You Can’t Shoot Low If You’re Afraid to Shoot High | Dr Raymond Prior (Part 1)

Anxious golf swing looks very different than a freely executed golf swing or putting stroke or so on and so forth

Right, so if I'm going out protecting against an 80 I don't really have access to shooting in the 60s

It's relative to your skill level, right?

So if this podcast is how low can you go it's also well how high are you willing to risk going if you want to actually go low because you can't risk

Can't risk shooting 65 you don't have access to the freedom required for that if you're not also willing to shoot in 80

So many of the club golfers that I have worked with over time one of the primary barriers for them is

Domino wonder number one is this can't be really bad for whatever reasons they've attached to it

And then therefore you're not playing freely enough to shoot

Lower than your handicap enough to move it down and certainly not low enough to do that under pressure in your club events

You remember guests or so on and so forth

Okay, before we start this episode

You might have asked a few silly questions

Have you ever stood in the first tee feeling really really anxious?

Have you ever told yourself just don't free putt today and then immediately free putt

Or have you ever had one of those rhymes where it feels like your body is just completely forgotten how to play golf

Yeah, thoughts so we've all been there

So today we're joined by Dr. Raymond prior

Top performance psychologist author of golf beneath the surface

And someone who works with elite performers across sport business and entertainment

And in this episode we get into something that might explain a lot of what happens inside your head on the golf course

Things like why your brain prioritizes avoidance over performance

Why trying to relax or think positive is often making things worse

And why sometimes the thing holding your golf bag might actually be something that happened years ago

Honestly, this one goes pretty deep

So let's dive straight it

This is how I know can you go

Okay

Welcome back everyone

Once again to how low can you go the golf improvement podcast born in Scotland

Where we speak to some of the leading experts in their field on golf improvement

Today we make no exception to that we are delighted to be joined by Dr. Raymond prior

author of golf beneath the surface which for me I actually gonna go out in the link here

I think in the not too distant future will be regarded as one of the classics of our time in terms of

Golf improvement

He's got a fantastic podcast with chase Cooper of the same name golf beneath the surface

Also works with some of the top players on the planet and not just golfers

He also works as a performance coach for

Oscar winners Grammy winners

CEOs you name it

Dr. Raymond prior we're delighted to welcome you thank you for joining us welcome to how low can you go

Okay, let's go out

That's the plan that's the plan

To give you just a little snippet of our backstory we started this

Podcast about seven months ago Chris

Yes, both of us trying to reach our golfing targets. I am a midhand decapper

I'd really love to get to single figures and I'm I'm trying to get to scratch and I feel like the abilities there

But the mental side of it is not there. So that's why we're speaking to you and just getting your thing to

All the great wisdom that you have

Yeah, no pressure

Raymond

Stay for anyone who's maybe less familiar with golf beneath the surface and any of your work

Do you want to just give everyone a bit of your background and just kind of talk through some of your work to do it?

Sure

You know the cliff notes is that

Spend up a lot a lot of time in school a variety of different advanced degrees all in pursuit of

Trying to understand what it is that really unlocks human

Some people use the word potential for me. It's kind of more like answering the question. Why aren't humans

Getting more out of what they're trying to do like what really holds us back is kind of question

So a whole manner of advanced degrees and everything from performance psychology to neuroscience sleep science and so on and so forth

The work I do by training and trade is to help people understand how their brain is working how their mind is working and how they can perhaps train both

Two more freely pursue the things that are important to them

Whatever that might look like and whatever realm that they're in

Golf beneath the surface the book is a bit of a

Covid lockdown project for me where I finally I always wanted to write a book

To try to contribute to the field and to people and I had time during a pandemic shutdown here in America was

Long enough for me to kind of dig in

In terms of what the book is aimed at for golfers is two things to again based on my professional goals to help people understand their minds their brains and themselves to be able to try to do things more

The way they want to then necessarily what they feel they need to hold back from

And then as a little bit of a challenge to the status quo of performance psychology particularly in golf which historically has been pretty poor

It's what I call surface level psychology, which is just like the oh, you're feeling really anxious

You should just relax or you're feeling really uncertain. You should just trust which

Is if you understand how the brain works even out of fundamental level?

You can understand why that stuff just doesn't really cut the mustard once things really get into a pressure situation or we're under enough stress

So that book was a bit of dual purpose there and then the podcast is a little bit of an extension with that where we're trying to

Have discussions around

How is it that we can really help unlock a little bit of what we tend to lock in and then also talk with a lot of people who are

Trying to help people do the same from whatever their area of expertise is whether it's biomechanics

Instruction also other some other psychology professionals all the way to you know

We have some people coming on in the next couple of months that are statisticians and others who are again

We're trying to help people perform better and I would argue be happier healthier people too as well

Well, I think you find

Certainly a lot of happy people if they perform like they want to on a golf course

Yeah, that can at times if I could just push back on that a little bit

Dave that if your happiness is dependent on outcomes on the golf course

We actually see those are the least happy people

Because you're gonna have an anxious experience and it's gonna be very difficult for you to produce those outcomes through anxiety

So if my happiness is gated by the outcomes that I produce in my life the approval of other people

So on and so forth all these things then I've created gates to happiness

When it is available to me and most of the things in my life as long as I don't create the conditions that wouldn't allow me to access it

Right, so there's certainly something to be said about producing a really good outcome or performing at a high level

And how that makes us feel

But if I only have access to that from the outcomes I produce then I'm creating the conditions of my brain to go do that thing

Or pursue those outcomes

Through a state of anxiety and avoidance which makes it harder for me to get and then the experience declines

And so on and now you kind of get a bit of a vicious cycle rather than a virtuous cycle

So look outcomes are not a bad thing

They do matter in our lives and there are consequences for when we do and don't

produce them

But if they are a gateway to our emotions we are by definition holding our emotions hostage by them

And outcomes are not controllable

And so now I have given an uncontrollable thing

Access and or control over my emotional state

Yeah, that's powerful

But I think on that and I'm delighted that you pushed back on me with regard to that

Would you say that that's possibly at the heart of why so many club golfers

Maybe don't reach their

Golf targets. They don't go as low as they would like to

Because of what you just said

There can be there are many factors contributing that so if I could frame this in a way where we can kind of organize it

If you think about anything we do in this case

Let's just say it's your golf performance with the intention of shooting the lowest scores that you can as often as you can

There is a domino effect

From us that influences that and that the beginning of that domino effect is always our psychology

This is not my personal opinion. This is how our nervous system works

Okay, so again, imagine you're going and playing a round of golf in a psychological state that goes just go try to do your best

Let's go see what happens versus your first domino is uh-oh this can't go a certain way

Or I can't let people judge me with this so essentially I've created two different situations one is

Permission to go perform freely the other one is not really

Right well from there the next domino is always our neurology

So now we're talking your brain activity your brain chemistry

Which then impacts your physiology which is whether your nervous system is up-regulated as a stress response or a threat response

And then you kick that down the line to now how that impacts your biomechanics and how your body is actually moving

Then of course that impacts how you would be able to use your core strategy or whether you're using it

Your equipment in the way that it's actually designed or whether you're using it as a defense mechanism against all the things that you're not trying to do

Or what the like again, there's a there's a kick down the line here right so all of these things matter

So sometimes for golfers it's well, I'm not in physical shape to be able to score low because I either run out of gas as my rounds are going on

Or I'm not flexible enough to be able to move in the ways that you need to to deliver the club to the golf ball

All of those things are indeed contributing factors

Where I would start with anyone is are you playing freely enough often enough from your first domino to even

Give yourself a chance to reach the outcomes that you want or to give yourself a chance to perform consistently enough and learn over time

To be able to figure out what down the line or down the chain reaction here is a contributing factor that you can then ultimately try to

Improve upon that might help you

So if I tell you you're going and playing a round of golf through anxiety

And then you come back and go on my swing was terrible like well your swings terrible because you played through anxiety the whole time

Anxious golf swing looks very different than a freely executed golf swing or putting stroke or so on and so forth

So if I'm going out protecting against an 80

I don't really have access to shooting in the 60s again relative to your skill level

Right, so this podcast is how low can you go?

It's also well how high are you willing to risk going if you want to actually go though

But you can't risk can't risk shooting you can't

Shoot a 65 you don't have access to the freedom required for that if you're not also willing to shoot in 80

So many of the club golfers that I have worked with over time one of the primary barriers for them is

Domino wonder number one is this can't can't be really bad for whatever reasons they've attached to it

And then therefore you're not playing freely enough to shoot

Lower than your handicap enough to move it down and certainly not low enough to do that under pressure in your club events

You remember guests your so on and so forth

And I heard you talk about acceptance there

Would that be the first domino for a unique set that might go wrong?

Is that could you would you say that sure? Let's let's look at let's start with how our brain operates

So we're going to go to domino to before we go to domino one here

So our brain is first and foremost designed to keep us alive

Okay, so if I give it

But let's also consider this your brain can only run basically two types of tasks

So anything we do in our lives and in all the infinite numbers of things we can do to our brain

It boils down to is this an avoidance based task

Move away from what you don't want to happen or experience

Mostly pain and discomfort or is this a pursuit based task move toward what you want to happen for the reasons that are important to

Okay, every task our brain is running at any time follows under falls under these two categories

Okay, avoidance against pursuit avoidance against pursuit and because our brain is first and foremost designed to keep us alive

It will run or prioritize avoidance based tasks over pursuit based tasks

Case in point for anyone here who's been putting in gone uh-oh don't three put

While they're actually trying to make the putt that's in front of them and gone well

Why did I miss that putt in such an anxious way well because your brain is actually running the original task or that least the primary task of

Don't three putt so our brain doesn't think negatively that's a

subjective labeling we put on thoughts that don't feel good to us

That's an avoidance based task if I tell you don't three putt

That's not a negative thought or a bad thought

That's an avoidance based task that now goes to the top of my brain's priority list

Which means trying to make that putt is back burner at best

Right also what's important to understand is our brains

Primary means to help us avoid the things that we tell it must be avoided is anxiety

Which is by definition worry about the future

So if I tell my brain three putting must at all costs be avoided or being judged by other people must be avoided

My brain is going to try to fill those tasks for me act the cost of any pursuit based tasks

I have in the experience that I'm having and I'm going to get anxiety because that's how my brain is designed to work

To your point Chris. Well, what's the opposite of avoidance?

Acceptance so the more I'm willing to accept being judged by others the less my brain prioritizes it

The more I'm willing to shoot an 80 doesn't mean I would be satisfied with it or I would like it

Or that I would be settling for it forever or that I'm not motivated to shoot better scores

But if I'm not willing to shoot an 80 my brain will be protecting me from an 80 far more than it is protecting me or or giving me

Access to trying to pursue

Shooting the lowest score that I can on whatever day

So my second domino is

Influenced by my first so if I go play a round of golf going I want to shoot the lowest score

I can but also don't shoot an 80

My second domino is going you gave me two tasks one is pursuit one is avoidance avoidance goes to the top of the list

Any avoidance based task requires anxiety and now I'm getting

Golf swings that are protecting against failure or putting strokes that are protecting against three puts or an entire performance experience trying to avoid being judged by others

Not actually aligned with the thing that I really want to do which is try to go as low as I can

So acceptance is a hard thing for us because it feels like I'm taking my hands off the wheel

And I am now vulnerable to the things that I really don't want to experience

Which is technically true, but that is the risk that we have to take

If we want our brain to actually pursue the things that we want

Hmm and just on that

So what you're saying with regard to acceptance

It's not being happy with shooting that 80 or higher from my perspective certainly it's not being you know

Good with that or okay without right?

No, so acceptance doesn't mean that you like it

It doesn't mean you're satisfied with it. It doesn't mean you're resigning yourself to it forever

It doesn't mean that you're not motivated to change it do better

It doesn't mean you're certain doesn't mean you're comfortable doesn't mean you're in control

What it means is I am possibly willing to experience that and everything that comes with it

Which might be a sense of dissatisfaction or oftentimes plays will tell me like I've done all this work trying to get better

Anyone out and I shot a score and it's really it kind of feels like a letdown

Again, those are real experiences

We don't necessarily need to avoid them at all costs

But if we try to then if we wouldn't be surprised why it's really difficult for me to play really freely

Right, so any golfer is going to have some performances that fall under the this is unsatisfying kind of disheartening in times

Depending on the type of the way the things certainly play out can be downright heartbreaking

Right, so it's not uncommon. I just got off full full on Olympic duty

And if you go give the best performance of your life

And then you look up at the scoreboard and you missed out on gold by this much or missed out on the podium by this much

It's going to be kind of heartbreaking because you have invested a ton

There's a person there's a personal investment a financial investment

All that risk is for us assuming all that translates to our brain is there's a risk that you might go do this thing in a certain way

And it end up in a certain way that feels a certain way

If I'm not willing to accept those my brain will try to protect me from those while I'm doing the thing right now

Which we might say good luck being present in your performance the more I'm trying to avoid a future that doesn't exist yet

Right, so we could do all day around here about being positive

I'm sure this is going to happen

You got to just relax and trust and be certain and believe in yourself

But that's not the language your brain speaks your brain speaks the language up

Do you want me to avoid risk or do you want me to pursue something while accepting risk? That's it

And so if I don't bring enough acceptance to the things that I don't want

I will not take the risks necessary to actually pursue the things that I do and that doesn't mean that you might not fail at times

You might

But I call it the difference between this is like sometimes we're just going to try and fail in that sucks

Versus death by a thousand cuts, which is I shot an 80 today that could have been a 73

But I didn't play freely enough to make it that way

And now I feel what I feel about that as well

And if you're a pro golfer

It's literally death by a thousand cuts

You will lose your job because you're just missing cuts

Because you're you're been trying to avoid missing cuts the whole time

And so there you're therefore you're never playing freely enough to get above the cut line for very long

Or you're always kind of hovering around it

A really really difficult place for us to pursue from

So the long and the short of it is when we guard against or we are

Unaccepting of the things we want from our first domino

Our second domino does exactly what it does

Needless to say there's a physiological response from that

Which usually comes from constriction and tension

And a threat response up regulation

And then you kick that down the line and every single thing down the line becomes compromised

Your core strategy, your equipment, your decision making, so on and so forth

And what we also see is like you get a pretty deteriorated experience

Which is like golf's fun, but it's not as fun as it could be

No, yeah

And I see that again

And I think like from you talking about like pastics

Like say you've experienced things in the past with your golf

Dave and I have spoke about this on in the first episode

Where basically I played a little bit of varsity golf in Oklahoma in the States

And I was doing a lot of trials and stuff like that

And it did not go the way that I wanted

And it ended up with me crying on the 18th green to the varsity coach

And then that led to me not playing golf for six years

And Dave, you had a similar situation

I would rather not talk about it Chris, but yeah, we did share this

In episode one, Chris says, no, Raymond, this is

Other end of the spectrum like Chris is talking about varsity golf

For me, this was, I went on holiday with an ex-girlfriend's family

This was many years ago

And the father hosted this big golf day

He was a good golfer

Her brothers were good golfers, I hear his sons

He had a lot of his friends there who were decent golfers

I had openly put in a lot of work into this day

Like for maybe six to nine months

Everybody knew that I was working to try and be a reasonable golfer

And I often say we describe it as the meltdown in La Manga

It was in La Manga in the resort in Spain

My body violently rejected any notion of a golf swing that day

But this was beyond, beyond, oh, that guy's hitting it purely

This was, I could not hit the ball

And when I did, it was in somebody's pool

Like it was like, I'm picking up the ball on every single hole

And I'm not even joking, that is kind of what we were talking about here

This felt like rock bottom

Honestly, this felt like rock bottom to me

And I think, well Chris and I were talking about before

You joined us, we were thinking

Are there scars that we have?

It's so daft, you know, a game of golf

And for me, certainly from my perspective

Such a low level of amateur golf

But are we still potentially

Feeling the scars from those experiences

Chris in tears on the 18th

Feeling like he's not shaping up for the varsity team

And me feeling utterly and totally humiliated

In front of a group of people who I really didn't want to be embarrassed in front of

Yeah, so I'll get off wearing this in our domino effect here

We as humans go through experiences that are oftentimes really painful for us

For a variety of reasons

So if my first domino is you must avoid your past pain

Again, potentially playing out in your future

We would see why now I'm playing through golf anxiety now

Because the actual thing I'm doing here is trying to avoid my past

Playing out again in my future

So for going through our domino effect

When players tell me I'm not playing very freely

Or I'm playing through anxiety

My question is what's what is it that could

Pensionally play out in the future that it is worth avoiding

Okay

Now that is not a okay just don't worry about that type of a thing

Now we've got to do a little bit of real psychological work

As to why it is you are on defense

While you're trying to do something pursuit based

And one of the reasons we do that which is not trivial at all is trauma

Trauma is what we experience

So people in a lot of sportsrooms use the word scar tissue

Scar tissue is not the right word

It is the most common vernacular for it

The word is trauma

Okay, so every human being has experienced trauma in our lives

In a variety of different ways

We could do a whole podcast on trauma

But trauma is what happens when we experience something

In a high state of arousal

That means my nervous system is up regulated

There is significant pain involved emotional or real

And we feel like we cannot escape

Okay, so if for example imagine you are a little kid

And you need of

Whatever type of dental procedure

And adults strap you to a chair

So you cannot get out

You are going to be in a state of fear

Which is a state of higher arousal

And there's going to be a whole lot of pain involved

That our brain embodies designed to encode that experience

As do not let this happen again

It's a survival mechanism for us

It's a physical survival mechanism for us

It's an emotional, it's a social

It's a whatever all the way down the line

So in order to have that not come up

As a thing that my brain must avoid

We have to deal with that trauma

Which means for us and again, I'm not telling anybody

You know, you're traumatized or whatever

But if it is a trauma event

What we have to do is we have to feel

In a safe and curious place

Whether it's a physical space

An emotional space or a relationship without somebody else

Usually a trained professional

That pain in full

So that our body and our brain can process that

In a way where it then goes

That's what happened then

That's not what's happening in the next thing here

Or if it is, is that something that I actually really need to guard against

So pain, particularly traumatic pain

And thoughts and everything that goes with it

That are not felt and not thought

Are inherited by our future selves

And then ultimately inherited by our future relationships

Which usually means like the next generation

This kind of, again, seemingly pretty dramatic

But it is not

Imagine you have grew up in a family

Where it's not okay to try and fail

What you are learning in a traumatic

In an attachment with people around you that you cannot escape

Because as children you cannot survive

Without the attachment to caretakers

Right

Is that it's not okay

For me to be myself in a vulnerable state

So then I have the attachment

Or I have the authenticity

And as a child you don't really have the choice

Your brain knows you'll need to sacrifice the authenticity

Which is a way of saying being vulnerable as yourself

Trying and failing so on and so forth

But this also plays out for us as adolescents

And as adults when we are in a place

Where it is not safe to try and fail

Or just be yourself

And whatever

And what's at stake there is non acceptance

Non-approval

And basically non-emotional safety

We are going to experience trauma

Right

And that will get carried to

Everything that we do that simulates that

So trauma isn't like

Well that exact experience

The trauma response in our brain goes

This is close enough

Right

I'm doing the same thing and people are watching

Close enough

Right

So if I don't deal with that

It will get inherited by my future self

When we do the thing

And then typically what we do is we bury those thoughts

And feelings and emotions

While we try to avoid them

And then they get inherited by our future self

And then now that kind of the can gets kicked down the road

Every human being has experience

Trauma in a way that they are carrying

With them very few people actually stop

And deal with that

And the reason they don't is because it's really painful

To deal with in the short term

You have to sit with that pain

Full brunt, full force

I used to tell people that is

You let the waves wash over you

And with somebody who can help you be curious

And non-judgmental about that

If you don't

You're always to some degree

Gardening against those waves

Which in and of itself

Creates a pretty painful experience for us

And then also that pain is still held

And it just gets kicked down the line

For what happens

So if for anybody who's going

Oh I've the loop of anxiety for me

Is I cannot let a past event

And the pain that comes with that

Play out for me in the future

That is definitely something

That if you do not deal with the past event

It will continue to be the first

Domino for you

In a way that is conscious or subconscious

And you will feel that as you go forward

So again that gets a little bit heavy

But now we're asking the question

What is keeping people from freely pursuing the things that they want

Gardening against what was a traumatic event for me in the past

Consistently over time

Is one of those reasons

That of course

People wouldn't be doing something really freely

So if I just tell you again

And here's my pushback on like traditional psychology and golf

You have had that type of an event

Let's imagine your Rory McRory at the 2011 Masters

And the whole thing falls apart

You cannot escape it

Your dreams are literally crumbling in your own hands

As you cannot control the golf club anymore

And everybody is watching and judging you

Being a young rock star

Who's supposed to be on a trajectory to the sun

And now you're falling out of the sky like Apollo

Right

So all of this being said

That is a traumatic event

You don't deal with that

Every single time you come to something like that

Which Augusta National hosts the Masters every single year

You're going to get that response over and over again

It's not scar tissue

It's trauma

And trauma

Unlike scar tissue

Can indeed be resolved

If we deal with the pain

Which is a scary proposition to us

Because we have to go back

And feel the same thing we felt when we were in that

But otherwise we carry it with us

Again and again

Again I don't want to be overly dramatic

But every human being has some type of trauma

They're carrying with them

And the reason we carry it with us is because one

It's our brain designed to do that for us

To try to protect us

Because it's a survival mechanism

And the other thing is because we typically don't deal with it

Yes

And that's a fascinating example

Rory in 2011

Because in all honesty

In that moment I remember watching that

Because as you know

A Northern Irish man

I'm rooting for Rory all the time

And I remember feeling his pain

Because at that moment when he missed like a couple of two fitters in a row

You know that felt like

Like us higher handicavers

We've been in that situation

It felt as kind of as bad as that

Like as that sort of standard of golf

In all honesty

Um are you so you say in remand

That

To try and heal these experiences

That Chris and I have

Reased as a sort of keyest study

Is that we need to immerse ourselves

Back in them

We need to kind of

Kind of

Almost try and relive them in some ways

To a certain degree

But there are some conditions to

If I just tell you go back and relive it

But you're in a highly upregulated state

And you're not in a place where you can do that

Safely and non-judgmentally

In curiously you will only be kind of reinforcing the trauma

Where that typically looks like and again

We need to be careful here about like trying to get people to do their own trauma work while we're on podcasts

But what that often looks like is yes

You need to go back to that experience

What it felt like

What the details were

And you will get some type of

And you'll know you're back in it for real

Because you'll start feeling it

emotionally and physiologically

Okay

Then what often happens is we've got to

Be in that

Discomfort and that pain, whatever levels it is

And downregulate meaning bring

I don't need to bring it down to a resting rate

But I have to bring my physiologically

So the conditions for trauma are

Physiological upregulation pain and inescapability

Right

So I need to be able to downregulate a little bit

And sit with that discomfort

And all that it has for me so that my body and brain can feel that

So if I was going to go to

Kind of the larger how trauma works in the natural world

Animals experience trauma all the time

But they feel it and then they move past it

Right so if I almost get eaten by something

It's a pretty traumatic experience

If I don't actually sit and without emotion

Feel it long enough

Well then also noticing

Oh, I'm actually safe right now

My brain won't recognize that event is over

And then therefore I can move on to the next one

Without guarding against the last one

Right so there's there are several conditions

For actually dealing with trauma

And it definitely needs to be a place where you are safe

To feel what you feel without needing to escape it

Although being able to if you wanted to stop at any time

Getting curious without a non-judgmental way

Without judging it for something you should or shouldn't be feeling

And to be able to downregulate enough to listen a little bit deeper

So typically when we are in a trauma response

We feel it up higher and it's a very loud feeling to us

It's barking at us

Versus then can I oh can I hear this and feel this

But also go a couple layers lower

For example

Again just a broad example

One of the things that's very traumatic for us is human beings

Is being embarrassed in front of other people

Judged by other people because it tells us in our brain

You are not accepted, you are not approved

You are not significant, you are discardable

Right

Which again would be very valuable for our tribe

200,000 years ago

But in our modern world it doesn't really apply

When I am in that going I am not enough

These people think I am not enough

I also have to listen a little bit deeper

And what message is my body

And my nervous system might also be sending me

As these people are not worth your time and effort

Anyway not that they are bad people

But this is not your tribe

Or something like this actually isn't about you

It's about them and their insecurities

Or maybe it's about

Yo this was just a traumatic event that you had

It really sucked

And you know what you actually really need

You need a hug from yourself

That just tells you it's going to be okay

Or even if it's not going to be okay in this way

This is not something that needs to define your life

Like there's a deeper wisdom

But if we're always guarding against the top layer

Of pain playing out again

We don't ever get into that

Right so it's almost like

Getting into your guts

Soft or quiet or voice

About what is happening there

Your intuition

About what that event was really about

More than just the painful experience that is on top

And I don't want to minimize that painful experience

It's real

And it hurts

Right

And again, trauma

You know we kind of throw this word

Trauma around a lot with people

Oh I slipped and fell on the pavement

No one was watching trauma

Like we've kind of bastardized it a little bit

But it is a real experience that we have

And it can you know everything from a car accident

Unfortunately sexual assault falls under this

Are

Military personnel coming back when you are in an environment

Again, higher rousal

Cannot escape on your own terms

And there is some level of pain

Whether that's emotional

The things you see that you can't unsee etc

All of these things are events that do and get coded

And yes, some things in golf

Or the social elements of it

Are definitely traumatic for us

And if we don't deal with them

We will carry them going forward

So again, I'm not suggesting that that is the case for every golfer

Or every club golfer

But it might be

And if again, if I just tell you

Just trust, just relax, be confident

Whatever all this surface of a stuff

That is not a language your brain speaks

In the face of trauma

Like there is no amount of hey

Just let it go

That can make trauma go away

That's not how it works

Our brain is specifically designed to hold on to that experience

In an effort to save you from it in the future

Which oftentimes it does

At the cost of though

Things that are really important to us

So again, let's say you were in a car accident

And it was really traumatic for you

And you go, well, I'm never going to drive in a car ever again

Okay, you are going to be safe

From that type of experience happening again to a large degree

But then also now you can't go anywhere

Right, so similar experience with our golf

If I've been embarrassed before or I've

The thing I've wanted was right in front of me

But I screwed it up right at the end

And I couldn't escape that

Because everyone reminded me of it

Or whatever I'm in it while it's happening

And I can't get out

Like, oh okay, well that I'm just never going to play golf with other people again

Or never playing, I get people thought

I'm never going to play competitive golf again

Okay, you will be safe from trying and failing

In competitive golf experiences

At the cost of playing something that you actually do want to play

And far be it for me to tell people

What they shouldn't do and for the reasons they don't

But if I don't deal with that past pain

I will try to avoid it in my future again

Just gets inherited and kicked down the

Down the road

And the means by which I try to deal with it are all avoidance-based

Not acceptance-based

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Okay, let's get back into it

And I think that's perfect on

Because I read your book over the last couple days

And it was the being mode of mind instead of the doing modes

In a lot of the time I know

Like I know for a fact

When I've been in the doing mode

And basically pushing things to the side

But over the last couple days

I've been doing the daily body scans

And I actually went out and played golf

And I was working on my breath work

And I felt like I was getting very centered again

So I wonder could you tell us like the difference between the being mode and the doing mode

As it refers to golf kind of in accepting and stuff like that

And also on that, why that works

Like why that body scan

Because we hear this sort of thing

To your point earlier Raymond like stuff like people saying

Hey just relax everybody or hey just think positively

You know come on like we all know

But we've heard that before and it hasn't worked

For most of us anyway

But yeah what Chris is saying

You hear that sort of thing too

You all just breathe you know and just be present

Why does that work

Sure why

So I would just say this

Every human being at any given moment is having an internal experience

Okay, so there's the external world that we are experiencing

And also our internal world

That is our thoughts, our feelings, our sensations

How our nervous system and our bodies are reacting

We might say just like inside your skin

Okay

So we have that at any moment

Whether we are aware of it or not

Whether we are admitting of it or denying it or not

So on and so forth

Right

So let's just say I'm trying to go play golf and really do it well

And it's under a set of circumstances

Where the outcomes matter to me

And there are consequences to what those outcomes are

Okay

Well I'm going to have an internal experience about that

I'm going to have thoughts about it

I'm going to have feelings about it

I'm going to have sensations about it

So on and so forth

A doing mode of mind

Is me trying to do something with my internal experience

So I'm trying to smother my thoughts and feelings

I'm trying to turn them off

I might be judging them for good or bad right or wrong

I might be trying to deny them

Pretend that they're not there

I might be trying to cover them up with other thoughts and feelings

So on and so forth

You shouldn't

You shouldn't be feeling this way

Shouldn't be doing that

Or me going

Or treating my thoughts as facts

Or thoughts and feelings as facts and precursors to the future

So if I had this thought

That must mean this in the future

Or if I'm feeling this way

And this happened in the past

Therefore it's a fact that if I'm feeling this now

It's going to go like this

Right

So one of the things we know for sure is our thought

We have like

Hundreds of thousands of thoughts today

Almost none of them are facts

Almost none of them are precursors to the future

Our brain and body is designed to think and feel

In the same way that our heart and lungs are designed to move blood and oxygen respectively

Right

Why all the just relax and do whatever

Or just don't think that way doesn't work

Is because now what I have done is I have won

Shifted my priority from the thing that I'm actually doing

To my internal experience

So my thoughts and feelings have now become the priority

So by definition

I'm not actually present with the thing that I'm doing

I am trying to control my internal state

Right

The second reason that doesn't work

Is the more I tell you don't think that

Or you shouldn't feel that way

We get the bounce back from our nervous system

Which is suppression and amplification

Which is imagine all you're on the first tea feeling anxious

And I tell you just relax

Or you go

I shouldn't be feeling this anxious in this situation

What happens to your feelings

Do they increase or do they decrease

Increase

Increase like this

So one of the bounce backs in our

Nervous system is the more I suppress things

The more amplified they become

And we also might know the more I suppress them

The more my future self is going to inherit them

Even if I can kind of bury them for a little bit

So the reason doing something with our inner experience

Doesn't work particularly under pressure

And certainly over time

Is that it increases my internal experience

As a felt experience

And it now creates a different priority system

So now my priority system is you need to be comfortable

You need to be certain and you need to be in control

Of what's happening internally

Which by definition is not the thing that I'm actually doing

So what we see from really high performers is they're just really good at prioritizing

The thing that they're actually doing

And nothing else

And so if I have to do something

With my thoughts and feelings

By definition my priorities have shifted

They have shifted internally

And to a feeling based thing

Instead of externally to the thing that I'm doing

What we also notice by this is it's immensely distracting

And any experience that we do

Distracted the experience gets worse

A bunch of research shows you can do things that are kind of less enjoyable

Versus things that are more enjoyable

And whichever one we do distracted

There's an amplification effect about which gets worse and which gets better

So you could do something like take out the trash

But actually be present in it

Which would be more enjoyable than watching a show

You really like while also being distracted

By trying to manage your thoughts and feelings

Or your cell phone or whatever that might be

So anything we do distracted

The experience gets worse

So a being mode of mind is just allowing your thoughts and feelings to be

Without making them the priority

So I'm not judging them as good or bad

They are not right or wrong

They are not facts

They are not precursors to the future

They are just things that I am currently experiencing

For whatever reasons I'm experiencing

And they don't need to be fixed

My thoughts and feelings are not a vending machine

That is not working

It is just what they are

And when that happens

I'm allowed to just experience whatever I experience

For whatever temporary amount of time I experience it

Without that becoming the priority

Every golfer in the world has played really good golf being uncomfortable

Or feeling uncertain

Or having really funky thoughts

What happens is if I go

I'm not allowed to have those

Or when I have those I have to do something with them

Now I'm trying to hit a golf shot while also doing that

Which we might say is just fundamentally distracting

And if I have certain feelings that I go

If I'm having them

Then I must be in trouble

I am now creating also the conditions for anxiety

Because I'm having an internal experience

That is unacceptable

And therefore must be avoided

So not only are they the priority

They trigger anxiety for me

So we used to think a long, long time ago

That really high performers never thought and felt certain ways

We were so, so wrong

What we actually find is that they experience

All the same things that everybody else does

They're just really good at letting it be

So to speak

So my, I remember when, sorry, to jump in

But I remember when Jordan Spathe I think it was

When he was really absolutely on fire

And gonna say maybe around 2016

Around 2017, around that time

When he won quite a few majors

And I remember watching up with a few friends

And how good he was at holding pots

I think I remember saying something like

I just don't think it even crosses his mind

The idea of missing that pot

Would you say that's probably not the case?

Probably not

There are times when those thoughts don't cross our mind

And then there are times when they do

Look, if I tell you you're playing in the back nine of a major

And you've got a pretty slippery putt

You're gonna tell me the thought of you missing

That is not gonna cross your mind

Or at least from time to time

It's not

Even if you've made a ton of pots

Your brain knows no pot is a guarantee

So if I-

But then when that-

Go ahead

So when that comes into your head

Say that thought of

I think I can miss this pot

And you're obviously being a being mood

And allowing it to come in

Like if you can't see anything else

How do you like move on from that

How do you let that thought come in

And just accept it

But you feel that you can't

You're just in your head then

How does that?

Yeah, I would still say that

There's still probably some layer of doing with it

So again, if you have a thought of

Jeez, I'm 100% sure I'm gonna miss this pot

Well, if I can't get off of that

That usually means I'm treating it as a fact

Or a precursor to the future

Okay

That if I'm having

Instead of again, it's just

Well, that's one possibility for this

Because if I just treat that as

Okay, that's a thought

My brain also goes

Well, there's other options for this

Right?

And let's say even then

Your brain like

All I can think about is I'm gonna miss it

You could still go

Okay, well, I don't have to do anything with that thought

Thought and then you can ask yourself

What do you want to do with this pot?

In which case then you're returning to the focus

On what it is that you're actually doing

Not necessarily what it is you're thinking

It is a significant

Incorrect psychological instruction

To say you must control your thoughts

In order to be able to perform well

So I always push back on people

When you got to think a certain way

Believe in yourself

You got to trust

You got to think positively

You need to think bigger about yourself

And all this stuff

No, you do not

In fact, the more you're doing that

The more you're distracting yourself

From the thing that you are actually doing

When you are doing it

Which then makes you less capable of doing that

Right

So what we can learn through our mindfulness practices

Is can I just let my inner experience be

And just leave it alone

Yes, I can notice it

And on at times it's gonna be in places that I don't like

Like nobody gets to go do things that are really meaningful

For them without their nervous system firing up

Coming with certain feelings and your brain recognizing

Oh, I really want this to go this way

And I would really prefer it doesn't go this way

And then spit us thoughts and feelings about that

We do not get that option

If you do you're just living a very very safe life

In which case then there's a certain level

Paying that comes with that too

All this being said

If I can learn to just have thoughts and feelings

And sensations by the way

And do nothing with them

Then I can actually focus on what I'm doing

How I'm doing it and for the reasons that I really want

Not the ones that my brain embodied

Just spit at me spontaneously

Or repeatedly or in a pattern

Right

So essentially if I can learn

The analogy I use with a lot of the players I work with

Is imagine you're at a aquarium

Your thoughts and feelings and sensations

Are the marine life behind the glass

We don't stop them

We don't turn them off

We don't do anything with them

We learn to just have them

But then also I'm gonna play golf on the other side of this glass

Right

So then I can remain in a pursuit based present execution

Even though I might be having

Un-un-un-comfortable

Uncertain avoidance based thoughts and feelings

So essentially having a thought

And actually acting upon it is not something that we have to do

We're having a feeling and then having to act on it

It's not something we have to do

Unless we have a thought in a feeling and we go

Because I'm feeling this I must act a certain way

Focus a certain way

Do things a certain way

Which again now I have to have you control your thoughts

Which now you're not doing the thing you're doing

You're also controlling your thoughts

So there's some layers to that during a zoo

But the reason you doing some body scan mindfulness

Is you're learning to just tune into your body

Without doing anything else

In which case then when you tune into your body

Or tune into your breath while you're playing

You can then actually prioritize the shot sets in front of you

And what we might notice is

Golf feels a whole lot easier

When the only thing you have to do

Is the shot that's in front of you

However challenging that might be

While also not having to juggle your internal experience

Just because it exists

We are going to pause things there

In part two we're going to take everything Dr. Raymond Pryor's just explained

The psychology, the avoidance versus pursuit stuff

The being mode

And we start talking about how that actually shows up for us

On the golf course

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Thank you all for listening

As ever

And we'll see you next time

With Dr. Raymond Pryor for part two

On How Low Can You Go

How Low Can You Go