Hey Fellow Golfer - 

Thank you for reading this week’s More Pars Than Bogeys Newsletter.

You can click here to read the online version of this week’s newsletter.

Also - I released two episodes on the Scratch Golfer’s Mindset Podcast that I know you’ll love:

1. #26: New Low, New Club, No (new?) Excuses

2. #27: [Inside the Mind] Dr. Jason Novetsky: Creating Your Golf Identity to Play to Your Potential

P.S. If you’re interested in learning more about how mindset coaching and hypnotherapy can help you get unstuck from the proverbial bunker of poor performance on the course and off the course, click here to schedule a coaching discovery call with me. 

You know what to do to play better golf.

• If you’re struggling off the tee box or with your putting, you hire a coach.

• If you’re struggling with adding distance to your drives, you hire a personal trainer.

• If you’re struggling to manage your emotions and to turn up your confidence, you hire a mindset coach. 

And, if you don’t know what to do, well, there’s no shortage of content readily available on Google and social media.

You’re not stuck because of a lack-of-information problem.

You’re stuck because you have a mindset problem.

When I refer to being stuck, I’m referring to knowing what to do yet finding creative ways to consciously and unconsciously sabotage your efforts to achieve your goals.

Sound familiar?

In today’s newsletter, you’ll learn about the two types of self-sabotage that continue to hold you back from playing to your potential (on and off the course).

You’ll learn why you sabotage and, of course, what you can begin to do to stop self-sabotage at the source so that you can get out of your own way and shoot more pars than bogeys. 

Let’s tee off!

Self-Sabotage Defined

Sabotage

/ˈsabəˌtäZH/

verb

deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct (something)

Self-sabotage can be defined as deliberately getting in your own way - deliberately destroying, damaging, or obstructing progress toward your goal - despite your best intentions.

It can occur both consciously and unconsciously.

An example of conscious self-sabotage would be recognizing the importance of a warm-up before your round, failing to plan appropriately, and arriving 10 minutes before your tee time.

You had a distinct decision opportunity and deliberately chose the path that served your short-term emotions (laziness, indifference) rather than your long-term dreams.

What makes this - and many other - sabotage behaviors feel “okay” is that your conscious mind possesses a strong ability to rationalize and justify via what you know as excuses. 

If you’ve ever convinced yourself that you’d be “fine” without warming up or that you “don’t need to warm up,” this is your conscious mind’s superpower in action.

Unconscious self-sabotage, on the other hand, is often not realized until days, weeks, months, or even years later. This is a pattern you typically don’t know until long after it happens.

Deciding (unconsciously) to half-ass (or skip altogether) your pre-shot routine after a poor shot or poor hole (or even string of good holes) is common. Most golfers I work with don’t even recognize they’ve been doing this until several holes later.

Another common example is the golfer who purchases several courses or books about the game but fails to implement what he learns.

He may even attend multiple workshops or hire a coach, yet fails to execute what he learns at the workshop or the practice instructions his coach has provided.

It isn’t until he reflects on his golf season and realizes his handicap didn’t improve - again…

To help you identify the wide range of self-sabotaging behaviors you may be engaging in, I categorize them into capital “S” and lowercase “s” sabotaging behaviors. 

Types of Sabotaging Behaviors

Capital “S” Sabotaging behaviors are the obvious behaviors you’re aware of that are sabotaging your success.

These are the “duh” behaviors that everybody on the course - no matter their location or culture - would quickly identify as a behavior that is holding you back.

Examples in the game of golf include: 

• Skipping your warm-up

• Not practicing on the range and the putting green between rounds

• Excessively drinking during your round

• The absence of a pre-shot routine

• Cursing, screaming, or throwing your club after a poor shot or mistake

• Blaming the course, your lie, the group behind you, or your playing partner for a poor shot or mistake

It’s worth noting that away from the course, capital “S” Sabotaging behaviors may look like: 

• Addiction, coping, and numbing behaviors (alcohol, THC, drugs, porn, video games, social media, Netflix, etc.),

• Procrastination and avoidance

• Gambling

• Binge eating

• Overspending

• Infidelity

Lowercase “s” sabotaging behaviors are the not-so-obvious, often overlooked behaviors you’re unaware of that sabotage your success.

In the moment and on their own, they appear insignificant. Yet, they add up to pack a destructive, sabotaging punch.

Examples in the game of golf include: 

• Inconsistently executing your pre- and post-shot routines

• Lack of preparation in your nutrition and hydration (before and during a round)

• Failing to adequately stretch before a round

• An inconsistent sleep, exercise, and nutrition routine away from the course

• Rushing your putting process (guilty!)

• Engaging in regular negative self-talk

• Trying to solve your mental game and swing game problems on your own (I know a guy who can help you in the mental game department)

Away from the game of golf (which we both know does affect you on the course), lowercase “s” sabotaging behaviors may look like this:

• Hitting snooze in the morning

• Skipping workouts

• Not following through on promises to yourself

• Holding grudges

• Arguing over nothing - with your significant other, child, or colleague

• Hiding or repressing your emotions

• Lying - to yourself and others. 

Why do you fall prone to deliberately sabotaging our success?

Let’s discuss that next.

This past weekend, I shot a new low. I also had a stretch of playing three over after five holes (my best yet). 

Two days later, a custom-fit set of clubs arrived…

Stay up to date on my quest to break 90 before November 13 by catching up on these two episodes:

1. #22 [Journey to Scratch] Blissful Disappointment, Lost Balls, and My Approach to Shoot Sub 90 in 92 Days - listen here.

2. #26 [Journey to Scratch] A New Low, New Clubs, and No (new?) Excuses - listen here.

Why You Sabotage

Self-sabotage is the result of incongruency between your unconscious and conscious mind. 

When your conscious and unconscious mind are not on the same page, your unconscious always wins. This becomes your default, and numerous sabotaging actions are put forth to keep you stuck in a predictable place of comfort.

Here’s what I mean:

• Your unconscious is home to your emotions, memories, and beliefs. 

• If fears, doubts, or feelings of inadequacy reside in your unconscious, they'll directly shape your conscious thoughts and actions, ultimately influencing your identity and reality. 

• This is especially true if you harbor a lack of safety around a certain behavior or achievement. 

If your unconscious mind doesn’t feel safe shooting in the 70s, you’ll continue carding in the 80s no matter how many times you shoot sub-40 on the front nine. 

You can read more about this phenomenon, known as the upper-limit problem, here.

Your unconscious wants to keep you safe and always thinks it’s doing so. Unfortunately, what it deems safe often appears outdated and irrational to your conscious mind. You consciously know it’s safe to make a million dollars or to shoot in the 70s, yet, your internal programming feels otherwise.

If you’re struggling to achieve one of these goals, a deep-rooted collection of beliefs and emotions likely formed to tell a story that it’s unsafe to achieve either of the above. 

When there’s an incongruency between your conscious and unconscious mind, your unconscious mind always wins. You default to the level of success your subconscious feels safest with. 

Allow me to share a quick example:

My new client has been shooting in the mid to high 90s all year. We’re doing a lot of work to help her turn up her volume of confidence and feel worthy, deserving, and capable of achieving her goals.

In the round after our first call together, she shot a new low of 42.

Yet, the back nine told a different story. She had a few blow-up holes and went on to shoot a 54, thus shooting in the mid-90s per usual.

This is an example of her subconsciously not feeling safe scoring lower. 

As someone who aspires to create a stronger presence on social media (she already does a great job), there are likely deep-rooted beliefs and fears about the identity change necessary to be a content creator who now breaks 90 (and soon 80).

The result is that her subconscious is attempting to keep her safe in her known comfort zone. 

Let’s now discuss why sabotaging behavior occurs and dig into the anatomy of it.

My client Ash was accustomed to scoring in the high 70s and low 80s before our work together.

He’s shot a 71 twice in the past month.

One reason for his tremendous improvement is his commitment to the mental game. He does an excellent job preparing before each round, including listening to my “play your best round” guided hypnosis audio.

Click here to use it before the next round to play your best round. 

The Anatomy of Self-Sabotage

Self-sabotaging behavior is a defense mechanism deployed by your subconscious to keep you stuck in a pattern of predictability and familiarity that your subconscious deems safe.

If you begin to engage in and experience beliefs that don’t align with what your unconscious deems to be true (and safe), then your subconscious will deploy an array of sabotaging efforts to bring you back into a place of safety.

This looks like predictable patterns and routines of two steps forward and three steps backward. If you think about where and how you’ve gotten in your way in the past, you may begin to notice several commonalities between situations.

Your subconscious has no issue recreating a pattern of stuckness because it already knows you can survive it, which aligns with priority one: keeping you safe and alive.

However, you remain stuck - or even become more stuck - by continuing to apply a surface-level solution to a deep-rooted problem.

This is comparable to noticing a large weed in your garden and persistently trying to eliminate it by trimming the visible part rather than directly targeting the roots for complete removal.

Or, to paint an even more vivid image, attempting to solve a deep-rooted (subconscious) issue with a surface-level (conscious) solution is like treating a bullet wound with a band-aid…

Self-sabotaging behavior is a pre-programmed response to an emotional state. Each time you engage in a sabotaging behavior, there exists an emotion, a trigger, and an action.

• Emotion (the core of the root system): this emotional state is often born out of fear and a desire to feel safe.
  
  You may feel the emotion of lack - of love, worthiness, deservingness, etc. - or an accompanying feeling of guilt, anger, rage, sadness, or grief.

• Trigger (the bulb of the weed): you attempt to leave your comfort zone or make progress past a level your unconscious deems safe.

• Action (the visible plant and leave): unconscious and conscious sabotage - both capital “S” and lowercase “s” behaviors ensue.

To eradicate self-sabotage, you must go to the source of when you learned this behavior and pluck the roots!

As The Golf Hypnotherapist, I use hypnosis to defuse the emotional charge of toxic emotions such as anger, frustration, and impatience, which has a powerful and positive downstream effect on your beliefs, actions, and results. 

Click here to schedule a free Mental Game Strategy session to learn how I can help you learn faster and shoot lower scores.

Stop Self-Sabotage: Action Steps

Below, you’ll find a list of helpful prompts to guide you in thinking more deeply about why you do what you do. 

1. Identify the sabotaging behavior that most holds you back from playing to your potential.
   

2. Through a lens of non-judgemental curiosity, gain clarity on the following:

   1. When before or during a round, you engage in the behavior.

   2. Your emotional state before - and after - the behavior.

   3. The trigger that initiates the behavior.

   4. How it’s helping you (yes, you read that right. How is it protecting you?).

   5. How it’s hurting you.
      

3. Once you have clarity around when and why you engage in this behavior, it’s time to implement what’s known as a pattern interrupt.
   
   I'll cover this in more detail in a future newsletter, but in short, a pattern interrupt is a valuable tool for disrupting your usual thoughts and actions, opening up space for new possibilities to emerge.
   
   This can look like yelling “stop it, stop it” out loud or clapping your hands three times.
   
   The purpose is to grab your attention, allowing you to reset, refocus, and ultimately shift from unconscious reaction to conscious response.

Here’s an example to help you relate.

• You have a bad habit of talking negatively to yourself after you miss what you felt was a makeable putt.

• The moment you catch yourself going down this spiral, shout out loud, “stop it, stop it.”

• Redirect your self-talk to a positive affirmation, such as, “I’m at peace with that putt. It’s time to focus on the next shot.”

Your Next Step

Every newsletter will conclude with a suggested action step and further resources on the topic we discussed.

After reading today’s newsletter, complete the action steps shared above.

Thank you for reading today’s newsletter.

If you found it valuable, share it with a fellow golfer ready to take their game to the next level.

Until next time,

Paul

P.S. What did you think of today’s newsletter? Reply back / drop a comment below to let me know.

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Thank you for reading.

When you're ready, there are three ways I can help you:

1. Listen to The Scratch Golfer’s Mindset Podcast: Whether you’re an occasional amateur, a weekend regular, or a competitor seeking a tournament trophy or your pro card, this podcast will help you overcome the mental hazards of your mind to shoot more pars than bogeys. Start listening.
   

2. Overcome the Mental Hazards of Your Mind: How Hypnosis Can Help You Shoot Lower Scores: Whether you spend two or ten hours at the range each week, if you don’t learn to address and overcome your mind's mental and emotional hazards, you’ll remain stuck in the proverbial bunker of poor performance playing well short of your potential. Shoot More Pars.
   

3. 1-1 Mindset Coaching and Hypnotherapy for Golfers: I help golfers overcome the emotional and mental hazards of their minds to shoot lower scores (and have more fun) using hypnosis. Book a free Golf Mental Game Strategy Call Today.