Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
Serious golfer? You know you’ve got the talent—but your brain keeps getting in the way. Think Above Par helps you master the mental game of golf, stop overthinking, and quit worrying about what others think on the course so you can play calm, confident, and consistent golf every round.
If you’re a serious golfer who knows you’re leaving shots out on the course, Think Above Par is your go-to podcast for mastering the mental game of golf. Hosted by Kathy Hart —a former Tour player, Top 50 Teacher, and Certified Mental Coach—each episode helps you strengthen your golf mindset, manage pressure, and play calm, confident, and consistent golf.
You’ll discover why you underperform under pressure, how to stop overthinking your swing, and what to do when you’re worried about what others think on the golf course. Whether you struggle with performance anxiety, perfectionism, or negative self-talk, Kathy shares proven mental-game tools to help you unlock your talent, enjoy the game again, and lower your golf scores.
Learn how to think above par—so you can play below par. Subscribe now to your weekly dose of golf mindset coaching and start transforming your golf brain today.
Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
Changing Your Golf Brain is Like Changing Your Golf Swing
•Kathy Hart Wood•Episode 107
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I wish I could wave a magic wand and give everyone a beautiful swing and a peaceful mind full of useful thoughts.
Unfortunately, our brains like to create habits and once we create them in our swing or in our brains, it takes some work to break the habits and replace them with new ones.
While we may not have a problem with doing the work, we are actually working against our own brain’s desire NOT to change.
In this episode, I share with you what to expect and how changing your negative thoughts and swing mechanics have a lot in common.
Welcome to Above Par. I'm your host, Kathy Hartwood. I show you how to take more of your talent to the golf course without practicing harder, taking more lessons, or buying new equipment. I show you how to end the frustration of underperforming so you can start playing to your potential. This is where you are gonna learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Let's get to it. Doing amazing things, feeling amazing, thinking amazing, everything just above par. Other than your score. Never looking for our scores to be above par. Whatever your par is, by the way. I'm not in this podcast, I'm not talking about just people who shoot below par when I say that. It's whatever your par is for you, because it's all relative, right? But we can always manage the way that we think about things, and we all have similar brains, which I've always talked about over and over on this podcast. So, which is so interesting how when you listen to other people, especially if you listen to people relative to my podcast or in the academy, you hear people from different levels of golf, different stages of golf, different handicap scores, and we still have similar thoughts. We still have things that get in our way. We still worry about what other people think. We still can be hard on ourselves. We can be perfectionists, we can have fears, we have anxiety, we have all the same emotions. The situation, the circumstance, the score, the number might be different. The level of tournaments might be different. We all have similar brains. And what I want to talk to you today about is making an analogy or a connection between what it's like to change your swing and what it's like to change your thoughts. Because if you can appreciate what it's like to change your swing, and if you can't and you're not improving, then you can hear me out on this part too. But if you've gone through some swing changes, if you've taken some lessons, you've tried to improve, you put in some practice, you worked on your mechanics, you know what that experience is like. I'm gonna connect it to what it's like to change your thoughts. Because this is the thing that happens. I think a lot of times, in both swing mechanics and thoughts, is people just want that magic wand, that magic pill. Just like, let's just make it go away really quickly or let's change it really quickly. I just want to move past this and move on and get to this place where I think I'm gonna feel better and play better. I don't want to put in the work so much. Instructors run into this all the time where people don't want to put in the work. They just want a quick fix, a band-aid. The thing about band-aids is what I tell people, I give you a band-aid, but it's gonna fall off. It's likely not gonna be long lasting. I could give you a band-aid to get you through the next tournament, to limp you through the next round, but it's gonna fall off. Because the only way to make lasting change with your golf game is to put in the work. The only way to make lasting change with how you think and how you feel and the results you're creating for yourself in your life and on the golf course is to put in the work. There is no magic pill. Now, I also say that sometimes things can shift with one thought. That for sure was me. Things shifted with one thought. I had this epiphany, but I did have to practice it and repeat it. I had a breakthrough, but it still took me effort to step into believing it and making it my own, just like we try and do with our golf swings, is we try and repeat them enough times to make them our own so that we can go about our business without having to think about our golf swing, our business being playing the game of golf. Right? Ideally, we'd like to not have to think about our mechanics, that we own it so well and we go out and play, we can free up our mental space and relax and just swing. It becomes automatic. As I talked about in one of my podcasts about the four stages of learning, we become unconsciously competent. So many of us go out there and play golf, and we're very consciously competent. Sometimes as we're learning, we're consciously incompetent. All right, we have to think about it, we still can't do it. So let me make a connection between what it's like to change a thought, and the reason we want to change a thought is because it changes how we feel, it changes what we do from that feeling and the results that we create. Negative thoughts, negative emotions create negative results for us. So it's always good to be aware of what we're thinking and feeling at any given moment, especially on the golf course. But in our day-to-day lives, our emotions are an indicator that we have some wonky thoughts going on that might be worth looking under the hood about. We start hitting some crappy shots on the golf course. It's kind of our indicator that we got something going on in our swing. Most of the time, sometimes it can be mental. But let's say if you're doing it on the range, when usually our brain is a little quieter, that's maybe it's time to go and get a lesson. Have someone look at your swing. What I do is I look at people's brains and your thoughts, and I show you the thoughts that are getting in your way. So the first swing change we can make is often an easy one. It can be simple. It could be someone pointing out to you, dude, dude, you're aimed at the right bunker. That's why you hit it in the right bunker. And then we go, oh. We fix our aim. It's not too hard, not too complicated. We make a quick correction. It didn't take a long time for us to start being aware of it. It didn't take much discomfort in us shifting it. So if you're like me, I'm my aimer gets broke all the time. I always have to stay on top of it because if I let it go for a very long period of time, I get aiming out to the right. And if you squared me back up, I would swear I made like 60 yards left. So I have to stay on top of it. At that case, I'm very uncomfortable. I did this US Open qualifier one time. My husband, who teaches, he basically said, dude, you are aimed so far right. And I had to play in this open qualifier, literally feeling like I was aimed about 40 yards left of my target. And when I felt 40 yards left of my target, I knew I was on point. I was aimed properly. I have to hang out there for a while until my brain gets back to connecting where my aim is and where my body is. I was I was so uncomfortable that whole way around. But that's also another conversation about having your husband catty for you. That did not work out so well either. Actually, I don't think he was my husband yet at that point, but yeah, that didn't work out well. That was a first and a last. Anyway, okay, that was off on a tangent. So sometimes what happens is when we have these easy fixes, such as your aim, it might be someone saying, you just gotta bend over a little bit more. You're three inches too far away from the golf ball. They can be simple little fixes. That is very similar to a thought that we have that we just notice is not serving us, but it hasn't spent a lot of time in our brain. It hasn't taken root, it doesn't take a lot of effort to shift it. It could be as simple as, oh, I don't like my pairing this morning, or I don't like that tea time, or you're playing a brand new golf course you haven't played before and you start complaining about number 14. Those thoughts aren't going to work for you. Your brain is going to find evidence of those thoughts. So you're going to find evidence of how you don't play 14 very well. And you're going to find evidence about how your group is annoying. The minute they start opening their mouth, likely you're going to sit there and say, here they go, they're being annoying. And so when we notice these thoughts that aren't going to serve us while we're out there playing golf or going to be a mental distraction for us, we clean them up. Not a big deal. Let me shift to something a little bit better and more useful for me. Usually things like that are complaining about things we have no control over. It's basically about whenever we argue with reality, we lose only every time. That's a Byron Katie quote. So we can have swing adjustments, setup adjustments, that aren't very challenging. They're not too uncomfortable. We haven't spent a lot of time in that place where our body has become very acclimated for those positions in golf that don't suit us. Same thing with a thought. So yes, there are going to be easier swing changes and there's going to be easier thought changes. The second one is about swing changes that are more ingrained. Maybe you have a loop in your swing. Maybe you twist the face open going back. Maybe your wrist is cuppy on the top. Maybe you have a bad pivot. Maybe you have a reverse pivot. These are things that you likely have been doing a longer time and they take more effort. They take more discomfort. A grip change is the best example. Whenever I give a lesson, someone coming to me with a god-awful grip, just a non-functioning grip. They weren't going to be able to find their ball on a consistent basis with this grip. And the only way for them to reach their goals and get better was for them to tweak it, adjust it, move it, shift it, change it. Oh my gosh, so much pushback. Most of the reason is because our hands are our only connection with the club. It's very uncomfortable to change your grip. So people would complain, I don't want to do it. I actually had one lady said, you can do anything, tweak anything, change anything in my swing, but you can't change my grip. And her grip, literally, I don't know how her hands stayed on the club. I don't know how it was gonna happen. But she said, You can't change my grip. I was like, why? She goes, it's too uncomfortable. I don't like it. Well, if you're not uncomfortable, you likely aren't making a change. But our brain is designed to resist change and resist discomfort. Your brain thinks you're in danger somehow, that something is going wrong. Those are the moments where we need to remind our brain that I'm willing to be uncomfortable. This is not a problem. For me to get where I want to go and do the things I want to do in my swing, I need to be willing to be uncomfortable. Most people, when they start swing changes and they're very uncomfortable, they either think the instructor is crazy, right? Or wrong. That can't be right. It's so uncomfortable. That's why we have video. We video people like, see, you're doing exactly what you should be doing, whatever that is that we're working on. Like, oh my gosh, it doesn't feel like that. Of course it doesn't feel like that, right? Because your body's more comfortable doing the wrong thing because you've rehearsed it so many times until it became comfortable. And it might not necessarily be wrong, it's just not effective, right? And you're looking to change it to create more distance or hit your ball straighter. So most people at that moment give up. I can't tell you how many times I've helped people with their grip. They're like, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna stay here. And they come back to me and it's shifted back to their old grip. Now they're not necessarily doing this on purpose, it's just your brain seeking comfort. So just slowly it tweaks back to where your brain's like, yes, that's comfortable. Let's go. In the other position, it feels like something is wrong. The way that you're going to make that swing change is to stay intentional and consistent and aware. It's when you start swinging and hitting balls and you're not paying attention, it will tweak back to what's comfortable, to old habits. This is the way changing your thoughts works too. If you have a thought that is very ingrained, a belief that you've held for a long time, for you to change that belief, or that thought, if it's not working for you, like I'm never gonna be a good enough player, there's no way I'll be a single-digit handicap. I'm always gonna suck off the T. Something that you've repeated enough times has now become ingrained. And for you to shift it is going to be uncomfortable. Your brain doesn't like to change, it doesn't like to shift. It wants you to seek comfort. You have to be willing to be uncomfortable to change a thought. All that happens is that thought has become a pattern, just like your swing, and it's comfortable, familiar. One of your brain's jobs is to conserve energy and to seek comfort. Creating habits does both things. So it goes against our brain's natural tendency to stay exactly the way it is. So when you have a thought that you notice isn't working for you, and you want to shift it to something more powerful and useful, you want to anticipate discomfort just like you would if you were making a swing change. You want to anticipate that your brain is going to give you pushback. It's gonna tell you maybe this isn't the right way to go. Let's go back to our old comfortable thinking and not change anything. And this is why people keep producing the same results over and over and over again. You've got to be willing to put in the work. You've got to be willing to go through the discomfort with your swing and with a thought change. That's why there is no quick fix relative to big swing changes, and there's no big fix relative to beliefs and thoughts that you want to change. It's helpful to have someone look at both of them. It's helpful to have someone look at your swing on a consistent basis because you can't see your own swing. I mean, you could video it if you know what you're looking for, but chances are what you're feeling isn't connecting with what you're doing because we're in that space of discomfort. Same thing with thoughts. That's why I talk about I help people see their thoughts. We find ladder thoughts that we work on along the way to get to the thought that we want to believe. That's easier for our brain to believe. That's the same as when you make a swing change, that you make gradual changes a little bit at a time. It's easier for your brain to shift, right? There's progress. If you had a big reverse pivot and you got yourself to just a baby reverse pivot, that's huge. And it probably still feels super awkward. But it is your first step, it is a win on your way to creating a more powerful pivot.
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If your thought is I suck with my driver, and you could start believing that like sometimes I don't suck with my driver, that's a win. We want to create a little space around our thoughts, some space that maybe it's believable or possible to think something different. And those are the incremental steps along the way, whether it's with your thoughts or with your swing change. I just want to share with you that the process is so similar. If you've worked on your swing and you know what it's like to make a swing change, the goal is to put in the work until it's effortless. You don't have to think so much. Same thing with thoughts. We want to put in the effort and the work so the thoughts come to us easily. They become believable. It takes repetition, it takes consistency, it takes knowing how to look at your thoughts, finding out which ones are useful and not useful for you, and being willing to go through the discomfort of changing a thought. It is no different than changing a swing, it is no different than breaking a habit. You gotta be willing to go through the discomfort. And then what happens is then when you get to the other side of it and you realize, oh, that wasn't so bad, I can do discomfort. On the other side is so much growth when I'm willing to go through it. Then you're willing to go on to the next thing and the next thing and the next thing. And when you can start anticipating, all I have to do is go through a little bit of discomfort, and I get to think this new thought, I get to have this new swing, I get to create these different results, I get to feel a different way, and you survived and nothing happened, and you didn't get tugged back to that old way of thinking, and there's no stopping you. You just keep going and knowing it's part of the process anytime that you want to make a change. All it takes is repetition, consistency, and awareness. All right, you got this. If I can help you, you can reach out to me at KathyHartwood.com. Have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you.
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