For members only. Golf Smarter number three hundred and forty two, published on
July seventeen, twenty twelve. Welcome to golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance
to gain insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the Golf Smarter podcast.
Great Golf Instruction Never gets old. Our interview library features hundreds of hours
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The regular golfer, they don't have the time to practice. A professional
golfer that's his whole life practicing, getting in chave, being disciplined, and
things like that. But you always have time to work on your mental game,
whether you're at work or whether you're commuting. If you start understanding your
emotions, what affects your mental gain, Like when you're driving, if it's
traffic, if you're getting angry, that's a great opportunity to work on your
mental gain. Hey, I have a fact there's traffic, I'm getting upset.
This is a good chance to work on my mental gain. And there's
countless timestar in the day. When you run across the negative emotions. Most
people just accept their negative emotions during the daytime because it doesn't affect their performance
as quickly as it does on the golf course. More of the mental keys
to improve your golf with Michael Anthony. This is Golf Smarter, sharing tips
and insights from golfers and golf professionals to help lower your score. It's worked
for your host, Fred Green. Welcome back to Golf Smarter for members only.
Michael, Hi, Fred, how you doing today? I'm doing fine.
It's interesting. We recorded our first episode before the US Open and here
we are a couple of days after the US Open and not something. You
know, I don't spend a lot of time talking about the PGA Tour.
I don't have the resources, but I have a television and I think the
majors are a different story. And the fact that it was right here in
the Bay Area, where you and I both live, it makes it kind
of fun. Did you get a chance to go out there at all?
I didn't get a chance to go out there. I was pretty much glued
to this, you know, screen watching, watching everything was going on,
and you know, all of a sudden, my girlfriend came in and she
says, oh my god, I left my wallet, my purse and blah
blah blah. So of course I had to come to her rescue and I
miss I think the last four holes and when I left, h you know
web Simps, then he was one shot behind, and when I came back,
you know, he was kissing the trophy. Well, you know,
I guess that's the difference of between having a wife and having a girlfriend.
A girlfriend you were going to jump, and a wife you go, there's
only three holes left. I'll be there in a minute. I'll be there
at an hour. Well yeah, you missed it. And it's funny because
I had I applied for credentials to go to go to the Open and didn't
receive them, and was debating with one of my son's NonStop shall we go?
Should we not go? Should we go? Should we not go?
He ended up going to one of the practice rounds and on Monday, I
luckily, I've been too work wise, I've been too busy. I couldn't
get away, and every day someone was calling me, going, you want
to go today, I'm like, I can't, but I'll tell you I've
been to professional golf tournaments and I know people are gonna be kicking me for
this one, but I've been to professional golf tournaments and I just think it's
better on television, just like football. I had no interest in fighting the
crowd. I like to go to the bathroom when I want to go to
the bathroom. And as I've talked about multiple times to me, when you're
at a professional golf tournament, everything is happening somewhere else. You have no
idea what's going on. So I've been to plenty of them in the past,
and I find out you missed so much by being there. Yeah,
you do. And I know I know that the excitement of saying I was
at the US Open, Well, my son was there and he bought me
a nice logo shirt, you know. So it's like, Okay, did
you go. No. I watched it on TV like everybody else, and
it was awesome. But here, so here's what happened. You're right,
you you miss You're telling me what happened. I want to set this up
because prior to it to the Open, I'm doing YouTube's now you know,
mental golf tips on YouTube, and I was talking. I was talking about
my one of my favorite subjects, which is outcome versus process goals and you
know, to win the US Open. That's the outcome, that's the big
deal. But you know, it's like to catch twenty two. If you
want something, you can't have it. If you don't want it, you
can have it. And people flew sight of the process. If you do
the process and stay totally in the process, who's going to win the person
who did the process better. And I made a point that you know,
you know Tiger, he had just won the Memorial and he was really on
fire, and the press was in I was Tiger going to be back?
And I basically made a comment that, you know, Tiger's extreme desire.
He probably has more desire to be successful than any golfer out there, you
know, just by all the action that he takes to get ready. And
I says, his desire is so extreme and he's so focused on the outcome
that that may prevent him from accomplishing it because it's going to keep him out
of the process, keep him out of the present. And sure enough,
two days he was right there and then he disappeared. And you can talk
about jim Yorick. Now, yeah, well, Tiger, you know I
know that like this kid Hostler, the amateur who is just all the Ray.
It's a pimple with a dimple. Uh huh. He's a kid participating
in the US Open and he's pimply faced kid with braces. It's like,
something's not right here. But he had game, he was awesome. Yeah,
came back and made a birdie. Yeah. And I would suspect that
he was all about the process. And I heard that he worked with with
Rotella, And it's like, why should I be attached to the outcome because
I'm here and there's no way I'm going to win this thing. I'm going
to do my best and hope for the best. But you have guys like
Tiger who are who is winning is the only goal? Right? It's all
about the outcome. It's not about participating, it's not about being there.
It's it's winning. Yeah. And and is that for a competitive golfer?
Is it wrong to want to win, to be focused on winning? No,
it's just like I or is that not the outcome? Well, there's
two goals. The outcome is to win and then the process are the you
know, is are the steps that take to win? And there are many
factors that go into it. And if you forget about the mental game,
you're shooting yourself in the foot. And the whole key of the mental game
is to stay in the moment, to stay in the present. And before
you know the battle begins, you say, okay, my game plan is
to win. Now, how you're going to win by staying in the present.
And anytime you start, while you're you know, playing, start focusing
on the outcome. You you create fear of losing. You're into the future.
You're not into the president. When you make a bad shot, you're
angry. You're in the past, you're not into the present. So in
order to win, you have to forget all about winning and stay in the
present. It's to Catch twenty two. It really is. Yeah, if
you want it, you can't have it. If you don't want it,
you'll have it. So like I t tell, you know, guy going
for gold medals like Tacker, you know, you know, going for nineteen
agers. I said, you know, nobody in the world's done this,
and so you know, you don't have much room for error, and so
you you set your sights on the outcome. But once you set your site,
you put all the energy into the moment. Well, it was interesting
on you know, because he played so well the first two days go into
the week and Thursday and Friday, the buzz everywhere was this is it right,
We're gonna do it. He's there, And then he had a difficult
round but didn't knock himself out of play on Saturday. And then after the
first four holes or even the first five holes on Sunday, you can hear
TVs turning off all over the country. Yeah, you just hear click click,
click click. The signal kept getting brighter and brighter and brighter as everyone
was turning off their TVs because it was like, oh well, then,
I'm you know, Furick is not the most dynamic personality, and Graham mcdoal's
interesting. Yeah, I'll keep my eye on him. But I went Tiger
Jim for a couple of minutes now, like you were talking about that,
you know, when you missed that one shot, he just dropped his driver
in frustration. Yeah, when he when he I think it was on.
He was just doing so well and he doesn't show any emotion. He's just
a stone face the whole time. You don't know what's going on. And
he hit a drive on sixteen. I think it was that just hard hook
left and he swung his club in discuss he didn't slam it to the ground,
but if there was a tree there, you could see he would maybe
have wrapped his club around it. And and you it was the first time
you saw him somewhat emotional, and you would think that, hopefully it's going
to be gone by the time he gets to his ball and saw that he
had a way to save it. But it just kind of spiraled down hill
after that. And you know, I don't want to use the choke word.
Oh I just did, but but it's it's so fascinating where a guy
bogi's a couple of holes and it's like, oh, he choked, Come
on, he hit a couple of bogies. Well, the timing was poor,
you know, it was the wrong time to hit a bogey. Yeah.
I don't know if that's choking, but he definitely was showing his emotion.
And after he had one, he put one over in the rough,
the rough h near a bunker, and and the ball just kind of went
in a bizarre direction and he just, you know, got down practically on
his knees and took the the shaft of his club and bit down on it,
you know, like and that was just obvious. You so you can
see that he was consumed with the outcome at that point. Oh yeah,
where because it was so close he could taste it. I mean, that's
the thing. He was so close. And that's when when you start getting
so close, all of a sudden, your control over the metal game disappears,
because you go into the future. You get concerned about the outcome,
and then there it goes. Let's talk about the general golfer out there.
You know, most of the golfers listing, you know, to the show,
having weren't playing in the US Open. So and you say, how
does this translate, you know, to you the golf right US is you
know, it's common knowledge that most golfers have a better practice game than when
they go to play. They can't take the practice game, you know,
when they're playing around the golf And the whole reason behind that is they stop
thinking, well, the range, you can miss the ball and you don't
care. You hit another ball, You hit another ball, you hit another
ball. But as soon as you go to play, you miss the ball,
and all of a sudden, oh my god, there goes a score.
You go You're just totally consumed about the outcome. Whereas on the range,
you're just in the process. You know, on the range, you're
on a nice you're on a mat, you're on the grass. It's flat,
it's you know, it's you know mode grass. Yeah, all of
a sudden you get on on the course and you have uneven lies, you
have hard pen, you have thick rough. It's just so different. So
I think what ends up happening is you just start tensing up, you start
gripping you know, the club harder, and you breathe faster. And the
last time that I remember being attached to my score during my round, I
stepped up to the eighteenth hole going, all I have to do is bogie
and I'm breaking eighty and I hit my driving the water done. I was
like, why did I even say it. It's like you just don't talk
about a guy pitching a no hitter during the game. He don't do it.
It's just amazing. It's so simple, you know, on the conceptual
basis that, yes, it's simple, conceptually, no question about it.
And then that's the question, just like you know, doing one hundred push
ups, the average person can't do one hundred push ups, including myself.
Now, is it hard? To do one hundred push ups. It's actually
pretty simple. If you just exercising on a daily basis and you start increasing
the amount of pushups to do, you know, by one a week or
maybe one or two a month, it's just a matter of time until you
can do one hundred push ups. It's just the focus and the discipline.
And it's well, Michael, that sounds like you're being attached to the outcome
there. Well, no, it's not being attached to the outcome. You're
focusing on getting to one hundred pushes. Well okay, Well that's first.
You have to have an outcome goal. Ah, okay. Once you set,
you go. Like I used to swim to San Francisco Bay, you
know, I swam Alcatraz, I swam the Golden Gay Bridges and really,
oh yeah, and it was a piece of cake. I used to jump
in the water. I remember the Sunrise swimmers at six thirty morning. I
was a member of the South End Rolling Club down at the foot of Aquatic
Park at Hyde Street, and we would jump in Monday through Friday at six
thirty summertime. Wintertime didn't make any difference. We'd swim all or two every
day. You know during the week and during a week ends. You know,
I'd still swim on Saturday and Sunday, and so I was in phenomenal
shape. So the swim alcoatraz with golden gay bridge was no big deal.
And in those days, we weren't using these wetsuits. No wetsuits allowed because
they were for sissies. You were your little speedo and a little bathing cap
and that was it. Wow, even during the dead of winter. And
that's mental training. Need to get yourself to jump in that water. You
know when it's pitch blackout in January and you know it's freezing holding for oh
my god. But anyway, if I try to do it now, I
would drown. There's no way I'm not in physical condition. It's the same
thing with the mental game. If you can start training your mind that every
time you catch yourself focusing on the outcome, and a lot of times you
do this after you played around the golf, you critique yourself and like we
talked before on the Golf Smarter you know podcast that we did a couple of
years ago. You know those tapes we used to talk about the tape.
You know how Star tips your brain record everything in your program to repeat your
past. And you're if you thought about you know, the outcome in the
past, you're going to think about it in the future unless after the round.
Look golf, you sit there and you talk to yourself and say,
tape in the future the next time I play. Anytime I start thinking about
the outcome, I'm going to snap my fingers and tell myself forget it.
Let's get back into the present. Let's take another deep breath and slowly exhale,
or you know, change my chemistry and then start playing. Like on
the eighteenth hole when you said, all I have to do is don't hit
it into water. You know, you've got to catch yourself. And if
you didn't catch yourself after the round, you have to say the next time
I play, I you know, when I start talking about the outcome,
I have to step away from the ball, have a talk to myself and
say, Fred, knock it off. You're thinking about the outcome. Let's
get back into the present and just see what happens. Take a couple of
deep breasts, exhale, get into the present, step up and hit the
ball. But you've got to do that over and over and over, so
it becomes instinctive. Makes sense, Yes, it does. It takes it
again, and we're going back to in theory. Yeah, it's not theory,
it's in reality. It's a question of how strong is your desire.
Most people have very weak desires. Unfortunately. I mean, I don't want
to get on the soapbuck to look at the people in the United States.
Most of them are abese. They're overweight, right, you know, it's
not too hard to get not to be overweight. All you do is stop
stop beating so much and start exercising and cut back on the suitets. Simple,
but most people don't. Discipline is a very self discipline. Self discipline.
Before you're gonna have discipline, you have to have desire. Interesting,
Once you have desire, you set a goal and an outcome goal, and
then you start doing the process. And that's what That's what life bulls down
to, That's what golf balls down to. That's what all sports boil down
to. Doing the work, go in the process, improve the process,
the results, take care of themselves. Nice forget about winning. You know.
We did a We had an episode of Golf Smarter in early two thousand
and eleven, episode number two hundred and seventy four. I just look up
okay, two hundred and seventy four with Mel Soul. Are you familiar with
Mel Soul played the South African PGA Tour PGA Professional and his whole thing is
NATO golf and Ato not attached to outcome NATO golf. Yeah, so you
know, it's not like you're the first person. We're the only person talking
about that. Is this is the basic rule? Right? Yeah? Everybody
knows that, but nobody does it right. And you know, and I
always always say, if you know something and you're not doing it, you
don't know it, because if you really knew it, you wouldn't do it.
Yeah, right, yeah, exactly. It's uh. I brought this
up at the end of the last episode, and I do want to pursue
this, and that would be personality types, okay, And there are multiple
personality types, especially in golf but in life in general, and they manifest
themselves in different ways on the golf course, whether they're attached to outcome or
not. How do how does that come into play? And what do you
recognize as the different personality types or does this not play into your teachings?
No, it plays totally into the teaching. Really, you go back to
the tape. You know, your tape starts working six months after conception.
You know, while you're still in your mother's room. It'll record everything through
your entire life. And some people have different set points. Now, for
some reason, people respond, they get angry very quickly, and that's a
particular set point. You know, it's on their particular tape, and that's
they call them a personality, a type, or whatever it is. But
your personality type is just a reflection of your emotional response to certain facts on
your tape. I've done a lot of one on one consultations, you know
with athletes, not only just golfers, but you know, boxers, weightlifters,
football players, you know, you name it, and we always get
into the emotions. And I always, you know, once I explain the
tape, and I said, your thoughts have two components, facts and emotions.
And when you see a fact and if you have a negative response to
it, it throws your chemistry off and takes away from your performance. And
then I'll ask my point out the four major negatives hate, greed, jealousy,
and fear and hates a strong word, but just say anger and that
out of those four things, fear is the number one, the negative emotion
that comes up vast majority of the times. And then after that anger comes
up. And so you could talk about personality types. You've got one person
to personality type that gets angry at the flash you know, of a button,
and other people at Jim Puoric. It takes a lot to get him
angry. But he got angry because he was thinking about the outcome, whereas
if with a Rory Sabatinio, you know, he gets real quick Tiger Woods,
if he starts missing the outcome, you can just start counting, Okay,
how many more misses before he starts throwing his club or starts spitting on
a green, or starts cussing. And so that's your personality types. When
he's winning, he's coolure And so you can almost look at every player on
tour, and the vast majority of them have fear as their dominant negative emotion,
and there's several of them that are very obvious that have anger. There's
been so much converse, so much talk about the intimidation factor the Tiger when
he is on not only does he have he must you know, love possessing
it. That when he starts to make his move, will when he when
he was making his move and he had the lead on Sunday, it would
be an intimidation element to everybody on the course. How how do you make
that work for yourself? How do you do that in competition? And how
do you avoid being intimidated? You have to study a little bit. The
first one is you have to understand that your your nervous system, you know,
is a combination of neurons and then biochemicals. Neurons and biochemicals, so
your nervous system is actually an alternating current. All alternating currents create an electromagnetic
field, which are infinite in nature. When you're dealing with somebody like Tiger
was who is super super confident, his electromagnetic field is so strong that anybody
around him can pick up on it, and if they feel it, you
know, it just starts. If a person doesn't have an equally strong magnetic
field, they've had it. There's no way they're going to combine it.
The only way you can combat it is just basically acknowledge it. Okay,
this guy has a superior talent than I have, and the only prayer that
I have of beating him is to get into his mind. He's confident,
but all I want to do is just play him even because if I can
play him even, I'm going to create doubt in his mind. And to
explain how this could work in a different sport, to make it easier to
visualize. I was working with the boxer at one time. It was a
lightweight, left handy, left hander, and he was really good. He
was fast. He was like a left handed cash as clay, you know,
Muhammad Alan. And he would say, yeah, I get into these
fights and when all of a sudden, these guys start coming after me with
all they have, and I would say, Rudy, take a look at
what you're talking about. He was so good. He would start beating the
guy and the guy was going down. He knew that if he didn't come
back, you know, he was history. Rudy pretty much would win the
match. So the guy would come after Rudy with all the ounce of his
courage, because you know, when your life's on the line, you use
all the energy that you have at your resources. And I says Rudy,
when somebody does that, that means he's all set to get to the surrender.
So all you have to do is play him even you don't even worry.
Just play him even, let him give you your best shot. And
after a while, after he gets sending you all of his best shots,
he's going to say, oh my god, I did everything I could under
my power, and this guy's still playing the evening I said, then step
it up and he'll wilt, just like that, he says. Michael,
it's a miracle. He says. It works every time. And that's the
same thing. If you're playing against a person who's intimidating you, all you
can do is say, I'm going to play the guy even till I can
put doubt in his mind, which will take away from his confidence. And
as soon as you put doubt in his mind, he's gone. Like he
used to say, the devil's greatest tool is doubt. You put a doubt
in the person's mind, they can't perform as well. Interesting. Yeah,
it really does. It's very interesting too, putting doubt in someone's mind.
Just play with him, I mean, just stay with him, or stay
one step ahead of him. But then it'll affect how they performed. Let
me tell you tell you a good example. I used to be really good
at playing you know shuffleboard, barroom shuffle board where you throw those little pucks
down the table. Yeah, And one day I was playing. I don't
play too much anymore, but there was just like the short game of golf.
I was really good good. I mean, I was like Tiggerwood's the
shuffleboard table. And this one guy showed up and he was a really good
shape, you know, a little bit bigger than me. And I said,
oh my god, this guy's pretty pretty awesome. You could feel his
energy. And so we played. It was a tough game, but I
ended up beating him. And after it was over, he said, oh,
he says, let me buy you a drink. I said, okay.
He says you intimidated me, and I don't get intimidated. I said,
well, what do you mean. He said, well, every time
you made you you played, whether you made a shot or missed a shot,
your attitude never changed. He says, nothing ever affected you. And
I said, well, thank you very much. I said, well what
do you do. He said, well, I'm my coach wrestling. And
he said I'm also the lead man for a swat team. And I said
wow. I said, well, what does a lead man for a swat
team do He says, I'm the first guy through the door, and I
got to take out my man on the right or before he shoots me.
And I said, well, do you ever have any fear? He says
no. I said, well, I'm a mental trainer. I says,
how do you get over the fear? He says, it's training, training,
training, training. You train so many times that you never ever think
about getting shot. You're so focused on doing your job, doing the process
that you never think about the outcome. And I said, do you ever
have any fear? He's the only fear I have is that my partner,
you know, doesn't take out his men, you know. And he says
other than that, he says no. And so it's the same thing,
whether it's being the lead man of a swat team, playing golf, playing
basketball, selling everything, it all comes down to the mental game, and
people don't put the time into understand it. Mostly. It's interesting that you
Yeah, it's interesting that you say selling. Now, all of a sudden,
we've we've gone beyond sports and and getting into you know, our professional
lives because we're not professional athletes. That's our passion, right, How do
you approach because again, especially selling, it's all about outcome. Yeah,
I want to sell a lot of books. I want to Yeah, right,
I want to sell. I want to increase my my revenue stream.
I want to increase my commissions. It's all about selling. Yeah, how
do you do you work with people like that? And how are you able
to help without talking about the outcome? You always have to talk about the
outcome to get your goal. You know, don't forget you know, you
don't forget about the outcome. You say, Okay, this is my goal.
I want to win. I want to sell. I want to whatever
the outcome is. And once you set your sites and you say, okay,
now what processes do I have to do in order to accomplish that?
And it's just like in selling, the whole goal is it's it's you know,
see, business has a distorted values. They're all about making money.
They don't care if they're doing a good job or a bad job. They
want to know am I making money? And I say that there are some
businesses that are really good. But from my experience, I try to take
my program into the business world years ago and I left it because it requires
total honesty. Business would rather make a buck than be totally honest. And
I challenge any corporation out there they want to put my program in, they'll
have to take a look at their product line. Either you're benefiting your customer
or you're not. And most people are more concerned how can I make more
money and get away with shaving my products value and still have enough value to
please my customer. So from that point of view, I sound kind of
cynical. It's just I'm repeating. I'm just reporting the facts of life that
are out there. And but but if you find a good product that you
can you can that provides benefit, it's an easy thing to sell. All
you have to do is go in and start talking to the prospect and explain
to them why they're going to benefit from it instead of being you know,
and they and their big thing is they're afraid of making a mistake, and
so you have to overcome their fear. And if you think about their their
best interests, I'm here to help you. And like solar, Solar is
a very interesting thing. It's really hot right now and it's very beneficial.
You pay your utility bill on your PG and e yes, okay, now,
if you stop your tilly bill, they cut off your electrizy, right,
yeah, right, Okay, what's your average utility bill a month?
Only? Oh, I'm not even gonna go there. Okay, let's say
it's two hundred dollars. I will say that it went down fifty bucks last
month because I installed Nest in my house and they now carry at the Apple
store. If you have not checked out Nest dot com and get a learning
thermostat, that's my outside of golf tip for today. Check out the learning
thermostat Nest Nest dot com. Awesome. Okay, so yeah, pgn E
bill interviewing. You know, if you really take a look at the technologies
advanced so far that you can actually put in a solar system for less money,
you know, financing it than what you're paying your utility bill. Let's
say your tilly bill is two hundred dollars and it costs you seventy five dollars
to finance. To think, so you're putting one hundred and twenty five dollars
into your pocket every month, you know, and hey, that's you know,
that's a great thing. Pleasure. You're helping out the economy. And
so a salesperson, all they have to do is overcome a person's objective.
They say, well, gee, I can't afford it. I said,
well, you pay PG and need, don't you. And they said yeah.
And I said, well, why don't you just stop paying them and
get yourself a solar system, pay the solar and the and the money left
over, you know, buy groceries with it, or take your way to
you know, to a movie or whatever you want. You know, so
you're throwing money away. Now, that's the very simple product to sell,
as long as you're strong and you and you overcome a person's objective. It's
what they're what they're doing. They're saying I can't afford it. They didn't
spend the time to find out they can afford it, and they're better off
doing it than not doing it. It's a battle of wills, and if
you're a strong sales person you can explain that to them. Yes, I
understand. However, did you look at this, it's it's all mental.
Life is mental. I've been accus is being mental, but that's something else
all together. What sports have you encountered that this topic is just not as
important as it is. In golf at the high level, there's it's it's
discussed quite a bit, is that right? Oh yeah, just because once
you get to that level, at a high level, I guess once you
get there, the talent level talent. Yeah, once the talent level is
at a professional, high end, major league type level, I would think
that there's very very little that separates the goods from the greats. That's that's
you're correct, And it's all mental, just like a baseball really you know,
like you know why Cy Young winner one year and all of a sudden
I have a hard time winning the next year. Does talent disappear? Mental?
Yeah, you know, so air resport, when you get up to
the high level, it's all mental, you know, unless you have certain
god given talents. But even still, god given talents don't win all the
time because some people, you know, take you know, get in there
and the god given talent talent person, you know, he chokes, he
starts thinking about the outcome, he gets out of his game. But the
best ones always get into the process. Michael Jordan, he was totally into
the process, you know, And you know, people do miracles, you
know, just like golfers, Like when Tagger was in the role he was
in the process. And but you know, just you just like the regular
golfer. The regular golfer, they don't have the time to practice, or
they don't choose to take the time to practice. But most of them just
don't have the time, you know. Like a professional golfer, that's his
whole life. It's practicing, getting in shape, being disciplined, and things
like that. But you always have time to work when your mental game,
because whether you're at work or whether you're commuting. You know, if you
start understanding it your emotions, what affects your mental game and your tape,
you're going to repeat your emotions, Like when you're driving, if it's traffic,
if you're getting angry, that's a great opportunity to work on your mental
game. Hey, I got to understand I have a factor's traffic, I'm
getting upset. This is a good chance to work on my mental game,
you know. And there's countless times during the day, you know, when
you run across negative emotions, and most people they just accept their negative emotions
during the daytime because it doesn't affect their performance as quickly as it does on
a golf course. But you can practice your mental game all day long and
if you do. When it comes time to play golf, it's really easy
to control your emotions. It's a lot easier than if you don't. And
it gets harder and harder when you're having you know, and golf is one
of those sports that you just don't get better every day every time you go
out there, you and the range of scores outcomes on any given day could
swing ten to twenty strokes. Right, yeah, you can. You can
go out like last time I played, shot in eighty one, today in
eighty seven, and and then it right in between, I'll shoot a ninety
five. They just and once things start consistently not and I try to,
you know, let it all go, let it all go. But then
I'll get to a spot where it's like, you know, like, okay,
I've had five five really bad shots, not just holes, I mean
five bad holes. It starts, the doubt rises and the frustration increases.
It's not so easy to break away from that's how would you do that?
It's mental training. Bred you cannot get it, get away from it if
you don't spend the time every day working on your emotions, learning how to
you know, transfer your emotions from negative to positive negative the positive or negative
to neutral. So when all of a sudden you're having a bad day and
each shot gets worse and worse and your chemistry gets down and down, you
just have to say, hey, today's goal is to keep a good attitude
and not be negative, and just play one shot at a time and don't
care about the score, because today we're all about the process, and the
process is to play this with a good attitude. I love that. I
love that because you know, it's like before every round, you should you
should agree with your playing partners. Okay, here's today's rules, right,
here's our rules today. You know, anything inside of two feet pick it
up. If you find a ball, it's yours, or you know,
any rules you want to make. As long as everyone agrees on those rules,
then you're fine. But I think you have to agree with yourself.
Here's how I'm going to You know, I don't know what's going to be
the outcome of today's game. I don't know. I know that I want
to perform well. But if things don't go well, I have to agree
with myself. Got to let it go. Don't get worried about it.
You know how many times have we had bad days like that and feel like
you want to just walk off, of course, and then just I quit.
I don't care. Let me just finish these four or five holes,
and I'm done. I want to go home. And all of a sudden,
those four or five holes everything starts to work again. Mm hmm.
Yeah. And you know we talked about sales earlier. It's it's the same
thing. And earlier in my lifetime, I used to do a lot of
selling, you know, I was developing my program. I would work with
the athletes for free, and I would go out and like time, get
jobs, you know, selling them. I was really really good at selling
if I had a product, I believed that. And some days you go
out there and you'd be out there and knocking on doors. You knock on
one hundred doors and no, no, no, no, no no.
Other days you go out there, you couldn't knock on one hundred doors because
the first twenty said yes, yes, yes, and you were too busy
writing up to the orders. You never got to do one hundred things.
And so why is one day miserable and the next day it's so successful.
But you got to keep the same attitude. You can't get too high.
You can't get too low. You know, it's all numbers and they all
balance out at the end of the day or at the end of the week
or at the end of the month. You know, baseball players, for
example, the hitters, if they have a rule they look at ten bats
in a row. During ten bats, if they had zero for ten,
that's over with. They start fresh on the next ten. Then if you
get five for ten, that's shooting five hundred. So they figured, okay,
we got five for twenty, that's two hundred and fifty. And so
that's how they keep their sanity. They don't. They just and it's the
same thing when you're playing. You've got to understand that my attitude comes first,
to school comes second. And if you can learn to control your attitude,
no matter whatever happens out there, you're going to find out you consistently
shoot better lower scores and the spread is a lot smaller. You're not going
to have a twenty, you know shot spread. You may have a ten
shot and then if you can start working, then you'll come into a five
shot spread. But it all comes down to, you know, how much
energy you put into mastering the present moment, and you know, I have
my four step routine that we talked about. You know, smarter, you
know golf, it's the basic you know, instinct. Having said this for
a while, so we got to think for a second again. Feedback,
relax, preparation, instinctive execution. And so after the shot you have a
look, chance to look at the feedback. Okay, what happened? Good,
bad, and different? And then once you learn from the feedback,
you see, okay, I've got to relax. That's history. Let's get
back into the presence. So you relax. Then as you're approaching the ball,
you start pairing yourself with a good attitude and what's the distance, what
is the lie? What is my colt? You know, this plan of
attack, and then you step up and you don't think. You hit the
ball instinctively and then feedback what happened. And if you can do that on
every single shot, your attitude stays consistent. And that's all you can control
is your attitude. You can't control the golf shot. No, Sometimes I
like to play like in like you're saying a baseball player and doing ten at
bats and then move on like I'll play in groups of three holes. Okay,
I want to play. I want to see if I can just play
it one over on these three holes. And I know that I'm already saying
that I want to be part of the outcome. But if I just break
it down, it seems to be easier and I can also let go of
things. It's like, okay, I'm done with that now I'll move on.
But I should just do that hole by hole. I guess, well,
you know that that gives you good range because you're playing with three holes
and that's my outcome goal. But how do you accomplish it? You do
it one shot at a time, and at the end of the you know,
you know, three rounds, you take a look, Okay, now,
how good was I with my mental game? Did I play one shot
at a time? Or was I worrying about, you know, shooting two
over and you know as I was playing, yep. And then then what
is good about that is that you had a chance after three holes to get
some feedback to see how well you did with your mental game and then play
the next you know, three holes. Awesome, and then you can learn
from that and say, okay, let's play the next three holes. And
as you do this, by the time you played you know, nine holes,
your mental game is starting to really get into shape. And I always
tell people if you play par you know for the first fifteen holes and then
you burned you the last three, you know, you're shooting a pretty good
score. Yeah yeah, so why worry about shooting par? You know,
and say them, I should you shooting? Miss this here and I missed
this one there. Don't worry about it, right, I said, they'll
come definitely. Don't worry about it because then you're gonna start freaking out.
Oh my god, I haven't made a mistake in a while. It's a
case of death. I mean, I was caddying for for one guy,
you know, he was in Greening regulation first, you know, nine holes
in the he was at par and he said, my god, I should
be at least three under by now. I said, shut up, I
said one shot at I said, knock it off. And so he ended
up, you know, making six birdies on the last night. Wow wow.
And that wouldn't have happened if he didn't keep his cool. I would
love to be there here to caddy say to somebody, shut up, you
know you got you got it. Knock it off, I said, knock
it off. You know, your your anger is getting to you. Yeah,
I said, what's wrong with you? Don't you listen to what I'm
telling you? And there I want to throw this club and hitching ahead with
it. Yeah, you're probably not shooting fifty nine today, so just relax.
Yeah, it's just it. But it's amazing. But this program that
I have, the Mental Keys to Improve your Golf, it works every time.
All they have to do is, you know, read the material,
you know, get just get the CD and just listen to it over and
over and then just pay attention and to your mental game. Well that's a
that's a great segue there, because I was just about to say. The
two books Metal Golf Tips and The Metal Keys to Improve Your Golf Guaranteed to
Lower Your Score by Michael Anthony. They're both available on the golfers Mart in
the Golfers Mart at golfsmarter dot com and also though if you have not checked
out golf Smarter Tips, a year's worth of five minutes six minute shows with
Michael we did like fifties two shows or something. Golf Smarter Tips are still
available in iTunes and even though we recorded them a couple of years ago.
They're still valid. I mean, the points don't change, and the training
is all there and you can just go through it. You can get a
CDs. You can go check them out at mentalkeys dot com and also his
YouTube videos. Look up Michael Anthony Mental Keys. Don't forget my CD using
the Mental Keys to polish the wheel. That's powerful. Put that on your
mark. Well, you know, I this is the digital age. Nobody
buys CDs. Sorry, Michael, but when he stopped driving their car to
the uh, you know, to the golf course, you know I'll agree
with you. Well, oh, why you think people put in CDs?
They don't hook people their iPod and their and their iPhones and their Android phones
and their blue tooths and see the only way they can get it is to
get the CD to downloaded into it, because that's the only only format that
it's available in. Well, you should make it downloadable. I haven't figured
that Amazon hasn't set it up that way yet. Yeah, I've tried.
At least I do it from your website. Well, on the website,
it's just that's more complicated than that. Bread. I've just pulled everything out
and put it into Amazon and other distributors. Well, that's one of the
better distributors you can have, no question. Amazon's a good distributor. You
know, your website's a good distributor. Oh, thank you. You know,
it's really good. It's a pleasure being here, you know, talking
to you and talking to all the golfers you know that are listening. You
know, I do get you know, people come in they say I heard
about you on the podcast, so you know, so it's working. Awesome,
awesome, I'm glad to hear that. Well, thank you. Hey,
it was great to have you on again, Michael, it was.
It's always a pleasure to speak to you, even if we separated by a
couple of weeks or a couple of years, but it's always always great to
hear from you again. Thanks so much for coming back on the show and
being on our members only podcast. And it's my pleasure. Thank you. Fred