stop in, early adolescence and childhood. The vast majority of pro-Gulfers I work with are terrified of missing greens in certain spots because their college coaches have been telling them, you can't miss here, you can't miss there, you better not miss there, you better not miss there. Based on whatever scoring systems they have, which again, doesn't mean that they're bad. But if I adopt that scoring system as a mindset, very ashape mindset, you cannot miss there, you shouldn't miss there, otherwise your dead is the answer, which is the pessimistic explanatory behind it. We get a lot of very, very anxious pro-Gulfers. So like fundamentally speaking, they are crazy skilled, but always playing defense with their skills. So they learn that starting as children and it continues all the way through adulthood. And then by the time they get to me, I'm trying to reshape their psychological framework. But if we start doing this younger with kids, like if you can almost white ask like, okay, who do I know who's a golfer who plays really, really freely all the time? Meaning they're not guarding against failure. And you reel back, it's probably because they were around a certain number of people that were like, there's no reason to guard against failure. So you don't need to learn that as a system and be able to play golfing versus, oh, this person is just naturally confident. No, they're not. It's all nurture when it comes to confidence because we're either telling ourselves you can or you can't and not can or can't outcome wise, can or cannot do this freely in what your brain is really asking. So young and in whatever language makes sense to them or makes sense to you, but younger the better because that's where they're starting to pick it up, whether we're aware of it or not. Thank you so much. Yeah, of course. Request from Kyle. A couple more here. What are your thoughts on add a shot course management? For example, if you missed the fairway add a shot, is there another strategy recommend for trying to simulate a tournament conditions? Well, I still think the, based, and again, this is not just my opinion, it's based on some research about like how you kind of create a pressurized conditions for people. It's making the challenge more difficult than it would be on the course. So that might be adding strokes loss, but again, the purpose there isn't, I just said, you can do that. Provided what you're doing is that is the cost and we're gonna accept that stroke if you do so that you can do it really freely. But if it's now what you're teaching them is you miss a fairway. Oh crap, it costs me even more than it actually costs me. And now I'm just trying to not miss fairways then what you'll get is the opposite effect, right? So as coaches we narrow the parameters or we make missing the parameters more costly that can indeed be beneficial, provided the people in the thing are not then bringing anxiety, meaning avoidance to whatever's outside the parameters to work with them, right? So if I go, oh three putting is actually gonna cost you an extra stroke. Well, then what I'm trying to communicate as a coach is I want you to put really, really freely. And if you end up eating that stroke, you do. So more, if we're really trying to shape people not just with conversations, but with the things we put them in, what we're trying to do is go, these are the margins we're making them smaller. Lean in to how small they are. And here's the cost, lean in to how costly that might be so that they can operate more freely. Like the analogy I use is if you watch any professional soccer team practice, the field isn't getting bigger, it's getting smaller. You need to operate in smaller spaces. And when you lose the ball, it gets more costly. But the purpose of that is not to punish people. It's to help them train playing in these smaller spaces so that when they get into bigger spaces, they experience it as, oh, I have more room. I have more time. I have more space to operate. So we do have to be careful, not necessarily with the what, but the application that we're giving to people. So for anyone here who grew up playing sports, and if you've made a mistake, you've got punished by just having to do fitness, basically running sprints or laps or whatever. The subtle message behind that is if you screw up, there's more at stake than just screwing up, which now I'm creating the fertile ground for fear of failure, versus, oh, you screwed up and there's consequences. Can we be accepting of those consequences? It's a difficult thing to try to balance. Usually what I'm trying to get coaches to do is create conditions that are difficult to operate within and costly margins and then reward people for doing things freely, not necessarily based on the outcome that you necessarily saw, which doesn't mean outcomes don't matter. And you don't need to select the best teams for you to compete. But if we're trying to train people to be confident, we have to start removing all the things they do to rely on confidence that may or may not be available. I hope that-- Thank you. Yeah, that was from Justin Malone, great question there. One more from Jen Ho. A lot of times people will call out the downfall of a golfer's performance saying he's not clutch. He's choking. How much of someone's mindset can be observed from physical movements? If so, are there any golfer's you find surprisingly or particularly impressive? Um, there are, to the first part of that question, are there things you can observe physically? Yes. So if you look at anxiety, anxiety is a three stage defense mechanism. First stage of anxiety is what we would call don't do it. So all the negative thoughts, the assumptions, the dear God don't go left, people are going to laugh at you. You can't screw this up. Plus the feelings we have, that heaviness and dread in our chest all the way to the tightness and tension in our arms and hands. That is your brain responding to something you have told it. This is very threatening. We can't let this happen. It's trying to convince you to not do it. So many, many hundreds of thousands of years ago for our ancestors, the best way to avoid a threat would be to not engage with it at all. Well, our brain is still the same. We're just now in a modern world. So if I'm playing in a golf tournament and I go, uh oh, maybe just don't do this. And my brain is going, yeah, that's a good idea. It will spit at me all the types of things to try to get me to just not do it. Which by the way, stage one of anxiety, we, if you actually looked at the world through stage one anxiety, you see most people bail out here. So what you would see on the golf courses, your pre-shot routine gets really, really long. You at, there's a pretty straight forward shot and you're still discussing the 18 different ways that you could play it. You're waiting for the wind for the umpteenth time. All the way to like, I'm standing over the golf ball and screaming at myself, take the club back and my brain's like, so the full on hesitation, that is stage one anxiety for us. Our brain is getting us to just not engage with something that we have deemed unacceptable or whatever version of it. So we could observe people typically slowing down and in ways that are like your brain going, the best way for us to not do this is or not get hurt and this is just don't do it. The second thing in our second stage of anxiety is what I call, let's get it over with. So if I can't get you to not engage with a threat, which would be the most safe and the most energy conserving way to deal with a potential threat, the second most energy conserving and safe way would be to get it over with this soon as possible. So would you rather get eaten by a saber-toothed tagger in five seconds or 50 seconds, your brain will take the five. In which case then now people go from hesitation to rushing through it. So here we see everything from, I made a decision about what shot players tell me like, I feel like I kind of blacked out. That is your brain being like, you told me that you're going to do this, but also it's super unacceptable at this and this. I can't guarantee that. So what I can't guarantee you is I'm going to just try to get you to the next moment as soon as possible. So that's also the rush transition from the top, the jerky fighting. So we call it the Yips. The Yips is not a syndrome. It is stage one and stage two of anxiety. I can't take the club back Yips is stage one, your brain trying to get you to just not put it. Stage two is that jerky motion toward the ball, just trying to get it over with and out of whatever current discomfort you're already in and just get it done so that you can get on to MI or MI not going to make this and just feel more searching and more comfortable and more in control of the next moment. That stage two anxiety. But we also know from that what we would observe be hard to see on a camera sometimes or in person. It will one disrupt the sequencing of motions. Needless to say a jerk from the top is a different sequence of motions and firing of muscles because again, it's not about how to do this as well as I can. It's how we get over feel like I get it over with as soon as possible. So you will see a disrupted sequencing of motions to what we see as people. They have a really difficult time applying the appropriate amount of force. So again, go back and imagine you have a chip and I tell you long is dead but you also better not leave this thing in the bunker. It's going to be really difficult for my brain to apply the appropriate amount of force if I'm also trying to avoid these two into the spectrum or just one or the other. So it's kind of a Goldilocks and free bears. If it can't be too hot and it can't be too cold, really difficult for our brain to find where it's just right because I'm trying to avoid these two things at the same time. So we see people cutting and chipping through anxiety have a terrible time with distance control and trajectory because it's jerked and oftentimes it's don't go here, don't go there. So you could observe this from people potentially, especially if you really know their golf swing and what it is when it's sequenced freely or what their distance control is like when it's also done freely. And the last thing we know which is more of an internal thing but it is almost impossible for our brain to find, clarify and hold a target that is a pursuit based target when we are also trying to avoid this, this, this, this and this on the course and future consequences of what if this doesn't go well, what if people judge me, what if my score gets worse, etc. So the priority system is not this pursuit based target which makes it really, really difficult. So oftentimes when players are telling me, all I see is this, this, this and this and I have no idea where I want to hit this. That's a symptom of anxiety. So we might observe those. What you also might observe in the larger picture is stage three of anxiety is what I call your welcome bro, which is anytime we do something dictated by anxiety, not feeling it or experiencing it, but do the thing dictated by anxiety, we are reinforcing that as a response from our brain, meaning our brain goes, here's some anxiety and we go, okay, I'll do this through anxiety. We are effectively telling our brain, thanks for coming around and our brain goes, you're welcome. I'll be here next time. I'll be here sooner. I'll be here for more things. So it becomes a reinforced response for us. So for anyone here who's played golf, I used to get anxiety putting and then it was chipping from larger distances, then it was my wedge game and it starts to reel back. That all because I started putting through anxiety, not because I felt it because I'd put it anxiously or there's some I used to get anxious on the first team. Now I get anxious on the driving range. I used to be the driving range. Now it's the clubhouse. Now it's the parking lot. Now it's the drive to the course. That is stage three of us. Anytime we do something through anxiety, our brain goes, you're welcome, bud. I'll be here next time and I'll bring some friends. So we would start to observe this pattern again and again. And sometimes that's very situational for some people. Sometimes it becomes very generalized. Those would be the types of things you would observe from somebody operating in a perfect trying to perform through anxiety. This is what you would see if you're looking through the lens, let's just say it's PJ tour or the LPJ tour. 90% of people are operating through some level of anxiety. So again, if you just took this player away, when they play really freely, what is their ceiling and what is their floor, that's not what you're getting when they're playing in tournaments because they are oftentimes not playing with that level of freedom. There are a few people. Again, there's a reason Sky Shepherd has been number one in the world. Some of it is because he's really crazy good. The other part is he almost never operates through anxiety. So when he's got swing issues, it's a swing issue. It's not an anxiety issue, which by the way is a way easier thing to correct than anxiety. On the LPJ tour, genotidical played pretty crazy for you last year. But by the way, there are also people on the tours that if I mentioned their names, you have no idea who they are, but they're not as skilled as other people, but they are needing every single bit of juice from their squeeze because they're just not playing through anxiety, otherwise they wouldn't have a job. So it's not just the people at the top that are necessarily doing it, but you'll kind of know it too when you're watching somebody and you're just kind of asking the question, is this person holding back? Or to what degree is this person holding back? And if there is a part of you that's like, I kind of this, that's usually a bit of an indicator to certain degrees, right? So oftentimes what you'll see on PJ tour are the pre-shot routines involve a bunch of things that aren't necessary. You're in between, like, it's a pretty straightforward shot and I've gone back and forth between five or six different ways to play this thing. I have to take a drink from my water bottle before every single chip or plot, like all of these things would be kind of indications. I'm looking for something to tell me to do something freely, but it's not. So that's a very long-winded answer for it. If you're looking for it, you can see it, but sometimes it's a little bit subtle because some people are super skilled, so it might be difficult to see from the naked eye, but if you look closely now, you'll find it. Did you see the host of Tuneys taking a drink of water before every shot and he's holding the water in his mouth? Have you ever heard of it? So I actually got a couple of texts from some journalist asking about it. They probably won't write anything up because he didn't win, but there's two things. So if I tell you to take a drink of water and you're holding in your mouth and you're actually paying attention to what is the sensation of holding water in your mouth, there is a bit of a grounding effect to that. Grounding meaning it helps me to be present in the same way that I might ask you to pay attention to your breath. But if behind it, it's, oh, you better not screw up this chip and minimal effect whatsoever from putting water in your mouth. Most likely it's just placebo effect, which is, I did this and I hit a good chip, so I'm just going to do this even though it has nothing to do with the chip that you played or the chip's going forward. So, placebo effect. effect by definition is this works because I think it works, but one of the things about placebo effect is the more pressure you put it under and the longer you're asking it to create an effect because you think it works, the less likely it becomes to be able to work. So, I'm not sure exactly what he's using with that, but what we might say is I doubt he's doing that during practice rounds or when he's playing really freely with his buddies or on the driving range before every shot when he's driving it. All right, thanks for that. Yeah, he's been playing great the last couple weeks, but interesting. Well, the weather there. Yeah. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]