How to Be More Confident in Golf (Part 1)

Do you want a little more confidence on the golf course? Of course you do! It is the ultimate golf emotion. As Jason Dufner said " Confidence is KING".

In this episode, I talk about  the difference between self-confidence and confidence. I share how you can have confidence regardless of how you are hitting  the ball.

I discuss the effectiveness of positive affirmations and differentiate the difference between confidence and arrogance.

This is the first of a two parts series....nest week I share the 3 Traits of a Self-Confident Golfer.

Interested in working me? It starts with a phone call and you can schedule it HERE

Learn more at KathyHartWood.com

Watch on YouTube HERE

Transcript

So today is all about confidence. So if you are like most golfers when you play golf, you find that your confidence has a tendency to ebb and flow with your performance on how well you're hitting it or how well you're scoring. We feel like it just disappears on certain days, and then we have it the next day. And what I wanna do is I wanna share with you different ways that you can maintain and create confidence on purpose.

So if that is something that you are interested, you wanna hang in with me with this episode. But first I want to introduce myself. I am Kathy Hartwood, and this is Above par. This is where I'm gonna show you how to think above par so that you can play below par. I help people get unstuck. I help them unlock their talent and their potential.

It has been buried under layers of fear, doubt, anxiety, pressure, things that keep us, hold us back from taking all of our talent onto the golf course. And confidence is a big part of that. So I wanna start with, I'm gonna divide this episode into two podcasts. So you wanna make sure that you come back next week. And the reason is,

I just have so much content and I think I'm gonna have a hard time getting it in, in a reasonable length of time. And I do try and, you know, I value your time and try and keep these podcasts to about 15 minutes. So I think if I put everything in one, it's just gonna be too long. So you want to come back next week.

So I'm gonna talk about the difference between confidence and self-confidence. And I think the understanding the difference is so important. How you can create confidence on purpose. And I'm gonna talk about the three traits of a self-confident golfer. So let's get started. So why is confidence important in golf? Right? Of course, it is like the ultimate emotion. It is the one that we wanna have,

right? I always tell people that on the golf course, you wanna have one of the three preferred states, I call 'em the three Cs, is calm, certain or confident, right? You wanna go out there or a synonym of those. You wanna go out, you're play taking your best swings when you're in one of those states. When we're playing from a feeling of doubt or anxiety or fear or pressure or stress,

we're not taking our talent, our best talent out onto the golf course. Besides that, confident, as Jason Duffer says, confidence is king. It is the ultimate feeling that gives us that bring it on attitude that we really can do anything. So we want to, as many times as possible, get into that state. But like I said, a lot of times we feel like it,

you know, if we're not hitting it very well, we feel like we lose all of our confidence and it creates more doubt and more uncertainty, and then we start feeling a little more stress and pressure on the golf course, and we don't make our our best swings. So as you're, as you score better, right? You have better, more confidence.

And then as you have a higher score, you kind of lose some confidence. You make some decisions on the golf course that maybe weren't the best, and you lose a little bit of confidence. You take a couple of those just weird swings, those shots that come out, you're like, what the heck was that? We lose a little confidence, right?

So it just ebbs and flows so much that we feel like we're more at the effect of it, right? It's one of those things that is just kind of elusive. We wish we could hang onto it more often. And I wanna define the difference between what confidence is and self-confidence is. So according to the dictionary, confidence is trust or belief in a thing or a person,

right? It's just that feeling that we know something is going to happen, right? So for in the, in the sense of golf, you might consider that, is that you have a lot of confidence in certain shots. You have confidence in your putting, you have confidence in your chipping, you have confidence that you keep the ball in play, right?

You can trust in your swing, right? Or you can trust in the shot or the club or the equipment, right? Or your partner or your caddy, whatever it is, you have confidence in different things. Self-confidence is that feeling of trust in one's own abilities, qualities and judgment. That's a, that's a feeling that you have about yourself. And the thing that's important to understand in that is that it's a feeling,

and I talk a lot about how your feelings come from your thoughts. So you can create that feeling with what you decide to think on the golf course, what you decide to think about yourself. So let me give you the example. So let's say if you were going to, let's say if I was going to learn how to ride a unicycle, I have no interest in learning how to ride a unicycle.

But if I wanted to go out and ride a unicycle, I have zero confidence in it. I have no idea what I'm doing. I can ride a bicycle for sure. I'm a, I'm not a big fan of heights. So I'm sure it would take me a little courage to get started to learn how to ride a unicycle. I would probably fall a bunch,

I would fall down. I would have to get back up and try again. It might take me a while and I have zero confidence at this given moment in time how to ride a unicycle, but I have total self-confidence in myself that I will figure it out, that I will have my own back, that I will stick with it, that I will fall down and get back up.

I trust in myself and I trust in my own ability to stick with it. Two totally different things. I might not know how or have any confidence and how to ride a unicycle, but I have total self-confidence in myself that I'll figure it out, right? So it's, I think it's really valuable for you to differentiate those two when you're on the golf course.

So you might not be be having the best of rounds, you might be saying, I'm just not hitting it very well today. I don't have a ton of confidence in what's going on in my swing. But you can have self-confidence, you can have that confidence in yourself that you're gonna figure it out, that you're gonna hang in there, that you're gonna have your own back,

right? That you are not gonna give up or quit, that you are not going to walk off the golf course or slam clubs or react or beat up on yourself. It's just one of those things, you're gonna figure it out. So those, it's important to understand the difference between those two. Competence might be your belief in your ability, or your belief in your ability to do something at that given moment in time.

And self-confidence is the belief in yourself that you're gonna figure it out and have your own back and your own abilities. And that is a feeling that you are, that's available to you anytime, because it's always coming from a thought. So I like to create the visual of, of confidence being like on a seesaw, where you're at any given moment, because it comes from a thought,

any thought that you have is either moving you towards confidence on one side of the seesaw, where you're gonna tip towards confidence, or you're moving away from confidence and more towards doubt. So if you're, if you're thinking things on the golf course that are gonna move you more towards doubt, you're moving away from confidence, right? So any given moment in time,

any thought that you have is either moving you closer or further away from confidence, right? Which gives you a lot of power, right? It helps you decide on purpose what to think and say to yourself. Now this is a thing. It is different than positive affirmations, right? I used to think that confidence was just a trait that people had,

you know, just some people were born with more confidence than other people, right? That they were just, it was more natural to 'em. I thought there was like actually something that might be wrong with me. Like, why didn't I have as much confidence as that other girl over there? Right? Who, to me, I thought maybe it was a little too confident,

if you know what I mean, coming across a little cocky or arrogant. And it's important to understand the difference between the two, right? Confidence is that inner state of being. It's a knowing inside of you. You do not need to tell anybody or share it with anybody because it is a feeling that you have. It's just a knowing that you have that confidence inside of you.

Arrogance is an outer expression of an maybe an overexaggeration of your, of your abilities, right? Or yourself that we share and we have the talent to other people. It really is a sign of insecurity because we're, we're trying to convince other people, right? That we have these talents or skills, right? When you're confident you don't need to do that.

It's just a, it's just a knowing inside. So that's the difference, right? That was for me, I think when, when I was younger, very confusing. 'cause I saw so many people who are outwardly confident, and I thought, well, I just don't have that, right? It's just, but really in reality, they were just being a little cocky and arrogant.

And that's not confidence. That is actually insecurity coming out and over being over exaggerated. The other thing that I was saying is that confidence then, to create confidence does not mean that because of the seesaw analogy, that you need to say a lot of positive affirmations or you need to say things that you do not believe, right? I, I'm a fan of positive affirmations,

but I'm not a fan. It's only powerful if it resonates with you. Like if you can feel it and it, and you can sink into a feeling of belief with it, because like I said, it's an inner state or being that confidence. So you don't wanna put kind of whipped cream on, you know, a pig, so to speak when you're saying thoughts that you're just not believing,

right? So I'm gonna give you an example. My friend Jamie and I, she was my friend in junior golf, and we played, we went to tour school together, and I have no idea. Oh my gosh, I wish I could come up with his name. I keep, I, I always wanna say shocked to go on, but I don't,

I don't know exactly what the name of this person was, but she was some kind of creative, motivational, positive woman who had the, these series of cassettes. No idea how I got my hand on these cassettes. And this is how long ago it was, it was a cassette. And we stuck it in the car listening to listening to her on the way to tour school,

which was in Texas. And so she was saying these things that were like, things were coming easily and effortlessly to me, that's what she kept repeating. So whatever it was, you picked a subject and it was, it comes easily and effortlessly. And she would have this really soft sing-song voice. And so we, Jamie and I would crack each other up all the time.

So we were saying these and laughing, right? We're like, driving comes to me easily and effortlessly, right? So we just kept repeating it and repeating it, thinking that this was gonna give us this ultimate confidence that we would have this edge if we get through Q School, which is qualifying school for the LPGA. So we're out playing in a practice round,

and I had a five iron into the, into a green. I had a little bit of a, I think it was a little bit of a downhill lie. And I looked at her and I said, five irons come to me easily and effortlessly. We kind of giggled and I hit the shot and I hit a little fat. I was short of the green.

And I just looked at her and I was like, chipping comes to me easily and effortlessly, right? So while the intention was good, and we were trying our best to kind of have positive thoughts, we were really, we were trying to crowd out all of our nervousness and anxiety over going through Q School and while their positive thoughts, and they seem like they're doing a nice thing,

right? They just didn't resonate, right? They're not sitting with you. So positive affirmations are not necessarily the thoughts, right? They want, you wanna make sure that it is resonating with you inside, that you really believe the thought that is making you feel a little bit more positive than the negative thoughts that create doubt. Anything that helps you move towards that state or feeling of confidence.

But I wanna tell you and assure you that it's available to you. You wanna start paying attention to what you're actually saying on the golf course, right? Is that thought moving me more towards confidence or more towards doubt? Some examples of thoughts that we have a tendency to say to ourself often on the golf course include, you know, like, I stink.

I can't hit the shot. I don't know how to do this. This is really hard. Golf is hard. I don't hit it far enough. I'm not good enough. I can't make enough putts. Like they're just, they seem so subtle and they seem so true to us, but they're not building our confidence. They're not building that sense of believing in ourselves.

They're creating doubt. You know, as Henry Ford said, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. So whatever you decide to believe you're going to be right. If you think it's hard out there, if the course is playing hard or if you don't have enough length or distance, you're gonna be right enough length or distance to score,

well, you're gonna be right because you're choosing to think that. So you wanna be really selective about the thoughts that you're choosing to think on the golf course and ask yourself at any given moment in time, whether they're moving you closer towards confidence on the seesaw, or you're moving yourself further away from confidence and closer to doubt and understand that there is a distinct difference between what confidence is and self-confidence is.

You can go out there and not have a great day of ball striking, and you can still have the self-confidence in yourself. All right? I hope that helped. I'll talk to you next week. So listen us, if you love this podcast, you can talk to me live, you know, and I would love to talk to you about your golf and how I can help you take more of your talent on the golf course.

It starts with a phone call, and you can do that and schedule an appointment@kathyhartwood.com slash work with me. I hope to talk to you soon.