Above Par

Calling All Golf Perfectionists

May 19, 2021 Kathy Hart Wood Episode 18
Above Par
Calling All Golf Perfectionists
Show Notes Transcript

Perfectionism can seem noble...valued...a sign you care and that you want to excel.

But in fact it is driven from fear.

Perfectionistic golfers (PG) think if they swing, play, score perfectly they get a pass on the fears, and  judgement and shame.

That is a lot of pressure to put on your swing or putting stroke, or flip shot.

And then there is the anxiety that comes with perfectionism

If you are a PG, and underperforming, this is your work.

It's not your swing.

Learn more at KathyHartWood.com

Join MasterYourGolfBrain.com to learn how to manage your brain.

Hello, my golf friend, and welcome to Above Par. It's nice to have you back. I think I say that every time, I need to shake that up, I'm gonna shake that up next time, I don't know what I'm gonna say, but I'm gonna shake that up next time. So whether you're listening on the podcast or you're watching me on YouTube, I would really appreciate a subscribe, a like, a comment, anything that helps more people find me, and the algorithms get fired up, whatever they do, it's just so more people can help their golf games with this information. So if you can do that, I would really appreciate it. So this topic today is about procrastination, and it really is something that hits home for me, I knew I was gonna talk about this topic or this was going to be one of the topics of a podcast, because when I started this whole podcast, perfectionism had reared its ugly head for me again, in a big, bad way. I thought I had put it away in a closet, I thought I would call myself a reform perfectionist, but it came up when I started to do this podcast. I wanna talk to you today about what is healthy perfectionism and what is unhealthy perfectionism? Where it doesn't serve us, I think we can confuse the two of those, and sometimes we can label things as perfectionist when it's not, and sometimes we can glorify perfectionism, when it doesn't serve people. And so I wanna talk about the difference between those and how it shows up in golf, but I do believe this, I believe how you do one thing, you do everything, so that means that if you're a perfectionist off the golf course, it's gonna show up on a golf course. You can't separate it. I learned so much from that statement on all the different things that I did off of the golf course, where a lot of the reasons why I wasn't playing to my potential and I wasn't having as much fun, and I was frustrated all the time with my performance, so it wasn't necessarily about the things that I was doing on the golf course, but it was about those characteristics and fears that I had that were everywhere in my life, and so I wanna talk to you about that today. So some of the things that we can do besides perfectionism is off the golf course, it'll show up on the golf course as being overly critical or judgmental, we might be a people pleaser or a victim or emotional responsibility, we might not have off the golf course and we're definitely not gonna have it on the golf course. Emotional control, we might also have just a low self worth, which will show up on the golf course in lots of different ways that you're not able to take your best game out there, you put in all that work, you know you have the talent and you can't maximize it when you have these different things that are getting in the way of you performing your best, so perfectionism is one of them. And I wanna talk about it today. So by definition, perfectionism is a refusal to accept any standard, short of perfection, and I think the big two words in there are refusal and then standard, I think that's the part where we get a little confused because we can have a high standard, which we perceive to be a good thing. Right? That is a nice characteristic to have, that you have high standards, that you're always striving to work harder and improve a better and higher version of yourself and your golf game, we have high standards for different things, I think that's a nice trait to have, in my opinion. But what comes with that is also having your own back, working hard, but being willing to make mistakes, be willing to fail and learn from your mistakes, not making them mean anything about yourself, not connecting your achievement to your identity, having a little compassion for yourself, having realistic expectations and on your own abilities and what you can do and enjoying the ride, the whole process, you just love going through the process of trying to get to that higher standard. I think that's healthy. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, in my opinion. But perfectionism is that refusal or intolerance for anything short of perfection, that's where we get into trouble, that's where we've crossed the line, to where we're in a state where it's not serving us, and what I mean by not serving us as being that we're not able to take our best talent out on the golf course, but also we just feel crappy. Perfectionism is also tied to a lot of anxiety and stress, and anxiety for sure doesn't serve us, nobody, you don't wanna live your life in a state of anxiety or stress, especially on the golf course. And this is a thing that how it doesn't work with golf so greatly is that golf is not a game of perfect. I should write a book. So it's just not a perfect game, it can't be... We can't control bounces, we can't control roles, our lies or divots, or the length of grass, or the weather, or who we play with, if we're playing in tournaments, you can if you're playing casual golf. Those things are out of our control. So it's impossible for the game to be perfect, even as humans, it's very difficult for us to repeat the same swing no matter how much we've practiced over and over again, there's evidence of that just watching the best players in the world who play in practice every single day since they were probably teens or younger, make imperfect swings, but when we put that level of perfectionism and wanting to be perfect on our golf game, that pressure that we put on ourselves to perform, makes swinging our best damn near impossible. So for me, my first sign of my perfectionism came up in school where I love to make A's, I enjoyed making an A and then I became intolerant of making anything other than A's, and I remember making a poster on the Presidents in high school that probably included a little bit of artistic skill, which all I can do is about a stick finger. That's about it. So I really put a lot of pressure on myself to make sure I did that poster perfectly. I wanted to make sure that I got the A, I put way too much time into it that I needed to put into it. It didn't serve me because I put so much pressure on myself, and I had a lot of anxiety about what was gonna happen on the subjective grade I was going to get. Now maybe it did serve me in a way that I ended up skipping a year high school because I was such a perfectionist and made good grades. Did that serve me? I don't know, maybe... Maybe I excelled a little bit quicker than other people, but it did come at a cost, I remember that being one of the big moments that sticks out in my head as the first signs of my perfectionism, and it showed up on the golf course for sure. As I competed in college and I went on to play professional golf, I became very intolerant of making mistakes, I wanted to play perfect rounds, and that put pressure on myself to not make any mistakes. It's impossible to perform. I did not perform my best for sure. But this is the thing we get to define perfect, right? I got to define, perfect. What it is for me. At what point was that poster good enough for me to submit? At what point was I willing to sit there and go,"This is as good as it's gonna get. And I'm gonna go ahead and turn it in." That happened with my podcast, I re did the first couple of podcasts, that's when perfections came back out. The first one, I think I recorded it like eight times, I was not satisfied with any of it, and it took me a while, I'm just gonna be honest for me to notice, "Oh boy, my perfectionism is back out," and the reason that I didn't wanna hit upload or send or put it out into the universe

was:

I had a tremendous fear of it not being perfect. I reined that back in, once I noticed what was going on. I had to be willing to put out B work, go ahead and send it out there, be okay with all my rights and my ums and you knows. I edit, if you watch some of my earlier YouTube, when I recorded them on YouTube, it's so spliced up because I edited the heck out of it, I was trying to make it as perfect as I could. It was exhausting. I had so much anxiety and pressure over those first episodes... And this is the thing too. I think in golf, what happens is, I don't think technology has survived us so well, and I think it's bred a lot of perfectionists, like TrackMan, people are just so obsessed with the numbers of TrackMan. I have a love hate relationship with TrackMan and technology, just to be certain and clear here. I think it serves a purpose, but it's a tool, it is not an indicator of your ability to perform and score, and we use it as that, we use it as being, if my numbers are good, then I'm good, then I'm gonna excel, and that you work and work and work towards having these beautiful numbers which can't break an egg, and I remember I was at a Christmas party, this poor guy. Okay, so I had a couple of glasses of wine me, so my humor gets a little sassier or we had been having conversations about him working so hard on his TrackMan numbers, and so he wanted to give me his results at the end of the season, and next time I saw him was at this Christmas party, and he said to me, he's like, "Kathy," he goes, "My TrackMan, numbers have gone from this, this and this to this, and they have improved whatever indicators he was wanting to share with me, they improved so much and it's unbelievable, like all my lessons have been paying off and it's just amazing." And I said, "That is so great. I'm like, That's so good for you. So what is your handicap gone down?" Right? Now, keep in mind, he's probably at high teens on his handicap, and he looked at me lik e I stole his puppy, and he just is... The eyes got really big and his face kinda dropped, his mouth opened a little bit, and he just stared me like he had this epiphany at the same time that he said, "Well, my handicap hasn't gone down at all," but his TrackMan numbers are great, and he was obsessed all year about his TrackMan numbers. So TrackMan, while I think it's fun and it can be a great tool. It's definitely not an indicator of your ability to perform or if your handicap is gonna go down. So I think some of the technology that we can do, while it has a purpose, it can also breed some perfectionists, 'cause I know a lot of people who are very obsessed with what their numbers are out there, and that is, that's intolerance to be anything other than perfect. So Brene Brown, if you don't know who she is using an American researcher and she's written some books, one of them is "The Gifts of Imperfection," and she's a quote about perfectionists that I wanna read you from her data and her research. She said, "What emerged for me in the data is that perfectionism is not about striving for excellence or healthy striving, it's a way of thinking and feeling that says this,'If I look perfect, do it perfect, work perfect and live perfect, I can avoid or minimize shame, blame and judgment'". And that's really what it's about. Perfectionism is a fear of failure, a fear of disappointment, a fear of rejection, we're intolerant of feeling that, whether it's how we're going to treat ourselves or we're worried what other people are going to think. Right, that's why when you have a healthy standard of reaching high standards, rather, right, then you have your own back, you don't have a fear of making mistakes. That's the big difference, Brene goes on to say that, "Perfectionism is the ultimate fear." She says that, "People who are walking around as perfectionist, they're ultimately afraid that the world is going to see them for who they really are, and they won't measure up." It's so interesting, right? We have so many fears around the game of golf, really fears of making mistakes, fears of being disappointing, maybe people who are supporting you, fears of other people judging you for your score, or where you hit a golf ball when you're teeing off in front of other people, we have so much fear about what they'll think about where that ball went, all of that is so restrictive for us being able to take our best swings on the golf course, it's such an opposite what we're afraid of doing, we're doing, because we can't possibly take our best swings. I remember I coached this girl in college and she told me that she said All she wanted to do is play a perfect rounder golf, she just wants to play... Perfect. Perfectly. Whatever is perfect. And I said, "Okay." I said, "Let's define perfect. Let's start that, or we're on the first call, tummy, tell me what your round looks like, what does... Define perfect." She said, "Well, I hit most of the balls in the fairway, and then I hit it on the green," I said, "What club you hit in?" She goes, "Seven iron for the most part," I said,"Okay, so where are you hitting it?" She goes, "You know, in the close... 10, 15 feet." And I said, "Okay, great." And she said,"And then what's the rest around look like?" And she goes, "When I chip, I'm chipping it in close." I said, "Well, wait a minute. It's like you're chipping, that means you missed a green." And I said, "That's not perfect." She was like, "Well, yeah, I'm gonna miss some greens." I'm like, "You are? I'm like, Who says? Perfect is technically, in golf, is really holing every second shot, and if you're long enough, maybe holing them on par fives, so for double eagles, depending on how far you hit it." Right? That's technically perfect. It's not possible. I don't know. Maybe? Is it possible? It's never been done. The odds are so remote of that ever happening. So the point here is that we define perfect. You get to define perfect. I get to define it. When I turned in that poster, I got to define which version of my first podcast was good enough to upload it to the platform I got to decide. You get to decide what's perfect, she decided what was perfect, which was so interesting, which was allowing her to make a certain number of bogies. I've had other clients who told me that anything under 80 is perfect, so interesting. It's so interesting that it's really about how we decide what is perfect and that we're willing not to beat ourselves up over that, that we won't judge ourselves for anything worse than that, but the more pressure that you put on yourself to play "Perfect Golf," you can't play "Perfect Golf," it's impossible, it's impossible for you to swing your best when you have that pressure on yourself not to make a mistake. What if you could go out and just really be super tolerant of your mistakes? And enjoy the process, enjoy figuring out how to make a par or birdie from a missed shot where you could have your own back the whole way around and enjoy the round and have fun, and no matter what you score, it wasn't relevant to your self worth or your identity or any of it, wouldn't the game be so much more fun? Wouldn't you play so much better? Is just something that I want to shed some light on. I want you to notice where perfectionism is showing up for you off the golf course and on the golf course, notice that how it is a fear, it's a fear of failure, a fear of disappointment, of rejection of people judging you. Of you judging yourself, which boils down to really your identity, your identity as a golfer, your identity and self worth, because the greater that is, the more tolerant you are of other people judging yourself, the more... And you'll have your own back, the more you'll be willing to make mistakes and fail, and when you can do that... You can play your best golf. So I hope this helps my friend. Alright, best luck, I'll see you next week. And if you get a chance, please make sure that you subscribe like or comment... Alright, I appreciate it.