Hey Fellow Golfer -

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

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

Also - you don’t want to miss this week’s episode of The Scratch Golfer’s Mindset Podcast. I sit down with multi-tournament winner and humble scratch golfer Bryan Taylor to discuss how he approaches intentional practice.

Start listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify (after you read this, of course).

In a single day, you have between 50,000 to 70,000 thoughts. 

Shockingly, 80 percent of these are negative, and 90 percent are the same as yesterday.

Your mind is hardwired to scan your environment for threats, danger, and negative situations to keep you alive. 

This is not something you can fight.

There are countless emotional and mental hazards of your mind that you are forced to confront during a round - and sometimes multiple on a given hole or shot.

You cannot swing your way out of these hazards. And, spending more time on the range won’t equip you to let go of the anger you currently experience each time you slice your drive.

My point is this:

Yes, your swing matters.

Yes, you need adequate repetitions to develop confidence in your swing - a swing you can replicate on the range and the course.

But this is only one piece of the puzzle regarding shooting more pars than bogeys.

If you strolled the practice range of the Korn Ferry or DP tours on the day of a tournament you'd spot plenty of players with seemingly flawless swings, but many of them are unfamiliar faces who’ve been on this tour for years without ever tasting the PGA tour.

Why?

Because they haven't mastered the mental side of golf.

In this week’s newsletter, I’ll offer solid evidence and real-life examples to show how much golf relies on emotions and mindset.

I'll help you understand why trying to fix emotional challenges with your swing won't work.

To consistently shoot lower scores, you need focus, emotional control, patience, and confidence - not just a perfect swing.

Let’s tee off…

Is Your Golf Mindset Fixed?

In a typical round, you might experience:

• Negative talk about your capabilities

• Chastising yourself for your previous swing or decision

• Critical thoughts about who you are as a golfer (and person)

• Defeating thoughts about your talent

• Judgmental inner chatter comparing yourself to your peers

• Lack of focus

• And perhaps a general defeated, victim mindset as you hit another ball out of bounds or into a bunker.

Sound familiar?

Your mindset refers to your collection of words, thoughts, beliefs, and overall attitude about yourself. 

These influence how you feel and perceive yourself and how you show up in and perceive the world around you.

In psychology, this concept is expanded into two mindsets: fixed and growth.

Characteristics of a fixed mindset:

• The belief that your abilities, intelligence, and talent are static and cannot change.

• Tendency to avoid challenges and give up quickly when faced with resistance.

• Feeling threatened by feedback or by more successful people.

Characteristics of a growth mindset:

• The belief that your abilities, intelligence, and talent can be developed through dedication, effort, and learning.

• Tendency to seek and embrace challenges, knowing they foster growth and learning; persistence in the face of resistance and adversity.

• Open-mindedness and coachability when receiving feedback; feeling inspired by successful individuals.

Which mindset resonates with you? 

What kind of golf mindset do you have?

If it’s the former, don’t worry. Significant research, popularized by psychologist Carol Dweck in her book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success," suggests you can shift to a growth mindset.

I highly recommend this book to help you become a better golfer and person. You can grab a copy here (it’s not an affiliate link).

Before we explore the foundational elements of your mindset and how they relate to the mental game of golf, let's briefly introduce the two components of your mindset: your conscious and subconscious minds.

The Iceberg Theory of the Mind

Let's consider the Iceberg Theory of the Mind to understand the difference between your conscious and subconscious minds.

This psychological analogy, introduced by Dr. Sigmund Freud, compares your conscious mind to the tip of the iceberg: it's what you tangibly see and experience. Awareness, perception, self-talk, and deliberate thought reside here. It's also where your harsh inner critic lives.

Research suggests that up to 90 percent of the iceberg lies beneath the surface, similar to your subconscious mind lying beneath conscious awareness.

Your subconscious mind contains your imagination, intuition, creative power, emotions, memories, beliefs, and habits, which shape your personality and identity.

Therefore, the subconscious mind represents about 90% of your mind's power, while the conscious mind represents about 10%.

Communication between the two minds is like a radio: it's one-way, bottom-up communication. We can't simply shout commands down to our subconscious.

Instead, it's non-stop information being transmitted from unconscious to conscious awareness.

This can be good or bad, depending on the emotions, beliefs, and habits in your subconscious. 

However, these beliefs and behaviors are often outdated.

Your Subconscious Wants to Keep You Safe

Your subconscious has one objective: to keep you safe at all costs. 

It prioritizes this mission over everything else and always believes it’s acting to keep you safe.

For centuries, our ancestors relied on each other - our tribes - to survive. As we evolved, our minds became skilled at ensuring we maintained connections and scanning our environment for threats.

Fortunately, our ancestors' struggles - starvation, lack of shelter, predators - are no longer primary concerns for most. However, our subconscious hasn't updated accordingly.

And it’s still part of the everyday experience of being a human to experience worrisome and anxiety-provoking thoughts, irrational fears, and strong emotions. 

But again, your subconscious always believes it's helping you.

It evolved to protect our ancestors from dangers like saber-toothed tigers and starvation.

It learned to be on constant alert for threats.

Your subconscious is the reason the human species still exist today.

Unfortunately, it hasn't evolved as quickly as the rest of our brain and civilization. So, it often deploys sabotaging behaviors to keep us safe, even when we logically know we're safe.

What's even more frustrating to grasp is that most of your subconscious's emotions, beliefs, and habits are outdated and not yours. 

Around 95 percent of your beliefs are formed by age seven.

Today, you rely less on others, but your subconscious evolved when being abandoned by your tribe was seen as a threat. So, it learned powerful mechanisms to scan for danger, detect threats, and prioritize safety.

The challenge now is that many of these perceived threats aren't real. 

For instance, have you ever shot so well on the front nine that your mind began to drift to shattering your old course record by numerous strokes?

Yeah, me, too.

But what happened?

Did you find a way to sabotage that dream and shoot your usual score?

I thought so. 

This is a classic example of your subconscious grounding you back into a reality of safety and predictability - it’s unsafe to outshine others, is how it approaches the situation. Or, perhaps, you lack genuine belief that you’re worthy and capable of shooting such a score. 

More on this in a future newsletter or five…

Another common example I see often is that you may fear failure and judgment when playing with people you admire.

You worry about being excluded from the group or judged by these players, which feels threatening.

This fear creates tension, affects your mental game, and leads to poor performance. It's like the fear of playing poorly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

By the way, in episode seven of The Scratch Golfer’s Mindset Podcast, I discuss a fast, effective, and research-backed strategy for directly connecting with your subconscious mind so that you can begin to unlearn or upgrade the beliefs and behaviors that are no longer serving you.

Click here to listen to this episode after you finish reading this newsletter. 

The Mental Game of Golf 

By now, you're familiar with the difference between a growth and fixed mindset and have a deeper understanding of the two minds that influence your mental game.

Now, let's answer one question: what exactly is the mental game in golf?

The mental game refers to the psychological and emotional aspects of your performance. 

In last week’s newsletter, we dove into the emotional aspect of the mental game - a must-read.

Specifically, the mental game includes:

• Your self-talk (positive versus negative)

• Your thoughts about yourself, others, golf, and life

• Your beliefs about yourself, your worth, and your abilities

In golf, the mental game also encompasses:

• Your focus and concentration

• Consistently executing routines

• Cultivating confidence

• Managing stress and anxiety

• Overcoming adversity

• Decision-making and self-trust

• Adaptability

• Goal setting and commitment

• Grit and persistence

• Practicing patience

Golf is a battle against yourself. Every stroke is about flawless technique and a test of the mind. 

It's where you confront your inner critic, self-doubt, and past mistakes.

Whether you're a weekend warrior, amateur, or seasoned veteran, your mindset is key to unlocking your best performance.

Can you maintain focus and precision, or will past mistakes cloud your confidence?

Do you see how crucial it is to work on your mental game as much as your swing?

I hope so.

If you’re not sure where or how to start working on your mental game, here are a few low-hanging fruit options to get you going:

1. Join our free Facebook Group, More Pars Than Bogeys, for weekly mindset education and live coaching.

2. Commit to reading each weekly More Pars Than Bogeys Newsletter and to listening to each episode of The Scratch Golfer’s Mindset Podcast.

3. Download my free hypnosis audio recording to help you shoot more pars than bogeys during your next round. 

What Does Mental Game Training Look Like?

On the range or the course during a round, mental game work looks like this:

• Focusing on positive self-talk

• Actively unhooking yourself from defeating thoughts and sabotaging beliefs

• Interrupting negative thought patterns and vicious self-talk loops

• Emotionally off-gassing (see here for a refresher)

• Infusing a sense of curiosity as you examine the outcome of each shot

These are helpful in-round areas of focus. 

It should be the goal to ingrain each of these into the foundation of your mindset.

More important, however, is your work away from the course to begin unlearning unconscious reactions and upgrading to conscious responses.

Whether it be through journaling, meditating, breathwork, golf mindset coaching, or long bouts of silence and solitude, here are some of the areas you need to bring your attention to:

• Changing the way you talk to and about yourself.

• Learning how to get unhooked from detrimental thoughts.

• Unlearn limiting beliefs and stories.

• Stop self-sabotaging behaviors.

• Dismantle destructive mindset programs (next week’s discussion)

Are you interested in a deep-dive discussion on the mental game of golf and in learning effective strategies you can implement today to begin cultivating a winning mindset that will help you shoot more pars than bogeys?

If so, I highly recommend you make the time to listen to part one and part two of my interview with Jesse Perryman on the Flag Hunters Podcast.

Click here to listen. 

Your Next Step

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

First, if you haven’t listened to episode three of The Scratch Golfer’s Mindset Podcast, you need to. It gives a raw, vulnerable look into my self-talk and mental game during my first round of nine holes after a 15-year hiatus.

Click here to listen to “[My First 9 Holes] The Nasty Things You Say to Yourself During a Round (But Don’t Want to Admit).”

Your action step after reading this newsletter - it’s okay to read it twice! - add a few categories to your scorecard during your upcoming round.

What you need to do is grab an extra scorecard from the clubhouse. In the area where you’d typically write the names of your foursome, I want you to pencil in the following:

• Harsh, critical, or judgmental self-talk

• Fixed, unhelpful thoughts

• Limiting and negative beliefs

In short, you can simply write about your thoughts and beliefs.

On each hole, your job is to observe, with nonjudgmental curiosity, how many fixed and negative words, thoughts, and beliefs you have about yourself. 

That’s it.

This should provide immense clarity on the current state of your mental game.

What you do with that information is up to you; however, if you’re serious about shooting more pars than bogeys, I suggest you begin taking massive action to change the story and attitude in your mind.

Thank you for reading today’s newsletter.

If you found it valuable, share it with a fellow golfer who struggles with emotional regulation.

Play well and have fun!

Until next time,

Paul

P.S. What did you think of today’s newsletter? Reply back or 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. Join The More Pars than Bogey's Facebook Group: Whether you’re an occasional amateur, a weekend regular, or a competitor seeking a tournament trophy or your pro card, this group will help you shoot lower scores. ​Join Us Now​.

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.