When Golf Means Too Much

In this episode, Kathy prompts golfers to consider the deeper meaning of the game as the season concludes.

Encouraging reflection beyond the casual acknowledgment of golf being just a sport,

Kathy highlights potential emotional red flags, such as heightened anxiety or an excessive focus on scores.

The episode aims to gently guide listeners into honestly assessing the emotional impact of golf on their lives, urging them to explore whether the game carries more significance than they consciously recognize.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

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 going to learn how to think above par so you can play below par. Let's get to it. Hello, my girlfriend. Welcome back to Above Par. So glad that you're here and listening. I wanted to give a shout out. I had a post on Facebook where I had some people reaching out to me and thanking me for the podcast. This podcast. So I wanted to give them a shout out. First one's Deanne Payne said, just wanted to say thanks, Kathy, for your podcast. I listen often and always, binge hard on them before tournament. Appreciate you. And then Anne Parr. She says, congrats to my post that I made. I've been listening to you for over a year. Your podcast has helped me big time. It's helped my mindset as well, improving the way I play. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you, Ann, and thank you, Deanne, for listening to the podcast. Um, I appreciate it. I appreciate all the kind words when I run into y'all at events and on my social media. And speaking of events, I just got back from Big Canoe in Georgia. Shout out to all the ladies up there who listened to my podcast just north of Atlanta. I did a workshop at the club up there for about 36 women. Joan Delk, a teaching pro there, invited me to come up and talk to the group, and it was an amazing day. I love getting the opportunity to go talk to people at their clubs and go visit them and help them with unleashing their game, thinking above par, playing to their potential, performing better in tournaments. I love bringing this podcast to your clubs. And thank you again for listening or binging, whichever way you're doing it. It's all good by me. I keep them nice and short so you can binge them. So, anyway, so what I wanted to talk to you today about was what golf means to you, the meaning of golf to you, especially at the end of the season when we're reflecting back or starting the winter season, depending on where you live. It's just looking back and reflecting on the year on what golf means to you. And often when I ask people this question, they will reassure me that I know it's just a game, it's just a thing that I do. It's social. I play for fun. It's not that big a deal. There's bigger things in life. I'm fortunate to belong to this beautiful club or play at these beautiful courses or play this game. They take golf and they use their rational part of their brain, which reassures them that it is a game, that it is for fun. But the reality is that there's a lot revealed to you on what you make golf mean by how you feel when you're on the golf course. So I want to bring up a couple things and see if any of these resonate with you that is a red flag, so to speak, that golf means a little bit more. No matter how much our rational banner tells us tell us that it's just for fun, I just like going out and playing with my friends and playing in little social events. A few of these examples that I'm going to share with you are ways that we make golf mean too much. We make the score mean too much, we make the game mean too much. And I'll explain a little bit more about what too much is in just a second. Okay, so the first one is if you're just feeling very anxious when you play the game of golf. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't get anxious performing or playing in tournaments, but if you're overly anxious, you might be anxious the whole round, or you might lose sleep before you go out and perform or play. On the golf course, you might feel like you have a lot of pressure. You might just want to hurry up and get to 18 so you can get relief from all the pressure that you're feeling while you're out there performing. Number three is you might worry about what other people think. Like so you're so preoccupied worrying about what they're thinking about your golf game and how you hit it, how you're scoring, what you look like maybe, what your swing looks like, what your stroke looks like. If you're spending a lot of time in your golf course, worry on the golf course, worrying about what other people think, right? That's a little bit of a red flag. You might experience a fear, a fear of failure or a fear of disappointment when you're out there playing. It hangs out with you all day. You might find yourself avoiding playing with people or avoiding playing certain courses or avoiding playing in events, right? So we decide I'm not gonna play in that event or I'm not gonna stay play with certain people because of how I'm gonna feel or how I could possibly feel. Next one is you might be preoccupied with your results and your score. Are you thinking about your score the whole time while you're out there playing? You might be worried about your score before you go and tee off. Come down the last few holes, you start adding up your score. You could be preoccupied with other people's scores and their results in your group.

unknown 4:56

Right?

SPEAKER_00 4:56

You know this person because they're like, What'd you have there? Right? Or they want to know what'd you shoot. I shouldn't do a whole podcast on that one, actually. You might find yourself spending a lot of time after the round in a bad place, a bad mood, disappointed, in shame, beating yourself up. I'm not saying that we're not gonna experience that. I'm not gonna say that we're not gonna have it. But how long do you sit there in that disappointment or that shame? Do you take it home with you? Does it affect your family life? Does it affect your social life? Or you might even find that you obsess over the game. You spend a lot of time thinking about golf, studying golf, watching YouTube videos, taking lessons, studying track man numbers, buying new equipment. There's a difference between having a passion and obsession. So we've cross crossed the passion line and we've gone into total obsession. Where you're spending most of your time focused on the game of golf. Now you could argue with me that some of these are not that bad or not that big of a deal. But most of them, if they're reoccurring, not they're just not a one-time event. If they're recurring or it is what you predominantly experience when you're playing golf, I want you to check in and ask yourself a few questions and find out what golf means to you. Now you've got to be really brutally honest with yourself, right? If you're saying yes, it's just a game, I just do it for fun, I live at a country club, I hang out there all summer long, it's not that big of a deal. If it's not that big of a deal, then you wouldn't be worried about your results. You wouldn't be putting so much pressure on you. You wouldn't have a fear of failure or disappointment or have perfectionism that shows up. You wouldn't spend a lot of time after a round in a bad place or in a bad mood.

unknown 6:41

Right?

SPEAKER_00 6:42

So I want you to ask yourself, what are you making golf mean about you? One of the ways we know this is that if you play well, what do you get to think and feel? And if you don't play so well, what are you going to think and feel? Because this is what I want you to remember is that everything we do and don't do is based on how we get to feel. So if you're putting pressure on yourself to produce a result, it's because you're going to feel a certain way, or you're trying to prevent feeling a certain way. Often, that thing that we're trying to prevent feeling or what we want to feel is good about ourselves, or we're preventing feeling crappy about ourselves. It has a lot to be tied to our self-worth and our identity at our community or at our golf course, how we think other people perceive us, how we get to talk about us after a round, what we make good shots mean and bad shots mean, good days and bad days, high scores and low scores, approval and validation from other people, or disapproval from other people, judgment from other people and ourselves. The answer for this is not in me or in this podcast, the answer is in you. You've got to ask yourself these questions. See if any of those things resonate with you about how you experience golf, how much pressure you might be putting on your results or your game so that you get just feel a certain way. So that you can feel a certain way about yourself. Now, it doesn't mean that we don't want to win and we don't love that feeling of winning. But conversely, when you don't win, what do you make that mean? And how do you feel? The other question I ask you is what do you need from the game of golf? Some of you are gonna say, I don't need anything. But when you really ask it, what do you need golf to do for you to help you feel a certain way? How are you looking to feel? What experience are you looking to have? Because when we can jump into the game of golf and enjoy the process of playing golf and improving and having the ups and downs and the good days and the bad days, not needing it to produce anything for us, not needing a result for us to feel good about ourselves or talk good about ourselves, not needing our score for other people to approve of us. When we can go out there and just enjoy the process of learning the game, getting better at it, not making the results mean anything, just an indicator of if we're moving in the right direction or not moving in the right direction, you will show up so much better on the golf course and you will have the best time relative to where you might be right now. You would end up going out there and playing golf with a sense of calm and peace and no urgency and patience and grace for yourself instead of being out there and backhanding yourself trying to perform so that you get to feel a certain way. All right. So, what I want you to do when you get a moment is really ask yourself, what has golf meant to me this season? What do my scores mean to me? What do they mean about me? Because the answers for that are gonna be really revealing about the results that you created this year and whether you're playing to your potential, taking as much of the talent as you can out on the golf course and enjoying the game as much as you possibly can. All right, my friends, because I'm gonna reiterate you are not your golf game and you are not your score. And the more that we tie those two together, the harder it is for us to perform and take all of our talent out there. All right, if you have any questions or if I can help you in any way relative to this topic, make sure you reach out to me at kathyheartwood.com. All right, have a beautiful week. I'll talk to you next Wednesday.

unknown 10:18

Bye.