Thoughts That Create Pressure Part 2: The Hidden Layers

(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Golf Planet Surface Podcast. My name is Raymond Pryor, co-host with me, my co-host, the one and only Chase Cooper. Chase, we kind of maybe wrapped up pretty quick in the last episode on a topic. I know I've gotten a lot of feedback after our last episode, we were talking about how we think in ways that create, not just pressure for us, but most frequently kind of the things that we would say, kind of get in our own way, which is frustration and anxiety, which in and of themselves aren't necessarily bad, but when they are frequent enough, hang around long enough and become intense enough, become very difficult to perform well, and very difficult to learn over time, and certainly doesn't make the things we're doing as enjoyable. So maybe we'll do a quick recap here for a little bit, stretch a few things out that we might have condensed at the end, and then finish this conversation where we're talking about how this applies to our, I think kind of we're talking self-talk or inter-dialogue, we can kind of pick apart what that means, and then ultimately for people about like, all right, well, what do we do? - Yeah, I wish there was times where you, and I even said on the pod, you went on a great run for 15, 20 minutes that felt like that was, I wanted to almost pause multiple times and say, okay, let's dive into that. Let's dive into that, and unfortunately, we were both on a little bit of a time crunch, so we kind of, we kind of power through. What I think would be kind of a good idea was like I wrote down a few notes from the pod and just kind of run back through and see if there's anything that you wanna touch a little deeper on, and just see if this kind of covered everything, and then we can kind of go into, into next steps from there. - So yeah. - All right, so I wrote down the brain as designed to think constantly, so trying to not think in golf as a losing battle from the start, you know, any thoughts on that quickly? - Yeah, last week we talked about how our brain is, it kind of produces two different types of thoughts. The one is spontaneous, and these are just thoughts that we have, this is our brain being the super computer that it is, trying to help us navigate the world and our performance is based on our histories, our projections, our emotions, and a variety of different things, and it's gonna do that, we can't stop it from doing that. So if I told you just don't think, like imagine, you know, you hit a golf shot, like the first couple of thoughts that pop into your head, like I'm supposed to tell you, you should stop those, or if I show you, oh, here's a hole that you've had a history with both good or bad based on your history, just don't have thoughts about those, like your brain is gonna spit you some spontaneous thoughts. We also have deliberate thoughts, which is us thinking about something on purpose, maybe rolling some ideas around and around in our head, or even talking out loud for us is often deliberate thoughts. If you even think as a general rule of thumb, if you wanna say spontaneous and deliberate thoughts, a not exact dividing line between those two, but a rough dividing line art. The thoughts that we often have in our head versus the ones we actually speak, and what the ratios are for how many thoughts we have in a day versus how many words we actually speak. Well, that's just one layer of the differentiator between perhaps a spontaneous thought. Sometimes we speak our spontaneous thoughts, but mostly we don't. And often times we speak our deliberate thoughts, but we don't always speak them, but that's just kind of a rough guiding line for the types of thoughts that we have. So we're never trying to turn our thoughts off, like the idea of just play a shot and don't think is technically speaking impossible. And if you could just turn your thoughts off, like you would be brain dead, which is, you know, certainly not a very viable place to perform. And so like, yeah, I wrote down there are two types of thoughts, spontaneous, fast, automatic, uncontrollable, deliberate, slow, effort, full, and controllable. Do you, one of the things that you've kind of touched on a lot on this pod through the years is like, be careful about, you know, adding judgment and good and bad to your thoughts. Are there, is there ever a time where you do with these types of, with maybe with the deliberate thoughts or is it still never, we're never judging them? And it's not never, but we just need to know what the cause and effect of judging any of our thoughts are, which is we're going to start adding a layer of emotion to them. And typically they're the agitating emotions, right? So if I label thoughts good and bad, good ones are probably going to feel certain way, but bad ones are not. But then what's the line between a good thought and a bad thought? And then if again, if our brain is designed to think, and I tell you, these are thoughts you should or shouldn't be having, which is another layer of judgment, what we're going to see is now you're going to need to judge things just for existing. And what the research shows us over and over again is that judging our thoughts makes us feel worse for judging them as positive or negative, good or bad, right and wrong, but also for something that we should or shouldn't be having. When we do this, we typically feel worse. And then chase where it comes to like a focus issue is then now my internal experience, the thoughts I'm having and the feelings are creating become the priority for me. They take a lot of my attention and my emotional bandwidth, which then would come at the cost to my performance. So a less cost effective way for us to interact with our own thoughts and feelings is to learn to observe them. But without adding any value to them, without judging them for good or bad, right or wrong, sure should be having. And to start to see them as just thoughts about something, right, and then what happens is they can exist without necessarily pulling our focus or our emotions and more specifically pulling our efforts toward the day. And by the way, judging your thoughts is also incredibly stressful for us. That is meaning there is a significant duration and intensity of demand to judge everything that you think. And then if you do that for long enough, eventually it's gonna cause a lot of anxiety and a lot of frustration. - So I mentioned off air, we've got state championship week this week for a lot of my girls and next week for a lot of my high school boys. Give us a real world example of how judging your thoughts could be very detrimental. - Imagine you're playing a team event and your thought is, oh, I don't want to ruin this for my teammates. Or I hope I don't play terrible and screw this up for my teammates. So judging a thought would be like, oh, that's a bad thought, don't have it. Instead of that's just a thought about something I really don't want to happen. Then also learning to observe, that's a projection. So as we talked about before, it's not a fact. It's not a precursor to the future. It's only a thought about the future. And it's also not a command that I have to follow, meaning because I have that thought, I have to go out the next day based on that thought, trying to just not screw it up for me or for other people. Right, so if I tell anybody, hey, you're about to play something really important to you with meaningful outcomes both for you and other people. Just don't have spontaneous thoughts or even deliberate thoughts about how that might go in a way that you don't want to. Or particularly if you have a history where maybe that has happened before, it's an impossible task I have just given you that is probably gonna make you feel worse. And then you're probably gonna be thinking about, well, how do I turn these off and now you're ruminating? And we might say that that's gonna be a pretty rough night before. - Yeah, no, for sure. And then we get into just accepting it. If that does happen, can we live with it? Can we live with the results? If we have a putt to win the golf tournament or win the tournament for our team or to get in a playoff and we miss, can we pre-accept all those? - Yeah, we might get to what that looks like, but even before we get there, can we notice that is an A-shaped thought. I must not screw this up for me or for others because that would be the most disastrous thing in the world. What that is doing again is one, it is grossly underestimating the margin for error that you have to operate within or the likelihood of that even happening in the first place. And two, grossly overestimating the consequences. Again, it's not that there are none, but there are very rarely what we imagine. So there's a significant amount of research to support what many philosophers, several hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, have started to observe in that we suffer far more in imagination than we do in reality. And that is in part because of how our brain is designed and the shapes of thoughts that we treat as facts, as precursors and as commands that we must follow. - That's good. Yeah, the brain's an exaggerator, I love that. High-level performance relies more on fast procedural thinking, not slow conscious control. Trying to consciously control mechanics during the swing is ineffective because it's too slow for the speed of the movement. The goal is not to eliminate thinking, but to match thinking to the task, simple, focused, external, impossible. Any thoughts on those? - Again, if we're just kind of recapping the fastest, strongest parts of our brain run our procedural memory. And that is basically the skill set. So you're kind of working toward the center and kind of backwards in the brain. And when we are not consciously trying to think through a golf swing, this is the part of our brain that sees and reacts, which is where we typically perform at our best. Not always, but typically. However, for us to have access to that means that we have to think in ways that don't attach our performance to things that may not be available to us, which would cause us to try to create conscious control. Right, so consciously trying to think through something with the slower, weaker part of our brain that doesn't have enough time and doesn't actually have enough control to be able to do. do something is coming from us trying to gain control over an experience, either to control an outcome, to control a motion, to control an outcome, to control feelings. It is a natural response. It also just so happens to be a very ineffective response. It makes us feel like we are doing something to be in control. The downside is that again and again and again when tested, particularly with athletic endeavors, we notice that it is not at all effective. No one has ever played their best golf consciously trying to think through and controlling every single outcome, or if they have, it is so exceedingly rare that it is not a viable performance strategy. So if you look at high performers, when we put them on things where we can measure their brain activity, when they are doing things really well and in what we would describe as flow state, the activity is coming from procedural knowledge where the prefrontal cortex which is slower and the more conscious thinking is just orienting toward targets. All right. Now again, that's kind of more ideal state and again, it is skill based dependent, the worse you are at something, the more you're going to need to consciously think through some stuff because the procedural memory has not been developed yet. In which case, then you would think through stuff, but the expert, like pro golfers at that skill level or really high level amateurs, the more you're relying on conscious control, the less control you have over what you're doing. Yeah, there's times where, and we've talked about this quite a bit, but there's times where swing thoughts are just fine, but making them too specific or too positional oftentimes makes it really tough, getting deeper on the backswing, turning our hips more, rotating more, moving up and down, that stuff's much simpler, more external stuff, trying to get to right elbow in a specific spot on the way down is really difficult. There's a series of research studies that show too that the smaller the muscle group that we try to do that with the less precise it becomes. So if I'm trying to create conscious control, like particularly with the golf swing, that would be like my wrists and hands through conscious declarative memory, meaning consciously thinking through something it becomes even less precise than even if I so again, so that might mean for a golfer in a practical way, the more my swing thoughts are oriented around the larger muscle groups for me, probably the more efficient they would be, but the closer they get to my hands and basically the grip of the golf club, the less efficient they're going to be. Those muscle groups are too small to be so fine tuned for movements. So what would you say to, I was just on just on another podcast with your, our friends over at Hello, can you go and talked a lot about contact and I've talked a lot about contact and collaborating contact and toe strikes and heel strikes and I've had some, I'm going to call them old school thinkers that have said you can't think about contact and some of their reasoning was because it has too much to do with the hands and it's too difficult to think about the fine tune. How would you describe that as far as like moving contact around, whether it is low point, because yes, it's a body movement, but it's also a hands and a wrist and an arms movement. How does that differentiate? I would probably, if I was trying to teach somebody that or even if I was trying to practice it myself, it would probably try to make it more of an external target thing that my muscles and procedural memory could orient too. So if you told me just like, hit this thing off the toe, right? So instead of me telling you, you know, turn the face in a certain way with my hands necessarily, right, or hit this thing off the heel in the same way that if you were throwing a baseball to me, I'd say throw it really high. Like you would eventually figure out that your release point would be much sooner versus if I told you throw this thing into the ground, you would also realize it's later without necessarily needing to figure out wrist angles of where you release that, right? So again, there is something to be said about the skill level because if I've never thrown a baseball before in my life, you might need to tell me, okay, now I think you'd think about throwing this thing straight up in the air, but with add some rotation to it or something. But depending on your skill level, but the better we get at something, the less efficient that becomes again. I'm not saying that there's no value to it, but the circumstances with which they are applied for the person, their specific aims for their lesson or for what they're trying to do with the golf club and the golf ball matter in that equation and what we're trying to pick, right? Yeah, so there's a difference between putting a 3D sensor or a wrist sensor on the player and saying they need 14 degrees of radial deviation in an impact. Now, if you take a tour player who is one tuned into that and can feel the difference between that, that's one thing. You take your average amateur. First of all, I would also argue cause an effect like for the average amateur, the reason they're wrist angles or impact position is flip or whatever is because of a larger body movement or a weight shift issue or a set up or a grip issue or a little bit tangential with that. That being said, if I'm asking the slowest and weakest parts of my brain to operate the finest tuned smallest muscle groups at a high skill level, we can see that's pretty disruptive for us. They just can't keep up with that. And I also think that's why the golf industry as a whole, the instructional side of the golf industry as a whole has always kind of been pivot driven and been all that stuff because it is hard to really fine tune what the fingers and the hands and the wrists and all that stuff are doing, having said that I'm, I'm a big fan of still adding some, some hands to the motion at times just because we are very good with our hands and we are very good with, and that's the only thing that controls a lot. One of the things we know for sure, I mean, if we just look at the nervous system, if you look at the amount of nerve endings and different parts of our body, so for anyone playing the home neuroscience game, you're looking up image called homunculus. And it's a depiction of the human body as it relates to how many nerve endings and how sensitive they are and basically as human beings were all face, hands, feet and genitals. If you're talking about what does the golf club feel like, oftentimes that is going to come from hands, but then again, is it, is it the muscles that I'm using to create that or am I trying to feel a certain thing that is generated more from a body motion? So again, there's a lot of nuance to this, but as it relates to our conversation, ashape thinking tends to try to get us to consciously think through something that isn't necessarily best consciously thought through and then of course that can trickle down in some pretty deleterious ways depending on what my skill level is and where I'm actually myself to try to control something like, you know, with my hands at the club face at the moment of impact, like that's a really, really small margin for error there, particularly when we've already made it smaller based on how we're thinking about it. Yeah, for sure. So to put a bow on what you would, you would recommend for most coaches to, to teach from what the science says, be very, very careful about having specific focuses with the smaller muscles. Does that, is that fair? Yeah, I would say move toward those last, right? Because then again, even if you just think about the kinetic chain of a golf swing or any real motion, even if it's like a jump shot in basketball, the beginnings and the most powerful motions in that that determine what the arms and hands are doing are starting from basically between the bottom of our sternum, where at our diaphragm and the tops of our knees. So basically like ribs to kneecaps is like the core for athletic motion, particularly motions where we are throwing or catching something. And so I would probably want to coach from there first and then move my way kind of toward limbs or to weight shift or something. So there would probably be a couple of levers that I would pull before that before I start trying to coach somebody how to use their hands when the kinetic chain isn't really very efficient to begin with, right? And the same thing for myself, like when my golf swing gets off, it's very rarely whatever's going on with my arms and hands, it's that my body's not moving in a way and my arms and hands have to compensate for that in which case then I can be, oh, well, my arms and hands did this. What's like, what's kind of like why did they do? Yeah. And we kind of with working with beginners, we start with club across your shoulders, turn, turn, pivot finish and then we get the grip and then we start, okay, now lay in the airplane, now twist the airplane and the twist the airplane is usually five or six lessons in. All right, cool. So we'll go back to the, get back to the recap on this. This is, and we've talked about this a time, but confidence has kind of been redefined as permission to perform freely, not believe or certainty about results. Most golfers have unstable confidence because their confidence depends on results, feelings, past performance, or often other people's opinions. Yeah. So for thinking about confidence, again, confidence, I think any human being who's lived at all understands that I feel certain ways when I execute more freely, all right. So it's not that confidence doesn't have any base in feeling in it at all. But what we're seeing from the highest performers on the most consistent performers in the world is that their confidence is rooted the least in what things feel like and it's rooted the least in context. And it relies the least on outcomes, okay. So what it means is for me to go do something freely and authentically, where is that permission coming from? Is it coming from me just because that's how I want to do it? Because I know that's in my best interest, and it also feels a certain way to me. Or am I waiting for something else to give me that permission, which at times in our lives, they do, right? Like we are oftentimes in situations where we recognize the stakes are very low and I can get. that permission from the situation. Case in point players tell me frequently, when I'm one behind the cut line, I play so freely it's incredible, right? That's our situational acceptance. So it's a context where I feel like I have nothing to lose and therefore give myself permission to take the risk to go try to play great, knowing that I might not. Or there's times when we get a series of outcomes that our brain then calculates. Well, the future must look like this and we really like how that calculates. That is also part of this equation. The problem for us is all of these things are unstable other than me giving that permission to myself. So again, the analogy we use last time is, imagine I go, I'm a really consistent golfer, provided. I have my favorite club, flat stance, flat life, favorable wind and a favorable pin. What you would say is you probably are a great golfer. If you can check every single one of those boxes, which may happen for you about once a round. Otherwise, you would go, well, what do you do when you have a side hill lie? Or you're not your favorite club or an unfavorable wind. Or you're not in the fairway or you're not hitting off a tee. The same thing goes for us psychologically. Well, what do we do to give ourselves permission when the things that give us permission aren't necessarily there? But the reason we gravitate toward those unstable things is because when they are available to us, we feel them very much. Right? So the downside to this then becomes, well, if I'm trying to perform at a higher level, that means these things are going to be available to be less and less because my subjective experience with them is going to change most of the time. And it's going to evolve, I'm going to build a tolerance to them. So we might see, if we're kind of talking about our conversation here, is that A shaped thoughts make our permission to perform freely more contingent upon context and all of the different layers we talked about before. Outcomes, my own thoughts and feelings, other people's opinions, my past and future, and then whatever the current reality is offering me and how I feel about it. Yeah, I'm super confident if I'm driving it well. And if that, the last couple of weeks or the last couple of days I have been driving it well, then it can work out great and everything's fine. But we're not going to keep, you know, and you've always said to, you can't trick the brain in a lot of times like, we can tell ourselves how good of a putter we are. But if we haven't made a bunch of putts and we usually use that as kind of our backup to build our confidence, it can be failing quickly. So here you're highlighting, again, I am not saying that self-belief is a bad thing. What we're saying is it's not nearly as stable as we tend to give it because believing that, even if it's a layer of, I believe I can handle anything, not even I believe that every outcome is going to go my way or that I'm good enough or whatever. It requires evidence for our brain to go, yes, I definitely believe that. - All right. - Now, would you say recent evidence? - Semi-recent enough, right? Again, so think about something that we believe very strongly when we're kids, we've used Santa Claus on this at a bunch of times. When that evidence perceived or real is in place, that belief is very strong. But the world has a funny way of giving us the truth, and if we're other than kind of living in the dark, so once you become self-aware enough, at some point you're gonna start seeing evidence to the contrary, which is why nobody who's an adult really believes in Santa Claus, right? Because at some point you're gonna see some evidence and because you're getting more intelligent and more self-aware, there at some point you can't deny it in the same way that if I just believe I'm a great golfer, but I've been going through it for a couple of months, that self-belief is not necessarily that stable despite the fact that I might pump a whole bunch of energy into it. So again, as we've talked about before, the research shows us that the best and most consistent performers in the world are relying on self-belief. The least, it's far too shaky a ground for them to try to gain permission to perform freely from because they're playing in places where they're gonna get crappy outcomes pretty regularly. Right, like I think again, if it's outside of golf, we go to like pitching in the major leagues. Statistics show that basically even the size young winners every year, one out of five games, they're just gonna get shell. In which case then, if I go, I believe I'm great. Well, 20% of the time the world is telling you, no, you're not. In which case then, I have mixed reviews at best. So again, I'm not saying the self-belief is a bad thing. It is really powerful for us as humans. As we get better at something, it becomes less stable because it becomes less predictive for us. Another thing to keep in mind about self-belief is if you're working with a psychology professional who's pushing that, research shows us that the number one reason psychology professionals push self-belief on other people is because they believe it was something they lacked. So again, think about that in another context. Imagine you go to a dietician and they tell you, you need more protein and you go, why do you think that? 'Cause I needed more protein. That may or may not be the best fit for you. So it is important for us to kind of ask some questions about like, okay, well, why are we trying to develop this or that and so on and so forth, right? So again, there is something about us as human beings where we do respond to other people believing in us and the world giving us evidence that we have reason to believe in ourselves. There's nothing wrong with that and it is powerful. Also unstable. And risky for my players too, at times, it's risky because if I keep telling me or if it's an A-shape thought too, you've got all the talent in the world, you've got to try and it's to be great. Oh, we gotta be careful. - I believe I am great at golf. Again, not a negative thought, but it is a fixed mindset. I am good at something in which case then every outcome you get in performance you have is either confirming or denying how good you are in which case then when I get them, I really feel good and belief increases. When I don't, I can't. And we've talked about fixing growth mindset a lot on this program before. The core belief of a growth mindset is everything is helping me to learn and grow and get better versus the fixed mindset is I just believe I'm really good at something. So again, self-belief can be a very double-sided sort and what we see from like really good high-quality psychology research is that it's really not something that the best in the world are relying on too often. When it's there, they're probably lean on it pretty hard. But when it's not, it's not. - And again, I go back to my tell my players like, yeah, they're great mentally when everything's working well, but do they only get that two or three or four times a year where everything's dialed in and our goals to be more stable around those events. - Look, and again, not to be judgmental toward anyone, but if you're only in a great place psychologically, when a series of other things are in place that is telling you exactly that so much of your permission to perform freely is tied to things that are rarely available to you. - So good, right. So good, so good. Thoughts are not negative or positive. They're either constricting A shape or expanding B shape in terms of margin for error. A shape thinking creates must have to can't rules strings margin for error increases anxiety and avoidance, B shape thinking creates preferences not requirements, keeps margin for error wide allows freedom adaptability and resilience. - Yeah, so A shape thoughts again, our perceived margin for error is decreasing in a self-imposed way. And the way we speak that or hear that in our head is some version of have to need to must can't don't or shouldn't shouldn't. And then the consequences are us explaining any event and experience in our life as more long term, more widespread and more personal than they really are. And again, that doesn't mean that our margins for error are wide open or that there aren't consequences including consequences we don't want attached to the experiences of our life. There are, but in this case, we are making them smaller and more threatening. In a way that your brain is gonna want to deploy anxiety or frustration for because if that was the actual case, it would really require that probably. Versus V shape thinking, we are leaving the margin for error as wide as we can. It's not pretending that you can just hit the bolt anywhere while you're playing golf and still score or that you can do anything you want in the world. What it means is the actual margins for error are the actual margins for error. And the consequences attached to the things that we prefer not to happen are only as long term, only as widespread and only as personal or not personal as they really are. So missing a fairway is I just missed a fairway and that's it. It's not determining what my round will be. It might determine what I need to do next on this shot depending on what this lie is. But it's not nearly as long term as we typically make it. It's not about, oh, I'm just hitting it probably, it's like, no, I just hit this one. - We're not a terrible driver of the ball because of that. - That's some conclusion of that nature or even aimed at our internal experience. I'm feeling anxiety. Therefore, I must be in trouble is also an A-shape thought that now my margin for error is missed because I'm feeling anxiety that I shouldn't be feeling. And if I'm feeling that I must be screwed, is a conclusion about the future being very long term, very widespread and also that's a pretty personal problem we have. So we can apply A-shape thinking to just about anything. Whereas V shape thinking again it sees things and they are so be like I'd prefer not to be feeling anxious, but I am. And just because I am doesn't mean anything other than I'm just feeling really anxious right now. Right instead of oh I shouldn't be feeling this way or if I am then I must be in trouble or I'm just an anxious person like. You're not just an anxious person your brain is capable of anxiety depending on how you think about things, but that doesn't make you an anxious person. Right so this would also be kind of my push back on and not just mine personally, but also the research on like personality profiles is they typically put people into categories. You're this type of person and because of that it's this kind of future for you, which is just an a shaped framework to put anybody into. Again it's just not very predictive so that that's we've talked about that before we don't need to go down that no for sure okay so before we get into some of the some of the other thoughts that we didn't quite get to last last week so you talked about. You know anxiety at the in there and like you're just because you have an anxious thought doesn't mean you're necessarily an anxious person you're capable of having anxiety. Turn this into a real world example whether it's with my players or you know we got college posties and coming up we've got another major coming up pretty soon like I'm having anxiety I'm having I'm fearful of the future when it comes to this these next couple of events. Obviously there's there's some there's some deeper levels that you like to get to with your players and and deeper you know conversations that happened before just this one but like talk us too quickly like how you deal with a player feeling more anxious about a certain event than they maybe having the past. I would be curious first tell me about what you're thinking about this event right and tell me what might be contributing to that. To say I'm just uncomfortable I just don't feel quite right I really feel like I need to I need to play well a lot of these a shaped thoughts like most some of that. Great and I would then might even be a little bit more curious what is it that's caused you to come to the conclusion that you made I'm noticing that that conclusion is treating the feeling you have as a precursor to your future and I'm also noticing that tomorrow doesn't show up until tomorrow so tell me a little bit more about what's causing you to make that conclusion and it's usually well. And it's usually well in the past when I felt a certain way I played the next day like well you felt a certain way but how did you treat those thoughts I treated them as if I had them then I'm in trouble right so there's a conclusion a shape conclusion in between these so we might say okay that's pretty a shaped going forward if you if you went to tomorrow. Through the same a shape framework what do you expect would happen. What's another way we can think about this that is credible meaning truthful and when you say it it might not. Make you feel differently but it actually might give you the opportunity to focus and act differently and that is well I just feel kind of crappy right now. I'm not even really sure how I feel when I wake up in the morning or if or I might ask question was last time you felt pretty crappy and played pretty decent golf and oh here here here and here okay how did you go about that well I was just letting myself feel crappy and I just kind of didn't care. Oh so basically it wasn't something that you could or couldn't feel at the time or that you should or shouldn't be feeling you just were and then you actually just focused on what you wanted to do and how you wanted to do it. So take me through how you did that or what's kind of things you did to so now we're kind of instead of. Just going with the fact that an a shape thought exists I'm inviting them to think differently about what it is they're experiencing and then also chase explore the evidence to the concert. Right so we don't just replace thoughts like I or replace feelings I'm feeling anxious I'll just feel relaxed anybody know that or I'm feeling any I'm thinking in a shape I'll just switch it to a V not really out works we actually have to explore that first thought and kind of show ourselves. I really think this is actually how it goes and look for evidence to the contrary in a way where our brain the way it works will assume a thought is true. Until we show it otherwise right so think about our childhood beliefs Easter Bunny Santa Claus my dad's the strongest guy in the world et cetera we assume that's true. Until we go huh that's an interesting thought I had about that I wonder if that's true and then start exploring the evidence to actually support or as we might see kind of refute what that is. That's right now the challenge for us as humans is we oftentimes treat our strongest our most prevalence our most shared and our most felt thoughts and beliefs as if they are true. Real problem for us as humans is oftentimes we fall into the trap of treating a thought as if it's true particularly a shape thoughts that we have held for a long time that many people hold or that we feel is very very true. Even though they're not right so that's where you're starting to get into some real psychological work with people about well of course you don't have permission to go play freely from yourself because the beliefs you have particularly a shape beliefs. At different layers and I'll talk about those layers here in a second are pretty strong and the reason you're treating them as strong is because your history with them the fact you share them with other people and they feel a certain way to. I feel like I have to try to be perfect or control outcomes well it's a long held a shaped belief it is often shared by many people and you're going to feel that in the form of frustration anxiety or. I hit a shot trying to really control the club face and it actually goes where I want it to and I go yep see did it and so it gets reinforced with confirmation bias over time again and again and again and confirmation bias by definition is I am excluding. Other evidence to the contrary of what I've been experiencing that might explain this in a different way that's what confirmation biases and it's a dangerous place for us to be in because we typically get farther and farther from the truth it's it's fascinating to me how often that happens with my my students i'll just have him hit into the net. And then I'll I'll have him assess the shot and then I'll show him I'll show them the result through a track man and then they'll come up with a different a different assessment or outside they'll hit it and be like oh I hit it left so I must have done this I'm like well why do you think that well because that's what that's what's happened in the past I'm like yeah but you're not that person anymore you don't have that golf swing anymore like just because the ball went this way they almost go backwards and think well I must have done that like what do we know and I always joke I'm like those aren't facts those are just those are guesses. The fact is the face was shot and we got to figure out why the face was shot that's the only reason it went left that's right to confirmation biases another survival mechanism for us it helps us to there's just too much information in our world. For us to organize in any one second or even one may despite the fact that our brain is organizing and processing billions of bits of information per second it needs filters to know what's important what's predictive and what's not. And so this bias this confirmation bias based on our past experiences not just the past experiences but also the shape of the beliefs that we experienced them in. It basically goes well this experience plus this belief we're going to use this as the predictive formula going forward. So any evidence that I experience that confirms this will get overvalued and encoded and any evidence to the contrary will just kick out not that it's bad but it's assuming it's not relevant. And again in our modern world this becomes a problem for us because now we get farther and farther from truth and truth is the most stable ground for us to be able to operate from when things get difficult for us which if we're talking about playing golf it's going to get difficult at times. And so is life for us right and so what happens it often feels better too right like there's a feeling confirmation bias makes us oftentimes feel self righteous or at least safe. So if you think about it or again our modern world where if your confirmation bias pushes you very strongly and let's say a political direction when you see evidence of that it's going to make you feel self righteous. The downside is when I see stuff to the opposite I become very threatened by it hence the challenge with a shaped thoughts and the confirmation bias they create is a ton of threat for us. And it also though they get reinforced through fear through anxiety through anger and by the way from feelings that we typically like but again that doesn't necessarily mean that any of them are oriented around truth. So they can it can be helpful for us at times but oftentimes I wouldn't say that I see many people again this is this is Raymond observing the world so I have to tune into my own confirmation bias on this but I don't see too many people operating from very heavy biases. That are very flexible and adaptable in the world right typically they're they're quite rigid and the reason they're rigid is because only things that fit the bias is stuff that they can operate from everything outside of it becomes either a threat or a disruption. Part two where we're going part two was just kind of talk about like the layers of a shape thoughts build they're not necessarily. So our brain has these types of thoughts, but you might think of them as kind of the there's the hub of the wheel. There's kind of the arms of the wheel. And then there's kind of the wheel spinning around it. So three layers. Is it both sides A and B both sides. There's layers to both. Yeah, for sure. Right. And what we're talking about here is kind of like we would call this a micro mezzo or macro. The micro would be like this is the experience I'm kind of having right now. So don't hit this left or else you're screwed about this golf shot. Right. So, but then oftentimes behind that thought is another a shape thought that might be the form of you better not screw up today because other people are relying on you and if you let them down. That is the non acceptable experience for whatever explanation I might be giving myself to that right then if you go even lower or really kind of like what is actually at the root of this. This is where our insecurity is and our trauma lives so that trauma on the behind that thought is that a mezzo so is it micro mezzo are you going to micro mezzo and then macro. That's right. So macro is the deepest right. So the macro means it's applied. There's a trickle effects. So micro is this very specific event that is related to this larger experience that is larger. These are my insecurities and traumas that I am guarding against. Right. So our insecurities come in essentially six layers. It's approval acceptance from other people. Significance meaning I need to feel significant or be seen as significant intelligence. I need to be seen as smart. Which is I need everyone to see how hard my life is. Validation just that I am experiencing what I think I'm experiencing for the reasons I think I'm experiencing it and that is okay. And power meaning I have more I have disproportionate influence over other people. So our insecurities is not so much that I necessarily although sometimes it's not a hard and fast rule. But in general most human beings insecurities are not actually about having these things that are about being seen as having these seen as significant seen as powerful seen as approved of an acceptance so we can see here what in a world of social media. Why people experience so much anxiety it's just insecurity bait constantly right there then also the deepest layer you might go like macro macro is our trauma trauma is the ultimate a shaped experience for us which is that thing from your past that was incredibly painful and consequential must not play out in your future here comes the full blown defense mechanisms for us. Right so we kind of talked before I always push back on the neuroscience approach to all you got to do is hold a target in your head because that assumes that the micro the mezzo the macro and the trauma layers are not interfering with that which is highly unlikely for any human being unless you have done the work to be able to clear that space or you're in a context where those things are not triggered. Which we might say the golf course, especially internment golf is usually not one of those places so here we see the importance of really good psychological work and understanding that our psychology is the first time psychology being is this an a shaped or a V shaped approach to this experience is the first domino and everything else is oftentimes dependent upon that including my neurology meaning can I even focus on a target and hold that frequency in my brain. Plus the neurochemical combination I mean what's so predictive from domino one is just everything and how everything goes. Okay so micro I can't hit it left right now mezzo I can't let other people down or if I keep it left I'm going to miss a cut would you say like it could be that it could be I need to play well to prove I'm a good golfer. Yeah to embarrass myself and the next macros I need to be a good golfer because I need other people to approve of me or accept me or just feel significant or feel powerful. I need to be a good golfer for I need to play well to go make it so college coaches is that still mezzo that's a real thing right like playing it from coaches but then it's like well I have to do it today well why today. I have to get a college scholarship or I have to keep my card or I have to all those now some of those are real. Yeah for sure I mean there's many of the competitive experiences we have are indeed a shit for example if you want to make a cut what level would you put those at those. Usually something mezzo but sometimes their reality right so for example I want to again here's a thought I want to play in college. But to do that I need college coaches to think I'm a pretty good player or else I can't that's a real challenge but then that event and experience that is a shaped in and of itself. How do I then meet that with more a shape than I must play perfectly. Or you know I can't ever hit this type of shot in front of these coaches or no coach will ever think I'm good enough so there are situations in our life in fact most competitive experiences in our life have some variation of an issue. There's a definitive margin for error that includes and excludes certain things in people and there are actual consequences with a certain amount of time a certain breath to our life breath excuse me and there's some type of personal investment in them right. But then how do I meet that experience with more of an a shape or a sharper a shape or do I meet that with V shaped approach meaning this is exactly what I want. These are the actual consequences and the really cool thing about us as humans is if we can actually strip this down to this is the experience what's actually at stake without me adding any consequences that don't exist other than the actual consequences and what is the actual margin for error that I have to operate within that offers us chase what you were talking about before which is is that a situation that I'm willing to accept. It's real though not the imagined one and the real one we are often very resilient with meaning yeah I can step into those I know that there's a margin like players tell me before q school all the time. The cut off is the top five you get a pj to require everyone else doesn't that's a pretty narrow margin for error and the consequences for that are big time for me next year there's a cup there's a significant amount of time attached to that there is a ripple effect for that my life in my livelihood. And I've invested a ton in trying to play pro golf. But if I meet that with and you better be perfect to do that and you better not screw this up you better not be judged by other people because if you do this whole thing was a waste you should have never been doing this in the first place. All that is going to take that actual very stressful experience and turn that into now and anxious experience and depending on how far down you go in that chase whether it's the day of you better not screw this up or you better not screw up this opportunity because you're supposed to be a pro golfer and that's how good you are. And then of course our insecurities are always attached somewhere in there that the more we attach those to it then the thing about our insecurities is that it's the widest net for any experience in our life to get caught in. So it's playing golf it's being you know rejected by somebody it's the job interview it's someone looked at me in a certain way the clothes on all of that falls under our insecurities because again they are so broad as a protective mechanism for us wanting to be seen or perceived in a certain way. And so everything we do can technically fall under that. So my high school kids I have to get a college golf scholarship always ask well why you know what what makes you say that well is it because from a financial standpoint is it because in a lot of times deep down it's for parents approval like it really it really seems like it always and I'm like do you love it are you your life be okay and some of them will laugh some of my girls especially be like I'd probably have more fun if I didn't like college golf it's like okay really you know and so always dive into that right so we're really talking about what is it that we actually need versus what is it that we just really really want and now chase you're also asking very good psychological question why is it that I really want this and do I even really want this right versus people have told me that I should want this or have to have this. In the same way well you have to believe in Santa Claus have to yeah who told you this are you sure that's like so again this is us challenging our thoughts by exploring them first which then opens up space for there to be evidence for us to look for at something in a way where now it allows us to think about something differently in a credible way because we're now paying attention to the wider more comprehensive set of evidence rather than the very biasly confirmed set of evidence that again my parents said I have to have a college scholarship if I treat that as a fact then that confirmation bias rolls for a couple of years that's going to seem very very true to me. All right so same level different layers for these. Yeah, I mean, V-Shaped is bad. I would love to hit this shot as close as I can. Let's go see what happens. Turn it around or more of a mezzal level. This is a really important way. This is a major championship. I would love to play well. It would really suck if I did it, but that's a risk that's worth me trying to take. And then macro level is I would prefer that people see me in a certain way or that I even feel about myself a certain way all the time. Not required. The thing about our insecurities is the way that we move past them is to actually experience the opposite of what it is that we think we need to fulfill them. So if that's I need people to accept me, it's a willingness to have other people not accept you, which means judging you in a way that you don't want. You know, and there's certainly some psychological work to deal with, which is like why is it that I'm valuing other people's opinions so much to begin with? Or why is it that I need to feel more significant than somebody, especially via something else? And how is that actually impacting how I feel about myself? Because the thing about us, if you mean this is a little bit of a sidetrack, but the more we chase our insecurities, typically the worse we feel about ourselves. However, the more we kind of allow ourselves to experience our insecurities, the better we feel about ourselves. But we have to sit through that discomfort for a little bit like the initial someone's judging me in a way I don't want feels kind of crappy to us. Or I wanted people to approve of me and and they're not. And then letting go of the need for that over time, that starts to feel better, but it's kind of like a blister becoming a callus. It takes a little bit of time and persistence with that to just let it hurt for a little bit and then it toughens up. But typically, what we do with our insecurities and our traumas is we just guard against them and it's kind of like a blister and then it kind of heals over and then it blisters again and then it's over and over or a wound that kind of opens and closes and doesn't ever really heal because we never really give it the time to do so or do the work to do it necessarily. But if you have trauma that is unresolved or insecurities that you are continuing to feed, you will get mezzo and micro level A shaped thoughts pretty frequent. Right. Again, the importance of really good psychological work and the reason why mental skills like a pre-shot routine or a breathing routine or something can only do so much for us when you have something something behind the scenes or if my threat level for the potential future is too high, me telling you to just be present is like trying to open a door by pushing on the hinges. Yeah, good luck. I love the big V shaped thoughts, so I would love to hit this as close as I can. What's my goal here? I'd love to hit the shot. Yeah. What's my goal for this term? I would love to play well this week. I'm going to, you know, it wouldn't be great. I'm not going to resign myself to playing terribly. But if it doesn't go well, it's okay, but let's go fire at it and bring a lot of freedom to it. Let's see what happens and then macro like I would love for people to see me as a great golfer. But if they don't, it's not not going to define me or affect my life. The benefit, the major benefit, well, major one of the major benefits of V shaped thinking when it's credible to us is that the worst case scenario for us to accept is the actual reality or the truth. Which sometimes doesn't feel very good. Like, I love to win this major, but if I'm in contention and I don't end up winning, I'm going to be pretty heartbroken about that for a little bit. That's the worst case scenario that is real. And then everyone will judge me, I should have never been in there in the first place. I'm never going to win a major championship again. How embarrassing was it for me? I'm never going to doubt all that. That is a way worse worst case scenario and 90% of it is imaginary. Right. So all that being said, how we're thinking about things creates the margins for us to be able to operate within and have permission to operate within. And the consequences that we add onto that are either going to be aligned with reality or they're going to be more imagined, particularly in some more threatening ways, which make it harder to accept. If I tell you the future's imaginary or real is going to include a bunch of these things, like even just the A shape thought, if this doesn't go well this time, it's it's it'll never go well. This is just here we go again all over again. That is a very long term conclusion about a short term event. Right. And that feels a certain way and that worst case scenario is way worse than actually this would just been one more failed. And I still don't know how the next one's going to go. Again, the real world can kind of suck and hurt sometimes. The imagined world is very protective for us. It a way that keeps us in the same cycles. And then what we might say is kind of entrenched is the stuff that continues to make it harder for us to deal with stress. Interesting. Yeah, this this stuff's really good. Like and I keep going back to like the brain's going to, you know, you always say keep it at face value, keep it relevant. And like the brain just kind of tends to just want to exaggerate everything. So the fake the like as you said, the imaginary world, it feels safer, but it but it actually makes all the problems way worse. It's typically exacerbates them. It's going to make us feel safer sometimes, but it's usually not. If I was going to boil this down and kind of our A-shaped or V-shaped thinking is applied to two different extra one external one internal response for us. So the main thing is like it is applied to stress. So the actual challenges that we have in our life externally. If I think about that A-shaped or V-shaped, I'm going to get a different stress response. One would be a productive stress response. Once probably going to be anxiety frustration oriented. And then we also think in A-shaped or V-shaped about our stress response. So for those playing the home game in their psychology textbooks, this is I either have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset, A-R-V. And then how do I actually respond when my internal experience tells me I'm going through stress? Do I go, uh-oh, this is an experience I shouldn't be having and can't be having and because I am I'm in trouble, A-shaped thinking, or I'm really nervous. I might even be feeling a little bit anxious, but this is actually not necessarily what I feel to prefer, but this could be really helpful for me to handle the stress and help me learn in the long term. Now we've got two different real life experiences through two different prisms and we would see how people can respond to both stress and their stress response in one a very helpful way and in other ways that can oftentimes be a lot of breaks applied instead of the gas. Good stuff. Little a little bit deep, but good stuff. There's some really good information there. Yeah. Okay. Final thoughts, anything in my out of this? Do we cover it all? Do we cover it all? No, no. So it's all I have in my notes from today. Let me see. Yeah, I mean, I just keep going back to like, I need to start off my round with a birdie or I'm not going to play well today or I have to do this and I have to do this and I have to do that like giving our giving our players the freedom to explore and the freedom to you may fail and I I wrestle with that whole thing like was I am I good enough and it's okay to to chase it for as long as you can and sometimes the answer is you may just not be good enough, but at least if you play freely enough to give it a chance and you you give yourself a you know a chance to try in a chance to play to your potential like that that's a much better outcome than you feel like you never did it. Yeah. What we can acknowledge about A shape thinking and approaches to things is it makes us feel like one we're in some control maybe we are maybe we aren't. Yeah. Two, it makes us feel like we're giving ourselves a better chance at something maybe we are and maybe we aren't. And it also makes us feel like well I did everything I possibly could to try to make that what I wanted it to be and then again maybe it did and maybe it did. So it's not necessarily what it they are intending to do for us it's what is the actual cause and effect that we're looking for and the actual cause and effect of A shape thinking is again mostly avoidance based mechanisms and the byproduct and natural consequences of V shape thinking aren't that we're necessarily comfortable in control or certain but we typically deploy more pursuit based approaches both in the short term and the long term and that typically feels better for us once we sit with it long enough to let go of all the avoidance based stuff. And a lot of my players and I did this to talk about man you know having really bad say it's a warm-up session or I just remember a lot of times too I'm in college in high school and I was really sick I tended to play really really well and it was like I have nothing to lose today I shouldn't play well and you go out there and you play so freely. Again if we're looking at that from behind your psychology your margin for error you gave yourself now just became wide open. Super wide yeah right and the consequences you weren't adding anything to well because you would always have well I felt terrible so if I played terrible there's a reason for that so you wouldn't make a long term a widespread or any personal conclusion from that which is not uncommon play like athletes in a variety of his work why do I always play great when I feel terrible because you don't think about your experience in the same way that's why also you don't have enough energy to think about them in an A shape because they require so much time and energy and effort and you don't have enough bandwidth for that so there's both of those going on but either way your psychological domino at the beginning of the domino effect was in a different And then. everything else after that fell according to that shape. - It's really good, go get, everybody go get sick, have zero expectations and play your best golf. - Let's go do that. - All right, we just created a new product. - Which, by the way, Chase, many people, I run it, many people chase exactly what you're talking about, but they're doing it from external means, right? That is drugs, alcohol, you know, it's amazing to me the amount of law students and medical students I work with who will go out and go crazy, the night before a huge exit, like why? It builds in an excuse 'cause what they're looking for is one, if this doesn't go well, it's not my fault. But also, it does shape your psychology differently because the circumstances do not allow you to think about it otherwise because I can't expect perfection of myself. If I wrecked my chance at perfection the day before, right? - Again, we're all chasing the same thing here, but the means by which you're going about it are just not sustainable. Or if they are something you're willing to do over time, you can't perform well with be a happy, healthy human being. And of course, you set yourself up for a whole number of liabilities and negligence and all that stuff. - Self-permission to pursue freely without a mickey. - Stable confidence, self-given permission to perform freely without anything else telling me that I need to do that, which I'm not pretending is easy, is pretty tough to do, especially in our modern world, but that's the spot. - That's why we're here. That's why we're here, thanks for everything you do for this podcast and trying to educate us all. I appreciate it. - Oh, geez. - Now you're pushing out my mic. - How am I supposed to get over my insecurities if you just keep feeding my mic in this game? - That's keeping nice, I keep being nice. I'm just trying to make sure everybody can take good notes so everybody can keep up, like I'm trying to keep up. - That's right, it's tough. - Okay, sure. Tell us where they can find us, Jason. - G-B-T-S podcast, Instagram at chasegroupregolf, Instagram at BTSmineset.com. We'll probably have a Q&A coming up soon, have a couple guests in the pipe that we'll get to and we get to, it's getting into busy season. So we'll do our best, we'll do our best. We'll try to maybe, maybe, pound out a couple of episodes in a couple of days and get some extra ones in the pipe. So we can keep you guys, keep you guys going. So, that'll be awesome. - Good. - Good to see you. - Thanks so much. - Be well everyone, we will talk soon. Thanks for joining us. (upbeat music)