Why the Golf Course Feels Like a Threat, and How to Change That w/ Karl Morris

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Avro can't fix your swing, but it supports the headspace needed to play your best. So if you want calm performance, visit AvroGolf.com and use promo code sweetspot20 for 20% off your order. Once again, that's AVROGolf.com and use promo code sweetspot20 for 20% off your order. Welcome back to another episode of the sweet spot. This is John Sherman from the four foundations of golf. And as always, I'm joined by Adam from Adam Young Golf. So I think it's a annual ritual now that one of our favorite coaches Carl Morris joins us on the sweet spot. I believe it's been just over a year, Carl. I forget how many times you've been on because it's been so many. Welcome back to the sweet spot. Thanks for having me, John. It feels like a reunion, as you say. And then we get together. I'm sure you guys will be coming back on my podcast as well. So it's nice to catch up. Yes, it's always fun. Recently, you came out with a book called The Mindcatti. And I've been poking through it. I like it because it's quick hitting chapters. There's a lot of different topics in a relatively small size book compared to the massive ridiculous things that Adam and myself have produced. So it's probably half the size of that, but it's packed in with a lot of quick hitting fun chapters. I believe you released it back in May. Tell us a little bit about, I know you've written many books. You co-authored the Lost Starter Golf series. We've talked about those in prior episodes, but tell us a little bit about the book and what inspired you to write it. It was kind of like the book for people who don't read books, John, really, in the sense that I had noticed myself. I mean, sort of read a lot over the years that I can't think of too many books recently that I've managed to go cover to cover where I've stayed the whole course and read the whole book. So maybe that's something to do with my attention span as I'm nearing a big birthday. But yeah, I mean, joking aside, the idea was that, you know, it's a bunch of lessons or experiences that I've had over the last 30 years are so working with players. And as you say, just bite-sized chunks that you can start at the beginning if you like and read all the way through. Well, you can just dive in at chapter 32 or whatever you, whatever takes your fancy, really. And hopefully in a couple of pages, there's something to think about and then take away. But we really sort of try to make it practical and applicable rather than it be in a sort of philosophical underpinning of what I believe in terms of the mental game. That's what I've always liked about your coaching style is that I've always believed the essence of coaching is, you know, a lot of people are trying to say similar things and I think really good coaches are really good communicators and they find interesting ways to frame a topic that then inspires the reader or the people to then change their behavior. And I think that's kind of one of your superpowers. I've definitely gotten concepts from you that have changed my mind on certain things and how I think about it. And we'll kind of go through some of those that struck me a few chapters in the book and Adams probably got some of themself. But while we start with you, what's one of your favorite chapters in the book if you can pick one? Put you on the hot sea for a second. Oh God, that's a good cat. Is that a longer go than I wrote it? I can't really probably can't remember. I think one of the stories that comes back to me, I maybe we talked about it before was an experience that I had years ago with Graham McDowell. We were over practicing late known and we're on the range that, I mean, I'm sure you guys have been there. It's a great facility and a lot of, a lot of tall plays have practiced there over the years. But I was with Graham. It must be 15 years ago, 16 years ago, something like that. And he nudged me and said, look who that is over there. And I looked up and I had no idea who this guy was. He said, that guy over there is the Alex Ferguson of American college football. And he told me his name was Lou Holtz. And I was still not the wiser. I've been knowing nothing about American football since I realized who I was in the present literally of greatness. And he came over and Graham introduced us. He said to me, he said, Coach, if there's anything that you want us to remember from your coach, what's the main thing that you would want somebody to take away? And he looked at us both and he said, win with that. Well, yeah, but obviously, yeah, go and win your games. And then he smiled. He said, he said, no, he said, I don't mean win the games. He said, and he drew the letters and he said, W-I-N, and he said, win stands for what's important. Now, that was a good example of just something short and sharp that, you know, had a big impact on me because I firmly believe that, and Adam's written about this, that attention is literally the key to accessing your skills, where you place your attention and what you place your attention on. And I think to just have a little thing like some of the players who put W-I-N on the glove or written it in the yardage book or whatever, when you catch yourself drifting off into stories as we all do, you know, what's important, now is it important to keep mourning about that three put on the 12th or is it important to actually just get really clear on what your intention is on this shot on the 15th. And I'm sure you guys have seen this that I think we're living this world, we pray at the altar of complexity these days. And it's almost like complexity, sexy and sells videos and gets looks and all the rest of it. But when it really comes to applying all this stuff, you know, I've been fortunate to work with some pretty reasonable players. And it's, are you smart enough as a coach to keep it simple? You know, and I think when you can do that and there was a perfect example of a legendary football coach, you'd obviously try to spend his career with that acronym, W-I-N, and it was a perfect example of something that just I'll never forget that conversation. And that's the idea in the book. I'm not saying everything is going to be as profound as that in the book, but it's the idea of simple things like that that you can apply straight away to your game. Yeah, I think there's like this misperception that at the top of every sport, whether it's coaches or players, there's some magical secret they have that they're gatekeeping that no one else has. And I was watching someone sent me a video of Mike Evans who is a Hall of Fame, he will be a Hall of Fame American football receiver. And his response with someone asked him, and I think it was a podcast, the clip they sent me, he's just like, what does elite, you know, everything. He's like, oh, I'm just able to plow through the boredom. Like the monotonous task daily more better than anyone else. He's like, that's my superpowers. Like I can just do small details and tolerate boredom better than anyone. And I'm sure people watching that were like, really, that's it. That's all you got for me. I think it's kind of like a letdown when sometimes you speak to these people who are revered. And I'm sure there's a lot more to it. Like there's all little pieces of their puzzle and their coaching puzzle, but it's nothing ever that complicated, right? You'll like this one, but hopefully you will. That was, I was looking at the open at Bertdale, just gone. I'm going to choose the afternoon one of the players I was with. We were waiting on the first team. We wasn't quite sure he was going to be in the four ball. And three of us there. And then this guy walks through to the tee. I thought, oh, this looks a bit familiar. And it was Scotty Sheffler. So I managed to walk nine holes, walking with Sheffler. And then number one, what a really nice guy. I mean, if, you know, if you will, number one by as far away as he is, you kind of have a bit of an excuse to be full of yourself, but it was anything but that and very, very gracious and shattered with everybody. But I find out that he's coached said, Randy Smith had said that pretty much for the last couple of years, and you guys are looking to like this with the big three, that all they really work on, or the thing that they work on the most because he wants to just hit that little cut all the time. It's just the feeling that the heel's going to get to the ball slightly before the toe. And it's kind of like, is that what the best player in the world it works on? Just getting the heel of the club to where I've slightly before the toe. And yes, he does. And he's masterful at it and wonderful at it. But again, as you said, John, there's a lot of things going underneath that. And there's a lot of pieces with that as well. But it's this essence of understanding the big three of impact, the big three of the mental game, whatever it is, keeping it compact enough so you can practically apply it. Yeah. And I think the great temptation of golf is obviously complexity, and not to say that you can't get complex at times. I'm thinking about some Players that I'm around a lot who are kind of on an upward trajectory in their game, and I've seen things like Which grips should I use today literally should I go stronger neutral or weak which swing thought? I just like this library of things to go with is like well, that's not working or you know guys switching irons all the time I'm gonna go with my tricks on as the x7s or the there's this shaft because that's not working Or I'm gonna change putter so there's always like this revolving door of intentions and thoughts and equipment and swing thoughts and Again another conversation I recently was one of my close friends who is a great player and putting is just killing him And we kind of deconstructed his putting routine and what he thinks about he's thinking about the apex of the putt and this It's like four or five different things. I'm like this is way too much information to wonder why you're anxious and confused on the Great John stop giving out personal conversations or it wasn't even yeah And a lot of people bash aim point. I'm like try and point for a second He's like been using and he's like oh man. This is simple for me I just do that name over there and hit it. I'm like, yeah, you can do that It was like a nice flush out for him because he is a great putter He just needs to get out of his own way so yeah I've always felt that like as golfers were searching for complex But we need to work towards simplicity as the end result on the course and that is such a hard roadmap to navigate Yeah, I think there was a book written number of years ago John nothing to do with golf But it's very relevant. It was called the tyranny of choice the paradox of choice Is it the paradox of choice? Yeah, I think it was Jonathan heat. That's a great book. I've read paradox of choice Let me see if there's another one the idea that you know in the modern world that we go into Starbucks or wherever now and years ago that you were just about T.R. Coffee now there's 53 options with coffee and and all the different things and And it's just it's just kind of like I think they did very studies were by People were offered lots of choice around a certain thing like jams or whatever it was and they just couldn't make a decision because there was So much option there, but when you narrow it down to two or three choices the brain can get its head around that not that not that that And again, we're like blowing smoke up both of you I think that's just how valuable things like the big three are that it just I've talked about this with plays What a relief if you play golf and There's potentially just three things that can cause the ball to do what you don't like even just to yeah Yeah, you know, you come into the scene of the crime then rather than this myriad of information You just mention it there John with putting you know, I can think with a couple of top-level players You just got so tied in knots with puttons to similar to your point. I've just said to them So let's have a look at this put with medium range put And I'll say to them well, which side of the hole is the ball definitely not going to go in on And they look at it and go it's definitely not going to go in on the left So I said well, what's the option then if it's not going to go in on the left? Which side is it going to go in on and so I'll obviously to the right and so maybe put a t-wear you think the ball will go in the hole And another's arguments about aiming at apex and break on all the rest of it, but you know when they get really clear I'm what the entry point is to the whole for some people that can really really free them up because You then get into the mental game big three that you just get a really clear intention Of what you're trying to do with the golf ball which helps you then focus your attention appropriately to allow your body to To get the job to work and I keep seeing it more and more that we just we just don't give our body enough credit The intellect holds sway so much These days because of the available information we demogue to our body to this thing that always needs to be told what to do yet We're a product of billions of years of evolution where we've moved objects to targets pretty efficiently to survive And we you know, we forget that and you see you know people are I see all the time people are so tied up They've just lost faith in the body to do what it can do because the intellect is holding sway so much over what they're trying to do with the golf club I was listening to a podcast recently on internal versus external focuses It was coming from coaches. They're a very internally driven. They kind of promote that a lot And you know they make good points that sometimes there's an appropriate time to be internal thinking about what your body motion is but a thing that may that came to my mind was that We only really do that because we get trained to do that Like I think if you drop someone on a desert island with a golf club and a stick and tell them to hit the ball They're not going to develop all of these internal rules generally Because they won't know about them. They won't know. Oh, let's think about my what my right arm is doing because they have no reference for what it should do They kind of forced to figure things out instinctively and one of the coaches on the park kind of mentioned that it's impossible to play golf without internal Focuses and I've heard a few other coaches say you can't play without internal focuses And I'm like well if you throw your keys to your wife Are you thinking about what your wrist is doing? No, it's only because you as a coach have trained yourself with all these internal cues That's wiring your brain. I'm an example of someone who did very early on why am I brain like that? I was internal as hell And now I can tap into the external I can tap into not thinking about those internal things in other words I'm just thinking brush the grass or just thinking target. So it can be achieved It's not easy. It isn't easy, but I think we can go back to that instinctive nature if we just first Decision is we got to decide to go there, right? You've got to decide to say hey, this is an option for us My thought on that Adam is that it's it's probably a really good job that our parents when we were learning to try and eat food Didn't use an internal focus of reference with a knife and fork because I think we'd probably a struggle for the rest of our life The money's to cut a steak and put food in our mouth with a knife and fork We just we got good at using the implements and humans are very very good at using tools whether it's a pen a scalpel or You know brush whatever it is. It's probably a gift that we didn't have language when we were learning all these things Like we weren't able to convey these things to ourselves in terms of language We couldn't say bend our arm because we didn't know what bend meant when we were a kid now as an adult Maybe that is a big difference is now as an adult we have language and so we is which is to one of your chapters about why pictures work better than words And maybe you can go off on to that part. Yeah, and I also think it reinforces the fact that we mistake That the swing is not the skill You can have a really really good. I've seen it. You can have a really really much improved looking golf swing But no improvement in your skills You know ultimately what are we trying to do? We're trying to improve our skill at applying the club to produce a certain shot But we get tied up in aesthetics of how things look because we're very visual society and we had done that route One of the things that I wouldn't say bugs me because I do it as well right because I know that this is what the audience demands but Some of the most liked posts on social media are when a coach posted before and after of a swing And it's all about Look at what we did with the movement look how much better his right arm is look at the better sequencing I'm thinking it would yet it's good and there's relevance there for sure. I'm not dismissing it in fact today I posted a before and after of the swing But we know that that doesn't guarantee better results for a player What I usually do when I post a before and after I usually post the Impact factors as well. Okay. How did the strike change or how did that direction change? How did the face face change because that's the goal of the movement? How did the outcome change? Yeah, as you said you can create a better looking motion or what was your line? I love it the swing is not the task or the swing is not the goal. What do you say? Not the swing is not the skill the skill Yeah Swing is not the skill. I'm John Dunning going to come on my podcast and he came with that I thought what a great line that is that we confuse the swing with the skill We go so far down that route now to what you're pointing about one of the chapters with pictures is that Again, it's amazing when you can get somebody to have a A clear image for instance like with the shot game to your point Adam about brushing the grass You know, it's surprising with images like I'll say to a player with a wedge, you know, you've got imagine that you just the soul of the club is like an aeroplane And you've got three potential landings with the aeroplane you've either got a crash landing where you're going to lose Use the leading edge you're going to abort the landing where the pilot pulls up or you've got a smooth landing Now everybody can reference that everybody's got an emotion attached to that. Oh, yeah I know what a smooth land is like and I know what a bumpy land is like and all of a sudden then You're into okay. Well, what landing was that? Oh, that was definitely a crash Now we can then go into oh, yeah, I'm using the leading edge. It's too steep. It's this that and the other but ultimately It's all just fluff really because are you able to land the golf club on the ground appropriately that is a skill Now we can debate endlessly how you're going to go about doing that and some do Oh, you can just get right to the heart of it and say can we develop the skill of landing the club appropriately on the ground And if you can land the club appropriately on the ground you're going to improve your shot game again It's these I think the point you made out of here is that it's been brave enough to actually maybe peer over the other side of the fence and say, actually, there's something interesting over there. I've maybe got to put a few of my beliefs on one side. I've maybe got to reduce my perceived importance as a coach that I've got all the secrets to pass on to somebody and actually then explore what could be a different way. Yeah, I love the plane analogy. That's actually how I teach kids. I'll give you a few other little things for that. You might already do these, but yeah, thinking of the soul, the club, crash landing, wheels touching down. You can change archite landing position with that. With kids, I also talk about different runways. So I spray three lines, one down the ball, one closer to their feet and one farther away. And I say that, look, if you land the plane on this runway, it's going to produce more a toe shot. If you land it on this runway, it's going to produce more of a heel. You can change the runway direction to change path. You can, more advanced, I've got some images for this that I created on Photoshop, but you can talk about the plane landing nose down to reduce loft or back down. So you're thinking of it crash landing with a backup to change attack angle, change loft, change bounce. There's so much that you can do with that. I say I teach kids like that, but then I often teach adults like that. And I say to them, like, this is how I teach a child, if I want to be really simple, but really, the reason why I'm doing it with an adult is because that's what they need in the moment. They're over complicating it. And I know that this simple image can achieve a ton of stuff. Like if I say to someone, I want you to land this plane on this runway with the back of the plane. And in this direction, the runway is going in this direction. I can change path, plane sequencing of their body, face angle, bounce loft, attack angle. I teach it all of those with that one simple image. And a couple of things on that as well, Adam. The first thing is that I've seen it time and time again. You perhaps get somebody who is having trouble with the with the chipping and maybe they've got the club too far back, maybe the hand, the shafts leaning forward too much. And they're perhaps trying to add lofts, lofts subconsciously through it. So they get in a kind of UP action. Just when you explain the concept of landing, the plane, and you say to them, "How would you set up if you wanted to land the plane?" You'll see them organising to a different set up position. You've not even had to mention it. I think the other more important thing is I'll say to plays with Shark Emmel. So go away from this session and never ever again, say to yourself that that was a bad ship or a bad shot. Just give yourself which landing did you have? Was it a crash landing? Was it an aborted landing? Was it a smooth landing? And there's something powerful in that because that's a kind of objective reality, rather than a subjective interpretation of am useless at chipping. And every time I say that was a dreadful shot, I'm reinforcing that story inside of my head. So again, these simple images can spill off or spin off into some really important psychological elements where you're starting to build more resilience with players because they're explaining the poor outcomes in a different way to themselves, which then changes the story of what they're carrying around with them in terms of their ability. We are going to take a quick break and we will be right back. Fall is probably my favourite time of year to play golf. The mornings are cooler, the courses are in great shape, and there are still plenty of afternoons where I can wear shorts. But I also want clothes that I can wear when I leave the course, which is one reason I've been enjoying chubby so much. Their original stretch shorts are comfortable enough for an entire round, but they don't look like something you can only wear on the golf course. 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It's just much more of a play idea, and they're not as bothered by the bad shots, and they really start to understand it quickly. They can link up. plane landed in the water. That's what the outcome is, so I love using that. Carl, we were talking about attention earlier, and I think one of the biggest problems for on-course skills that needs to be solved for players, you know, who want to get better at this game is auditing where their attention is going and what's kind of like grabbing at them. And you had a concept or a chapter in the book that was called How to Stop Golf's Hidden Persuaders. And you talked about kind of the influence of the types of playing partners you have. If these are people who kind of say things to you that maybe are negative or they have very high expectations of you and they're pointing out some of your faults, or even playing with better players and how that can be helpful at times. And even in round distractions, like slow play and stuff like that that you have no control over. Let's talk about that for a second, because that's one of the most common complaints I get at, like literally every level of the game, whether it's like tour or high-level competitive play or just Saturday morning round at a public course and people are waiting around. What are the hidden persuaders to you? I think the first thing, John, is to sort of before you play golf is to realize that you're going to go out there for five hours. Yeah. Your attention is going to be pulled in all kinds of directions by things as you say that you've got no control over whether that's people behaving like an idiot, saying stupid things, slow play, a whole bunch of things that it's going to happen. And the big thing for me then is to sort of say to yourself before you play, I have this simple model with attention that your attention is either on something that's useful or useless. And even again, having that simple model of you have the choice when you go out there to may notice where your attention is and then have the choice of whether you bring it back to something more useful. It was great. It was last year we're doing a golf school at West Arts and beautiful golf course just outside of North London. And it was the third day of the golf school and we were out on the course and there was three three balls on the course. And admittedly we were a little bit slower because we were doing some coaching, things like that. It's a beautiful afternoon. The course was relatively quiet. I'm in the third three ball at the back and I'm watching this guy coming up behind us and I can see this guy. I can see that the colour of his face is starting to change. He's going from sort of light pink to have a deepening versions of red. And I can see how frustrated he is. I can see him on the tee and he's got his hands on his hips and all the rest of it. He eventually came up to me and he literally came up to me and he was right in front of me. He was almost nose to nose. He couldn't hold it any longer. I don't think he appreciated my response because he almost couldn't get the words out. He was so agitated. He's going, "Slow play! Slow play!" He said, "It ruins my golf!" And I looked it and I said, "It doesn't have to." And I don't think he really appreciated that notion that he had a choice in the matter. And I thought afterwards it's a perfect example that it was a lovely afternoon. Yes, we were being slow. It was a golf school. The course was empty. He could have done some work on his bunker play. He could have it a few more thoughts. He could have gone to another hole. He had options of where to put his attention. But he decided to put his attention on how slow we were and make himself extremely miserable. And I've said it many, many times to play as I said, "When you go and play golf, if you want to find something that will make you miserable, you will succeed every single time that you play because the game will throw all kinds of stuff at you as we see. said, bad breaks, bad outcomes, stupid people, slow play, but it comes back to this, you know, maybe the bigger picture of all of this is, you know, I think every day with our life and it's a sort of big sort of philosophical claim this, every day that we operate in life, we will feel how we feel by and large as a result of what we put our attention on, or what we choose to put our attention on. And being miserable becomes a real habit if we're not careful and being angry becomes a real habit. And the years ago somebody's saying what makes angry people angry is because they get angry, they just get good at being angry. It's a low-hanging fruit, I think, for a lot of players because, you know, we spend so much time on the 5% of golf when we're playing golf, but how much influence does the 95% have when we're not actually playing golf, we're walking in between shots. And left to its own devices, you know, what does the mind do? It thinks some generally what are those thoughts concerned with, while regretting the past, anticipating the future, all those kind of things that the brain does. But what about if Fred said to me, Fred Schumick, 30 years ago, he said, what about if the most important element of golf was the time when you're not playing? I've never ever thought about that, I've never ever thought about what we do in between shots, but certainly at the higher levels of the game, it's often the defining factor of whether you access your skills or not. What you do in that 95%. I've become more and more concerned and interested in the in-between time because I think there's enough good information on what to do around the ball. Yeah. Yeah, from resources like ourselves, you like, there's a lot of good info now on how to pick targets, how to have a good routine, how to like kind of analyze your shot and move on. But I think the bigger burden and difficulty of golf is that, yeah, we have all this time where we're like kind of idle and we're just walking in or in the car or whatever it is. And it's very easy to let your attention be hijacked by someone else or something you're noticing. Another example recently, because I'm in kind of prime tournament season, I'm hearing all these things, tournament we just finished, a couple of guys were slow and the officials really didn't stop them. They didn't do much about it. And one guy in the group was very vocal about it and the other guy in the group kind of took his lead and saying like, oh, these guys are so slow and then like it became like a thing. That's all I could talk about the whole round. And that was the narrative of the day. Oh man, we've got to deal with these guys in front of us and the officials are doing not much. And that was literally the storyline about the round after it's all I could talk about. And naturally, one of them really got distracted by that and didn't play well because I was just like looming over him. And as you said, it's like, my reaction was the same. Yeah, I don't like that either. That bothers me. But you do have a choice, right? You have a choice to let that take you over, let it become an excuse, whatever it is, or you can kind of ignore it and find creative ways to place your attention elsewhere or maybe change the conversation with the playing partner. It's not a foregone conclusion that because these things happen, it has to affect you. So I don't think enough golfers understand this, think about it, or work on it. But that to me, as you said, a low-hanging fruit is, how do we spend the time in between shots productively and don't let someone else or something hijack our attention to a bad place? Very difficult. It would be foolish to say anything other than slow play is a blight on the game, but you know, you make that decision when you go out to play. You're not going to fix it that day. You know, it's a bigger discussion in the wider regions of golf. What's going to fix slow play? Maybe the way Ryan Fox plays the game might have some influence, but it filters down hopefully. From what I'm told, it's the golf courses who decide to make the two times eight minutes apart, instead of 12 minutes apart. If you don't fix something like that, you can have all the fast players you want. It won't make a difference. Yeah. But to what you're saying, and again, a bit like Adam's just talked about, there I think you can make a game of this in the 90%, 95% and really become curious about it. There's a line I've quoted so often, again, I had a deep resonance for me was a guy called Fritz Pearls. He was a Gestalt therapist, and one of his famous lines was that we need to stop thinking and come to our senses. And what he's basically, I didn't really understand it at the time, but in a when we're in our head, thinking about life, rather than experiencing life, by definition, when we go into the thinking mind, we are generally projecting into the future or regretting the past. And we tune into our senses. We can only be in our senses right here and now you can only feel your feet on the floor now. You can only be aware of the sounds around you right now, but you can make a game of that. Obviously, of the five senses smell and taste and not that relevant for golf, but I've found with a lot of players, there's one of the three senses that will really, really hook your attention as you're playing in between shots. So make a game of it where you go out and you play six six and six, where you six holes, where you tune into what you can see on the golf course that you've perhaps not seen before, six holes that you're tuning to what you can hear, and then six holes to something that you can feel like the feeling of your feet or your breath or whatever. I've seen it over and over again with, I can think of one guy in a very, very good German player. He had real issues with dealing with poor shots because he had poor shot and he'd stay with it, his attention was dragged into the past, tried all kinds of other techniques and other folk or the suggestions, but we made a game of it and we did the six six and six with the three senses and he came back and he said, "Sai did nothing for him, he was as distracted as ever." Feeling the ground didn't do anything, but for some reason, for him, tuning into the sounds of the golf course, he said, "God, he said I did that for a few holes, he said I felt like I was on drugs." He said, "I was just so at peace with the environment and so at peace with the golf course." Does it stop bad shots? No, things like this, but does it help our ability to deal with those bad shots? Are you going to play better by tuning into your senses in between shots? Maybe. Are you going to play worse? Definitely not, but it's just something really interesting to improve your experience and how many times have we contaminated this shot that we've got right now? We've been stuck in the past of something that's happened or anticipating what may happen in three or four holes time, but I think a bit like Adams just said about the landing the plane, the more we can make this stuff a game or the more we can gamify it and explore it rather than saying, "Right, you've got to think about this after a bad shot." I think the more it becomes an enjoyable experience, but certainly that 95% of the time. For me, the big one for me is tuning into the feeling of my feet as I'm walking along, even if I'm not on a golf course, I'll do this regularly. You go out there and you have an intention to focus on the feeling of your feet and it's amazing when you do it at first. You just notice how many places your mind is bouncing around and I've got to do this and I should have done that and all the busyness of life, but slowly but surely when you do the walking meditation that's been around for centuries, you do start to feel differently and you start to perceive the world differently. And I think probably more importantly with all this, I think when you're playing really well at golf, certainly for better players, you're really listening to what the golf course is asking of you. Every single shot that you play at golf, the golf course is asking you to respond in a certain way. And if you're in your head with all these thoughts, you don't respond to what's being asked of you. You don't notice the lie or whatever. For me, eyes and feel are a big one, especially under pressure. Like I just don't think there is a better solution than what you said there is that I've dealt with anxiety in my normal life and on the golf course and it continues to be a struggle with me. And when I can focus on my senses, it is a not a cure, but it is a incredible kind of game to play with yourself to move your attention elsewhere, which is another bridge to another topic I liked in the book. You're very good at coming up with these like kind of internal challenges that are not about score. And another one was dealing with like the different format of stroke play and match plays. Like a lot of golfers listening to this play both formats, whether it's for fun with their friends or in a more competitive environment. And one way I've always looked at is like, I don't really play situational golf. I'm just out there to making a good decision on each shot. I'm trying to do the same thing over and over again. That resonates well with me. But you had kind of a different way of explaining this. So like if you're playing match play with an opponent, you said like, well, what if you redirect your attention to the course and then you kind of had a different solution for stroke play. So can you talk about that a little bit? The first thing to recognize with this is when we go and play golf, the objective reality when we go and play golf is we're wondering around a big field with a set of implements hitting pieces of rubber. That's the objective reality. But the rest of it, we make it all up. You know, power is made up. It's a very powerful construct. Oh yeah. And it's a construct that we've all bought into. But my thought, the more I've looked at this over the east, John, is that if the reality that you've made up is making you miserable. Why not make up a different reality? This is what you're only limited by your imagination that we've all been told that golf is 18 holes made up of two sets of nine, which it is at all intents and purposes. We build all kinds of rituals around that. You know, halfway house, get to the turn, add your score up of a nine holes, all that kind of stuff. Now, if your hallucination that golf is 18 holes made up of two sets of nine is working for you, carry on with that hallucination. But if you find that a lot of your rounds, maybe you start badly and it takes nine holes before you can start again and you play well on the back nine or you have a good front nine and then you fall apart on the back. Maybe that reality that you're booting to, that golf is two sets of nine, maybe isn't working for you. So another reality could be that you play a golf six sets of three holes, super six, where you go out there and you make up something else. I was really lucky years ago. I got a chance to meet Tiger's first coach, really Gerrano when we're over in China doing some mind-factor certifications over there with coaches, sat down and had lunch with him and we talked about what he did with Tiger. I know it's well known this, but I just think it was genius really that what he said that they spent so much time on the golf course, he said they were just playing games all the time. And he said that we just, with a young kid, as Tiger was wasn't so talented, that if he was playing a par five or a long par four, he used to get really fed up about that, that he was taking six or seven. So they made up Tiger par. So he was playing par sevens and par eights and par nines. Now, if you play a par nine and you know, you shoot seven, you feel great, you feel fantastic. You've actually achieved something. But to me, it was a good example of this point and I'll make it in the book in a few places. Is that to understand, we're making all of this up. And if we're making it up and it's making your miserable, you have the option to make up something else. But it takes, again, it takes a leap of faith to say, I'm actually not going to go with this cultural hypnosis anymore. I'm actually going to create a different way to play the game. One other thing that seems to have resonated with people is that when you go out and play golf, and I'm sure I mentioned this in one of the chapters, is that every round of golf you'll ever play for the rest of your life will contain what I call ones, twos and threes. So ones, twos and threes would be one would be a good shot, two would be a good enough shot, and three would be a poor shot. I'll ask when I sit down and I'll say, what is your current relationship with the ones, twos and threes? And especially better players, if they're honest about it, they'll say, well, the ones are what I should do. I should be hitting good shots. What about the twos? Now, I got a bit annoyed about the twos. I don't like it in it's healy. I don't like finding the fairway if I told my driver. And what about the threes? Well, you don't want to know about the threes. And when you really examine your relationship to the ones, twos and threes, first of all, if you think about it, you could play the best round of golf your entire life tomorrow. John, if you went out and played tomorrow, and you shot a really low score, let's say you shot 65 tomorrow, which is within your capabilities. What's the chances in that 65 that there's going to be no threes, that there's going to be zero bad shots? This episode is brought to you by CashApp. When it comes to managing money, I'm looking for the same thing I want for most technology and even golf, make the useful stuff easy, give me more control and don't make me dig through complicated systems to find it. That's why I love the CashApp card so much, and it's security features. 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It was the only round of my life I've ever done it. - So you had a good play any time? - One out of, I don't know how many rounds in my life, I play well over a thousand, but that was an obnoxious response. But there is, even when you deconstruct, and obviously we all agree the post-round review is very powerful, but when you deconstruct any round, bad or good, like the good ones, there's some bad in there. You probably didn't notice and you got through, and then the bad ones are probably more good than you thought about. So yeah, it's not possible, usually, to play against a standard that is unrealistic, right? - But I think what we all do, and I did this only for 25 years, 'cause it was a quick learner, every round of golf that I went out and played, today was gonna be the day, like you just described, where the heavens would part and today, I wouldn't have to deal with the feelings that three bad shots gave me. And unfortunately, I never had that round that you just described on it never happens to me where I had a round with no bad shots. - I really was the only time my life where I looked back on it, where I was just like, for literally the one time, like I've got nothing, just, and then very abruptly after that, I had a brutally difficult start to an important round that was rocked my world not long after that in a tournament. So it came and went pretty quickly, unfortunately. (laughing) - But what you can do, and this might be a useful thing for folks to try out is with the ones twos and threes, is just have a think about your current relationship to the ones twos and threes. And then before you play the next round, if you've been struggling with poor shots, just give yourself a number of threes before you start, just allocate yourself eight threes, whatever it is. Now, what you've done there, you know, Raymond Pryototts a lot about this, you've actually front-loaded acceptance. You've actually put it out there that there's gonna be 10 threes today. Now, when they come along, what are you gonna do? You're gonna deal with that far better than going out as I did for all those years, hoping that today wasn't gonna be the day where I didn't have to deal with the threes. And I think for better players, both of you've seen this, I was at went with yesterday, PGA Championships practice round. I see it's so often with the highest level of the game, is how bad a relationship good players have with the ones. In the sense that there's no acknowledgement of some of the genius, that's what I should do. But again, can any to understand how our brain works with this, it's a simple mechanism that we have really, that our brain is always trying to pursue things that feel good and it's trying to avoid things that make you feel bad. Now, if you play golf and there's no acknowledgement of the ones, sooner or later your brain is gonna say, this thing called golf actually makes me feel miserable. I don't enjoy this. It's a crude analogy of this, but not that it should do this, but they trained dolphins, but when a dolphin does something that they want it to do in a show, they give it a fish and then it repeats that behavior. Now, we're no different than that. If you hit a one and you don't acknowledge it, you're not telling your brain to do it again. So again, to go out there and talk about a lot with players, about pursuing the ones, go out there and pursue as many ones as possible. Acknowledge the twos when they come along because most of your round will be twos. But pre-plan and accept there'll be some threes pretty much in every round, like playing unless you get the round that you talk to about. But again, it's a practical way of dealing with the reality of golf rather than hoping for an illusion to come true and this myth of consistency. - Well, yeah, I think the pre-planning of the threes is particularly relevant just because from my own experience and my other golfers is that when those threes come and they're coming, they can be so rattling. And this is something I'm still trying to work on under tournament pressure is that allowing that three when it does happen to not stop you in your tracks and it could have a real physical response to your body where you're just like, what was that? And then it throws you off for a few holes and you're reacting to that versus if you're more accepting and kind of, you're not, it's a difficult balance 'cause you don't wanna say it's about to happen. So like you want to understand that they can occur and it's very possible, but you also don't wanna be waiting for the other shoe to drop, so there's a balance there. But I think that is a very profound yet difficult skill is to absorb those threes, not let them rattle you and kind of move on with the rest of your round. And that to me is one of the differentiating factors between, to someone break 90 or 80 or 100 whatever the scoring milestones they have, it's that they don't deal with those moments very well. - I think there's something that John about before the round starts, even doing it in a formal way like writing it in your journal that you're giving yourself 10 threes today, all right? Whatever it is, there's something about that that actually allows you to deal with the inevitable when it comes along. - Yeah, I like that. - Carl, I had an interest in one few this week, so I shot 87, let that sink in my cup. - This is a tradey seven, yeah, it's a trade. - It's a trade. - Adam texted me the screenshot and I was like, "What the hell is this?" - I had a few people contact me 'cause they follow me on tangent. So they, some people checked in and they saw me. What's happening to Adam there? Well, they didn't realize it was an event called "Mitches Revenge." So basically they set up the course. It was a greenkeeper's revenge, something like that. They call it "Mitches Revenge" for this. So they set up the course, absolutely horrendous. It's 7,600 yards long. It was howling wind as well, 30 mile now. But mainly the issue was they put the pins in places where you couldn't stop it. You couldn't put the ball to the flag. If you stopped it six inches away, it rolled back to your feet. So you had to strategize and hit it three foot past the cup to make it stay there and then hold the three footer, which my pun is bad enough as it is. Anyway, but to your point about accepting the negatives, I knew in that event there are going to be some big numbers thrown in. In fact, my 87 finished fourth. I found it out the other day. It's a good knock. Yeah, it finished fourth out of 120 players. So that's how difficult the course was set up. But yeah, you knew straight off the bat that it's going to be some big numbers in there. You're going to have lots of four puts thrown in, which I did. But the interesting thing, it was a shotgun start. So I started on the hole that I absolutely dread. It's a long hole. It's uphill. And the fairway is I think where I can hit it is 15 yards wide. 50, maybe 20 yards wide. And there's out of bounds right. Or you lose your ball effectively at right or left. And so that was my starting one. And I did, I lost my ball. I hit a shot that wasn't that bad. I didn't judge the wind. I didn't know it was left to right. It started to carve off to the right a little bit more. Lost the ball. So I started out with that. But I accepted it because I knew that, well, this is going to happen in this round, probably two or three times. If not on the tee shots, definitely on the greens it's going to happen. So I really put my mind at ease on that one. And I was able to accept it greatly. Another little story, a side story I've got is that, I'm developing an app. I know you know that. So I'm developing an app. Now I don't know how mentally healthy my app is. You might laugh at it. But basically it's the track faults. With my recent eight week course, I had a few people using the app and they're saying, well, this is awful. I had 20 faults today. And I'm like, yeah, but that's good. You know what to work on now. And I actually showed them around that I had. And I shot three under par during that round. And I had 25 things in that round that could have been improved or changed. So it could be a subtle thing. Like, oh, I hit it a little bit high on the face. Or now, obviously I'm more critical of myself, but there are lots of twos effectively. At the occasional three, but lots of twos because I want to gather that data. But that helped me because I realized now that even in a round of three under par, there are going to be lots of things in there who's really highlighting to me. I always knew it, but having it there in front of me that, whoa, I shot three under and still there were 25 things, subtle things that I could improve in that. Okay, then you're never gonna have a round that's free. Unless you're John, you're never gonna have a round that's free. - 25, I mean, listen, if I really went through it and nitpicked, I don't think I mean, I was just like, this is one of those things where I think personality and level of analysis and these, like this is a bit of a choose your own adventure with golf, right? So I'm more of like the holistic, like looking for maybe one or two big things and Adam obviously enjoys going through it in far more detail than I do. I think we're a bit different in that way and that's okay. That shows you there's two ways to get to where you want. - I think what he reinforces, John, is that there was a philosopher he sadly passed away in a few years ago, a guy called Sidney Banks, who developed a whole area of psychology, they call the three principles. And one of the things that he was famous for saying was that if people would stop resisting their experience, that alone would change the world. And you can applaud that state, but you know, let's not go too deep in the whole of life, but if you applied it to golf, if we stopped resisting our experience, it would change the way we play golf because to Adam's point there, that there's a resistance to the fact that there's a lot of poor shots in around. There's a resistance to the fact there's a lot of twos and some threes. The great paradox kicks in then, that when we reduce that resistance and we're willing to go fully into that experience of every round we'll have ones, twos and threes in various quantities and various orders, the paradox kicks in that the more you accept that, the more the likelihood is that there's a free to detach to it and your brain doesn't perceive the golf course as a threat, which fundamentally I think is the number one thing we've got to look at from a performance perspective is does my brain perceive the golf course or this shot or this tournament or this situation, does my brain perceive this as threat or not? And it's not all or nothing, it's a sliding scale. But if your brain is perceiving threat, the three hard-wired physiological responses to that, good luck being able to execute your skills if that's happening and you don't have an understanding of how to actually reduce that threat, or you fall into the trap of, you can't access your skills on the golf course, then you go back to thinking it's just about swing mechanics only and you go back to an environment where there's no threat whatsoever called a driving range or a practice ground and you go through the cycle that most golfers have gone through for the past 25 or 30 years and there's an industry that feeds that narrative, there's an industry that feeds that insecurity that there almost always must be something wrong from a technical perspective. And I think until as coaches we, you know, what you guys are doing up, we're all preaching to the choir because we're all looking in a similar way but I just think until we sort of reduce the resistance that there is to looking at this game through the lens of yes, you've got to develop skills but there's a whole world of opportunity for coaches to explore how do you get players to access their skills. That to me is the holy grail of coaching in the future. - I've got a story, if you call it. I probably told you this one before but it's worth going through again, is when I did my PAT playing ability test, we did it at the belfry and the day actually, it was a day where I had to fill in a certain amount of rounds to get my PGA status. So I played in the playing ability test but it wasn't the playing ability test for me. So I was pressure free. I just had to get a number of rounds in. But everybody else in the event had to play in the playing ability test. And it was hammering it down, just like the worst British weather you can imagine typical summer for us. - Normal summer's there. - Yeah, and so the greens were waterlogged and I think it was right at the end of the season so they said, well, can we call it off and they're like, we can't. This is the last time of the season that we can do it. So we went ahead and played it. Anyway, one of the guys that I played with, I was just grinding it out. I was like three over par, I think. And one of the guys I played with was like 18 over par after the first round. And he was, you could tell he was a good player though. But he had the swing, he had the skill but he was just mentally all over the place and waterlogged greens complaining about everything as I probably would have in that scenario as well. And at the end of the round, he's like, oh, I said, you want to go for lunch? He's like, no, I'm going to hit the range. I'm like, okay, I'll see you on the next tee. And so came back for the second round and he was on the tee and I was like, how was the range? He's like, awesome, I figured it out. I figured something out on the range and I've got my game back. He went ahead and shot like a 95 the second round. And he was, he was complete. You could see he was so destroyed. He's like, I can't believe I figured it out on the range. Where did it go? - Take a number, buddy. - Yeah, I'll have to go back, but I think this is more of a boast than anything. But I, one, not that it was a tournament because it was just playing, but I think I won it by something like 10 to 15 shots. I think I was three over par on the next person. It was like 80, no, but it was ridiculous. That's how bad the event was. The thing there is I didn't have any pressure, right? I was out a little out of practice. He wasn't playing ability test for me. Everybody else there was like, oh, this is so much pressure. The conditions are awful. So you can tell everybody was super upset with themselves. But to your point, the range stuff, he went on the range, figured it out in air quotes and then came back and shot a worse round. And it just goes to show that there's such a, there can be such a disparity between the environments, especially when pressure is there. And so how do you deal with that kind of pressure? What would you say to that player? Maybe it's too late in the moment. You can't change someone in the moment too much. But what kind of short term and long term things would you give at player like that? I think the long term thing is to get to a point of understanding, and again, I battle with this for years, is to try and get to a point where you understand that your value as a human being cannot be determined by what a golf ball does and the number on a score card. [BLANK_AUDIO] It sounds a bit philosophical that but again I think you look at kids they start to play the game and we all go on this route where you play the game for the sheer joy of hitting golf shots and seeing the things sort up in the sky and we enjoy all that kind of stuff and then slowly but surely golf starts to give you things that massage is your ego, you know you get your handicap down, you win a junior tournament, you get a bit of a bit of fuss, maybe these days you know you get stuff on social media and slowly but surely our attachment of value to our worth becomes attached to the number on a scorecard and it's a slippery slope and I'm not saying there's an easy way out of this but I think again going back to what I said before about this central theme that is your brain perceiving the golf course, the environment of golf as a threat or an opportunity. Even talking to your brain that daftes this sounds, even talking to your brain and saying look I'm not you're going to try and protect me out there today by making me aware of all the things that can go wrong, you're going to protect me by trying to make my heart rate faster, you're going to protect me by having my mind full of busy thoughts but I'm going to be okay, it's literally a lot of it to me is about telling your brain over and over again, you're going to be okay with whatever happens out there today because the crazy thing is we've got this piece of machinery that's between our ears that is an incredible piece of kit that we've got but by and large it's 30,000 years old today in the sense that the number one concern for our brain every single day whether on a golf course or wherever is survival. Now was that a very useful thing? My goodness we're all here as a result of that but our brains wanting to see perception of danger and perception of threat, you've got to keep reassuring it in whatever different ways and there's lots of different tools and there's lots of different approaches but to me fundamentally it's that whatever happens out there I'm going to be okay and when that level of acceptance is there then a freedom emerge is where better mechanics can often emerge as a result of freedom. The harder part of all of this is that it's to John's point earlier on you know you can post a nice neat video on on YouTube here's this guy before he had time with me and he's steep in the backswing and he's collapsing at impact or whatever and look at him now it's all nice and neat and tidy because we can see it all developing the skills around acceptance isn't quite so easy it's not such an easy YouTube channel to put together that but I think for anybody who's seriously interested in trying to get the true capabilities out and enjoying the game and enjoying their experiences when you when you look at the skill of acceptance and really deeply understanding what your brain is actually up to when you play a golf then I think the other side of it is experiences that are so powerful and so good for us. I honestly think that golf doesn't sell itself enough as a health benefit you know in this world that we are so much now about mental health issues and all this kind of stuff well if you can go out in nature for four or five hours and be absorbed in something and deal with the setbacks that the game gives you I think this just you know for me it should be available on the NHS golf when it's probably a bit of a tough stretch on this country's about to be bankrupt in the UK but that's another subject but yeah I think the whole the whole thing about developing a relationship to the game that actually allows you to to deal with whatever it throws at you so that's a very long-winded answer to a good question which I hope was well I agree with everything you said it's a wonderful response and I also think another part of this is that what you go on to the golf course with is your baseline kind of expectations and what you're bringing that day so I'll put that golfer for example that Adam was describing which is many of us is that he thought he had solved the problem mechanically right so he gave himself a false sense of confidence that he had figured out something on the range that was thereby going to give him comfort and safety on the golf course he was going to hit good shots because he figured out something on the range and what he wasn't realizing was that the problem was probably elsewhere and he's not prepared to deal with that because the second he starts hitting a bad shot or two well then it's wait I thought I solved this he's not accepting of the fact that you don't get to control what you bring on the course that day you can do all the work in the world on the range and you can swing it like absolute crap and if you're not going out there with like some level of baseline acceptance of that you are done especially in a competitive environment so that's why yeah I think again we've beaten the dead horse with like what the golf world wants to give you is the mechanical solution but it doesn't prepare you for the human element of you've got four or five hours to deal with this out there and all the work on the range can't prepare you for that specifically it just it just doesn't it doesn't work that way unfortunately it's not that straightforward the intellect loves the idea that there's the mechanical solution I mean none of us are saying that impact conditions are not important we're not we're not saying that you you shouldn't try and develop your skills and get better ball strike and it hit out the middle more often all the things that you you guys talk about nobody's saying that you shouldn't look at that but if you think the solution to your golf is only in that environment you're missing a huge part of it and I think the problem is to what Adam said earlier on is that when you find the fix on the range you're only one shot away from not having the fix yeah yeah you mentioned something about that survival so we often put in terms of why do we get nervous on the golf course in terms of survival and I have a slightly different theory on it based on understanding how sport developed is actually similar but when you think of what sport was it was a way of triumphs figuring out who's the best hunter here like if you could throw a spear through a moving object you know throw a some have seen things where they throw a hoop like a hula hoop and they roll it across the ground you have to throw a spear through it and that was not just for fun and games that's just that's showing well if this person can do that they're probably going to be able to throw a spear at a hog or something and be able to be a good provider which then is not so much a survival thing in terms of being fit and strong and being able to take on enemies but being able to provide for yourself or in sporting terms comparing yourself to others so that you have the option to mate so people who are good at sports would often get the first pick of the females so it's horrible this is how we evolve this is this happens in tribes now and so that kind of makes me laugh sometimes when I get nervous at golf because I think well why am I getting nervous at this game oh because this is basically a test of my genetic skill how I score is a test of my genetic skill well why does that make me nervous oh because somewhere in my 30,000 year old wiring this is determining whether I get to mate or not which determines whether my genetic code goes on or not and then when I start to do that for me that just makes the whole thing ridiculous and I think well this is just an old system there's a lot on the line when you play trying to continue your genetic existence in theory but the reality is my girlfriend doesn't care whether I shoot 90 or 87 right this is an old wiring going on we have new wiring obviously your ability to have a good job earn good money is that new version of sport right it's to whether you you can do these things or whether you're a comedian good personality all these type of things go into it but yeah that old wiring of what is sport it's a way of showing who has the best genetic code effectively always put the most work in who has the most trained skills which then is a proxy for ability to provide which is a proxy for can I mate which is a proxy for can I get my genetic code to outlast me to even go deeper that because we're we're editing into some deeper waters here but that's fine as part of overall evolutionary makeup well physiological responses that we have on most of our physiological responses of having it's a case of they have had evolutionary benefit now one of the things that that we had to do to survive going back 20, 30,000 years ago is to have value within the tribe is to have value within the group and if your value was sufficiently diminished in the group you were ostracized from the group what did that mean it meant certain death now our brain is still perceiving things like that as crazy as that sounds now we're not in a tribe of cavemen and women anymore but we're in a tribe called golf we're in a tribe called golfers so it's evolutionary stuff kicks in that when we go and play golf if I play badly today I might have value within the groups reduced your brain literally thinks that means death so again when you start to understand more of this and you start to understand what your brain is up to comes back to what I said before of talking to your brain by saying brain thanks very much I'm glad you're looking after me but I'm going to be okay see for years and years and years I went down the route of trying to change the responses and trying to reframe things and things like that and a lot of it is actually counterproductive whereby you become at war with your brain you become at war with what it's programmed to do the more you can actually say thanks brain for these responses but I'm going to be okay things seem to settle down but it's again the more we resist our experience the more we actually strengthen it this again it's this great paradox that kicks in yeah what's one of the best ways out of a tough moment on the course or when you're feeling bad about yourself is like, can you just sit with it for a little bit rather than try to just do mental gymnastics and convince yourself that you're okay and just be like, yeah, this isn't good right now. That's all right. Like you said, like, hey, I'm just, this thing is malfunctioning right now. The response seems to be very out of whack, but it'll calm down eventually. Like, let's just sit with that for a second and yeah, you can do the, there's techniques to deal with it, the breathing and the, you know, the stuff we discussed, kind of like focusing on what your feet feel like and what you're seeing. I think those are helpful, but at some point you have to acknowledge, yeah, the alarms going off and maybe I'll just let that be okay with that and just let that sit for a bit rather than fight again. Because my instinct was always just like, I'm going to fight so hard against this, so I think my way out of it too. And that generally just prolongs it, I think. You know, you can look at things like nervousness, John, or anxiety. And again, you can go into all kinds of territory with this. But if you look at, let's say we'll look at nervousness and you actually notice nervousness, it'll be some sensations in your body that we've been conditioned to believe and we label it as nervousness. But all of a sudden, if you were to label those feelings and sensations as energy because that's what it is, it's, it's emotion, it's energy in motion. Again, what does energy want to do? It wants to move, it wants to, it wants to dissipate. But actually, it's the, oh, I shouldn't be feeling like this. I hate these feelings. It's the resistance to it that's the issue. You know, for me, it feels shame, frustration, like a lot of stuff in response to that feeling, right? A huge breakthrough for me was a guy, a body's teacher, I'm not a body's body, I do a very good friend of mine, a body's teacher. He said to me, he said, he said, it's not about changing your thoughts because the thoughts are going to come along. It's changing your relationship to your thoughts. And I think a massive breakthrough is when you start finding your thoughts amusing and you start finding your responses amusing. You're on the right track. If you can, if you can not, we all take ourselves so, excuse the language, we all take ourselves so fucking seriously. I mean, I was, I had to laugh, it went with the other day when I was there and I'm seeing all these people, and everybody's got the best of intentions and they're on there and, and everybody's, there's so many people, so serious about all this and one of a piece, so learned and all around, thinking, fucking hell, we're just trying to get a golf ball around the people's people. What is wrong with people? Yeah, it really is, yeah, it's ridiculous. And like, I've been dealing with a lot of this as I get older and starting to realize it, that what I've been doing for a long time doesn't work and working on this myself. So I've always found it fascinating, the crazy stuff that goes through my brain on the golf course and my reaction to it. And I think modifying and evolving your relationship with those thoughts is really important. And then I think our instincts in golf are always the opposite of what works. Like one of the founding beliefs of this show is doing the opposite of your fault. And I think that works physically. It could work mentally at times. It's interesting. So, yeah, you can zoom back out so many different points to where we get into like the cosmic insignificance would be the highest point of it. But yeah, like you go to Wentworth and you're like, this isn't that big of a deal. Like you're a bunch of multi-millionaires hitting a bunch, a little golf ball around like, let's settle down here. Yeah, let's just get some perspective on it. And I'm not belittling, it's not belittling anybody or anything. We're all trying to do our best to, you know, weave our way. It's perfect. This tall, interesting, cool life. But again, I think that a sense of humor is a great antidote to our own brain really. As I say, when we can start to just find some of the things, it never ceases to amaze me on a daily basis. The amount of shy that my brain comes up with in the nonsense that it cooks up on a regular basis. But I've just got a battery over these last few years that not taken it quite so seriously. And realizing that what I'm thinking now is going to pass away, it's going to pass through and I'm feeling a bit miserable now because of what I'm thinking. And the fact is I'm always going to be thinking. But it's realizing that it's not a permanent state of affairs, but it's in the past I would have tried to change things and do visualize it. And all this kind of stuff, it's a lot of efforting. There's more and more thinking that actually just compounds the problem largely. And then some day it said the other day, there's a great line I've heard. He said, you're either thinking about life or your experience in life. It's a great way of looking at it that, you know, when they're on the golf course, are we enjoying that feeling of catching that one right at the screws of the middle of the club face? And interacting with the ground correctly and picking the entry point into the hole or whatever it is. And it sounds all these things can sound so cliché. But I think the so important when you get the bigger picture of golf providing us with a laboratory to know a little bit more about ourselves and actually the breakthroughs that can happen as a result of that can be hugely beneficial. You've increased my workload exponentially with your foul mouth, Gal. I have to go out and delete those now. I'm just joking. Sorry about that. No, it's fine, it's fine. Yeah, one of the things I had on there was dump the ego. That's a chapter in your book and you talked about Sheffler as well. You talked about meeting Sheffler. One of the things that's been floating around, probably a year, maybe even two ago now, was his interview where he's talking about golf being not that important to him anymore. Years ago, this all kind of ties in. But years ago, I tried to create some kind of model for mental, which ties into what you're talking about. The model was like some epic symptoms were at the top. So things like all you need verbal, verbalization internally of what's happening or you're nervous, maybe you're shaking, maybe you feel adrenaline, whatever your body is feeling. And there are tools to alleviate those, right? There's breathing exercises, things like that, focusing. I think they're valuable. But then you go, well, why is that happening? And then you go at a level deeper and they may be conscious beliefs there. Oh, this means that for me, it would be something like, you know, with my 87 round recently, I'm thinking, oh, people are going to be looking at that 87 and thinking, oh, Adam's completely lost it. And that might affect my business. That's a kind of conscious belief that might be there. Or, you know, for the regular Joe, it's playing in a tournament as a 15 handicap. Maybe they have some other beliefs and all my friends are going to look down on me, something like that, which they're ridiculous when you break them down. And then you go deeper and you have the unconscious beliefs. So why are those things happening? Well, they're happening because the real deep subconscious beliefs of what we talked about of evolutionary wiring. And I think they all feed into each other. I couldn't find a way of explaining it well enough to turn it into a book. But that's my kind of model for us. You have the tools to deal with somatic symptoms. But as you say, they can be exhausting sometimes. And what I found was I would deal with that. And it would deal with it in the moment. You know, I'd do a breathing exercise. It would deal with it in the moment. And then a next shot later, it would be back again. I'd have to deal with it again. But the more I delved into, okay, well, more of my conscious beliefs that are causing this to happen, the less those things happened above. So I don't get as nervous now because my conscious beliefs have been changed. And that's actually fed down into the subconscious belief system. So I use the analogy that we have talked about this before of if you sit next to a tiger, you are going to feel nervous as hell. And you can do breathing exercises, but it'll be exhausted. And your brain will try and pull you away from those breathing exercises because it's like, this thing's going to kill you, even if it's a tamed tiger. Now, obviously, then a lion tamer tiger tamer comes in and says, it's okay. It's not going to, it's not going to hurt you. And that then changes your conscious belief, right? Oh, this is a tamed tiger. And that does help. But there's still going to be some levels of nerve there. It's only if you experience that tiger every single day for a year that you're unconscious beliefs are going to change. I liken that to Sheffler, basically dumping the ego is the ultimate of dissipating that subconscious belief system. And Sheffler, I think, has it locked down because his way of deleting the ego is golf is not that bigger thing. If I hit a bad shot, I still have to go home and do the dishes. And I think he's got that he's not just saying that it's not just lip service. I think he's actually got that lock down into his unconscious subconscious mind. There was a guy called Chuck Hogan years ago, huge influence on me and he wrote a bunch of books, one of them tigers, bond of power and a bunch of other things that he did, really, really interesting guy. He always talked about playing the game from a safe place. I think Sheffler's a perfect example. He plays golf from a safe place in the sense that his value is not on the line when he plays golf. He's playing golf with a freedom now. You know, he has a deep faith, which is another discussion, but I think I think fundamentally as a perspective on the game, where I think his brain is abundantly tuned into the golf course as being a place of opportunity. The golf course is providing him with an opportunity to show his skills. And again, I think when you look at that, there's all kinds of different ways that you can reduce the threat in our brain. When you start to look at the golf course and the golf course to architect as being your opponent and seeing it as a game that he's providing you with these puzzle to solve. Humans love puzzles, why the hell do we do crosswords and Sudoku and all this kind of stuff and we love quizzes? Because we like to solve puzzles. When you see golf that way, imagine that you're going to play a golf and you're going to be provided whatever your ability is between 65 and 85 different puzzles to solve. Again, that can be a way of reducing the threat because you go out there and you're not just thinking about trying to hit a certain position in your swing that hopefully will make it a good day. Every hole is providing you with a puzzle to solve and you solve it with shots. We've talked about this many times before, about the idea of just falling in love with the idea of creating golf shots. And I'm not talking about hitting draws and fades and all this kind of stuff and being crazy out there. I'm talking about seeing how you can solve the puzzle of the golf course with the tools that you have available. And I'm a firm believer that on any given day, you might not have your swing, but you'll always have shots that you can hit. That's a good way of going out to play the game of golf and not trying to cling onto the feelings that you have yesterday that very often are not the same today, tuning into the shots that you do have and playing the game with what you do have rather than wishing for what you don't have. Sometimes the puzzle, I'm thinking of different puzzles I try and solve on the golf course. And yeah, lots of times it's like the puzzle of impact for me. It's like, okay, what's the problem I'm trying to solve here? And I relate it to two or three things. It's face contact, ground contact, face direction. Trying to solve the puzzle. And sometimes there's a pattern there. So that's a nice easy puzzle to solve. Sometimes it's more inconsistency in that factor, which is a much more difficult puzzle to solve. And there may be different solutions. Sometimes like when I played Mitch's revenge, I knew that well, doesn't matter how good the shots I'm going to hit, I'm going to shoot a high score today. So my puzzle to solve was can I mentally stay in the game? First, long as possible, which is very difficult to, I'll be honest with you, but yeah, that was the puzzle I'm trying to solve. Or if I'm having a bad day, I flip it to can I grind out a good score? I find that works well for me. And I know the idea of grinding is different from the different people, different philosophies on it. But yeah, it's, I flip it sometimes so can I turn this 78 into a 76 today? Can I commit to myself at the end of the round walking off and say, well, I tried for almost every shot I didn't give up. So yeah, there's some different puzzles to solve, even sometimes mental, sometimes physical. The other thing you mentioned in the dump your ego section was kind of one way to deal with it is the other thought of kind of mastering, but we're discussing that right now is that you know, I'm saying to me, it's similar puzzles that can I get the most out of what I had today? And what I have is different on each day. Some days maybe mentally, I'm on a short release, some days physically it's not there, some days physically I'm feeling great, but maybe the mental style. Yeah, there's there's all these permutations of what parts of your game are going to show up. And I think one helpful way to solve the puzzle is yeah, can I just play a little game and try and get the most out of what I have today? That can mean a lot of different things to different golfers, but that's what gives me a lot of satisfaction from the game is that I often think about was that the lowest score I could have shot or the highest score I could have shot. And then like do a little mental review is saying like, well, did I get the most out of what I had today? That great. That's awesome. Maybe I didn't get the most out of what I had today. And some of it was, you know, just other stuff was just bad luck, rubbery green type stuff. So yeah, I think there's we're getting to the end of the episode here, but I think what I love about your work is that you continually find different ways to reframe this game, create unique, customized challenges that resonate with what you want out of golf and maybe align with your personality. And to your point earlier is that yes, this game was designed as 18 holes for some reason and two nines, but that doesn't mean you have to play it that way. The adventure is yours and I don't think enough of us myself included think outside the box enough. Hopefully that's one of the big things that people get away from this episode in your work. And I certainly encourage people to purchase this book is that there's a number of ways to go about this, right? Yeah, as I said earlier, Johnny, if the reality that you've made up is making you miserable, making another reality is your choice. Yeah, I love that. When you said that, sometimes I don't stop myself enough and think that way because I'll drift so far in one direction without realizing it'll be like, wait a second, how did I get here? And you know, it doesn't have to be this way. Oh, these are choice. Yeah, it is a choice. And like the path of least resistance is kind of to let golf drag you along and you have to kind of take control of times and take the wheel and say, it could be different if I have some type of interventions here. And I think you give a lot of good ideas for those interventions. I think that to me, that's the strength of your work and your contribution to the golf world. Thanks, John. Appreciate that. Thank you. Like what you said about being the best version of yourself, you said something along those lines. And golf is trying to teach us things. And you can almost decide what those lessons are. Like I said, you could decide, okay, this part of who I am as a person needs some work. Maybe it's patience. You say, okay, so the goal today, a little side quest, I suppose is, okay, let's see if I can play around a golf and just stay patient and accept those twos and threes that you have. Or maybe it's diligence with your strategy. You know, John talks a lot about strategic errors. So, you know, maybe a staying diligent to aiming more towards the middle or safe side of the green. Maybe making sure that you don't make a club selection error that lands you short. Because these are things that are in your control, right? If you can walk off around a golf and say, well, okay, I hit it short on this hole and this hole, but I was more of a strike error. But it wasn't a club selection error. I didn't get greedy and try a bust and aid eye in there when I know I needed my lifetime best. So you can kind of create these different side quests, depending on what you want to work on in your either your game or even your life or your personality. You could use golf as a laboratory and sort of decide who you're going to be on the golf course today. Are you going to be courageous? Are you going to be a little bit more instinctive? Are you going to maybe calculate it? And it's again, to bang the what the drum for the final time. It's up to you what you make up. So, make up something that's entertaining and you can be curious about it. Or even a you're going to be a good playing partner, you know, sometimes I need that advice. You know, I sometimes I can be a grump on the course and I look at it and like, oh, that can't be that fun to play with. Well, Carl, it's late in the UK. We've kept you long enough. Tell everyone where they can find the new book and the accompanying app that I know that you've been working on for a long time as well. Yeah, the book, John, is the as you said, is the main caddy. It's available on Amazon across the Husky's copy. Yeah, available on Amazon. And there's an accompanying app with it as well. The main caddy app where there's an AI version of me, which is pretty cool where it's everything's been fed into it. And you can have conversations with it. I'll ask you questions and things like that. But also, you know, you get a bunch of coaches listening to it. If any coach is kind of interested in more the performance side of it, we've done the mind factor. There's a bunch of mind factor coaches around the world. There's a mind factor certification course, which you can do. It's an online course. It's pretty much 20 years in the making, but it's like, it's an online platform that people can, coaches or players can go to. So have a look at that at the mind factor.com. But thanks guys for inviting me. I was thoroughly enjoying it. Time disappears really quickly. We have these conversations. We manage to go in a few different directions, which we always do. Yeah, it's been great. Well, I'll link to all those resources. And again, thanks for, I think, wonderful contributions to the golf world for decades. This won't be the last time you're on the show. It's always fun. So we'll link to all those resources and definitely check out the book and the app. Adam is always working everyone find your stuff. Adamiangolf.com. John, where can people find your stuff? Go on YouTube and check out my channel. John Sherman Golf and my other equipment channel golf gear explained. As always, thank you. If you made it to the end of this episode and wandered through this philosophical discussion and made it to the end, we appreciate you. We thank you for your ideas and we'll see you next time with a new episode. Before this, there's this. As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the grass. They've in the lots, weld in the goalposts, inspecting every football. The hardworking people to make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. 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