3 Traits of a Self-Confident Golfer

This is the second part of the Confident Golfer series.

In this podcast, I share the 3 traits of a self-confident golfers/person.

Everyone is looking for more self-confidence, especially on the golf course.  It is often thought that confidence only comes when we play well or score well.

That is not the case. Self-confidence is a skill that you can practice and build.
I promise it's available to you, and it starts with rehearsing the 3 traits I talk about in this episode.

You can schedule a time to talk with me live about your golf HERE

Visit Kathy Hart Wood YouTube

Listen to the John Rahm interview HERE    or   https://youtu.be/PcUpsa4wff4

Learn more at KathyHartWood.com

Transcript

All right, you ready to build some self-confidence today? Today I'm gonna, this is the second part of a two-part series on confidence. And today I'm gonna talk about the three traits of a self-confident golfer. I'm gonna show you what those are and how you can start using them today in your self and your golf game to start building confidence. So I wanna tell you that I recorded this podcast before John Rom won the US Open,

and I hope you got a chance to watch it, 'cause it was an amazing tournament and a fantastic finish. So happy for him. So many great stories coming out of that, especially after COVID and being on Father's Day, and he's a new dad and all the great stories. But his interviews after the tournament were so pertinent to this podcast, to this episode or the last two episodes.

He talked about being confident and calm. Those are two of the three C's that I talk about on being able to play your best golf. He talked about getting into that state during the last round. He talked about not having to feel like he has to play perfect golf all the time, that he can play in perfect golf and still be confident and still be calm.

And he talked about believing in himself, just having this, knowing the state that he was in, that he did not need to announce it. He did not need to say it out loud, but he just believed the whole day. So I want to send a link and make sure there's, or put a link in the description to that YouTube video so that you can watch it yourself.

And if you get an opportunity, you can look up some of his other interviews because they're awesome. So let's get to it. All right. But first, my name is Kathy Hartwood, and welcome back my friend. 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 that has been buried with fear and anxiety and doubt and pressure so that you can take more of your talent out onto the golf course. So I am glad that you are here with me and let's get started. So last week I talked a little bit about what confidence is, the difference between confidence and self-confidence and arrogance.

I talked about how you create confidence, where it comes from that it's a feeling, it's an inner state and a being a a, an inner state of being that you have, that you feel, and it comes from your thoughts and how we generate it from what we say to ourself. We're either, we're either always moving towards confidence or we're moving towards closer towards doubt with the things that we say to ourselves,

the words that we say to ourselves, it is the most preferred state that we can be in on the golf course because that feeling of confidence is that, has that bring it on attitude. There's, there's just nothing that you don't feel like you can accomplish or do when you're in that feeling. So we're always striving to create more of it. And I just wanna really emphasize like I did last week,

that there is a difference between your, your ability or confidence in doing something at this given moment in time. Like your golf game might ebb and flow because it is the nature of the beast of golf, right? Some days we hit it well, some days we don't. But you can always have self-confidence that is always available to you on how you decide on what to think about yourself.

So that's what I wanna encourage you to have. I want you really to have and foster that sense of self-confidence just because it is available so much to you and you play so much better golf with it. I talk about that being the three Cs, those preferred states to be in of calm, certain or confident where you're gonna make your best swings. So you're always striving to move closer towards confidence at any given moment in time.

I really think you need to protect that about yourself. Be very conscious of it. We're just naturally kind of negative, right? So we, we beat ourselves up and we're self-deprecating. We kind of almost feel like that we have to beat ourselves up a little bit to motivate ourselves. It is not a useful thing. It's, and it's becomes a habit,

right? We start doing it so often that we just think it's natural. Like that I telling yourself that you stink or that you're not gonna figure this out, or you just, all the negativity that we say about ourselves because we didn't do something. Well, you know, a lot of people will tell me that that's, well, that's how they motivate themselves.

And I'm just gonna here to tell you, it's like taking four steps back to move one step forward. You wanna protect that about yourself and the things that you're saying to yourself. And always be conscious of where you are on that seesaw that I mentioned last week about confidence and doubt. Confidence, self-confidence is a muscle that you can build. Just like I said,

it's a habit for us to beat ourselves up and create a lot of doubt. It is also just a habit for you to start creating thoughts or say thoughts that create more confidence. You can build up that muscle. And I think the more clarity you have and how it gets created, the easier it's for you to do. Right? So that's what I'm doing with these last two podcasts.

Okay. So let's talk about the three traits of a self-confident golfer. The first one is that you wanna get really good at making decisions. So making a decision is being decisive. And how that's gonna look on the golf course is that you are going to pick a yardage, pick a club, you're gonna pick a line, and you're going to decide that is the right line,

and you're gonna stand over the ball with certainty and competence. There is going to be no doubt in it, right? We get very indecisive because we have this fear of failure or worried about making the wrong decision, right? And I wanna tell you that thinking it's a wrong decision. Whatever you do is a choice. It is not true, right?

There is no wrong decision because it's, you're either right and it worked or you learned. That's it, right? You can decide to think that versus thinking that you made a mistake and that it was the wrong decision or that you failed. I think one of the most powerful stories that I had seen recently was a story about Tommy Fleetwood, who's playing in the Honda Classic,

I think, think it was last year. I don't know. Covid has made everything kind of blurry, but he was playing in the Honda Classic and he was on 18, and I, he needed to make a birdie to go into a playoff or to win. Don't get me caught on all the exact facts, but I know he needed to make a birdie.

And 18 is a par five dog leg, right? Water on the right. So he was hitting a hybrid inn and he had the world to the left, like he could have totally bailed out, left, hit a pin high, chipped up, tried to chip up and make a birdie, but he decided to hit the hybrid and go for the pin and try and hit close to the pin.

Of course, it's tucked right? Right closer to the water, and he hit the hybrid and it got a little away from him. It faded and it went into the water, right? And the commentary was amazing about that shot. I remember reading on Twitter, all the comments was that he got so criticized, like why did he do that? What was,

what was his reasoning? Why didn't he just bail out left and hit the ball up pin high, and then like I said, chip up, right? Everybody questioned his decision and he said the most amazing thing, and I'm gonna paraphrase it, but he said, we picked the right club. It was the club that I hit. I decided to hit it and I would do it again.

So he picked that club, not questioning, not standing over that ball, questioning whether he should have been bailing out, questioning whether it was the right club, because then he would've really made a bad swing, right? At least he gave himself a shot because he stood over it with certainty. It just didn't work, right? So he, it didn't work,

it didn't turn out. He just learned from it, right? At that given moment, he made a decision, it didn't work, and he had his own back. While the rest of the golf community was beating him up for his decision, he had his own back, right? And that's another important part of when you make a decision. However,

it turns out you wanna make sure that you're having your own back. So the second trait of a self-confident golfer is the willingness to experience any emotion. So golf is a very emotional sport. We experience anxiety and nerves and stress, and pressure, disappointment, fear, right? We can doubt uncertainty, right? Synonyms basically there we can, we can experience so many of these emotions,

anger, happiness, joy, all within one round, right? But a lot of times most people are not willing to experience a lot of emotions. There's emotions that we just wanna just eliminate out of our vocabulary and our experience. A lot of people have this with anxiety, right? Just, I just don't wanna experience any anxiety. Just please, let's remove that one.

I'll experience a lot of emotions, but let's just take anxiety away, right? We just don't have that luxury. We, as a part of the human experience, we get to experience all the emotions, but the more you're willing to experience emotions, the more confidence that you have, the more you're not afraid or unwilling to go into any situation or experience,

right? If you can think about a lot of the things that hold people back on the golf course are fears, fear of failure, fear of disappointment, anxiety, pressure, nerves, worrying about what other people think. Judgment is another one that we have. That's where that we judge ourselves and we judge other people. Disappointment. If I didn't say that,

anger, right? All of those, if we're willing to go out on the golf course and be willing to just exper bring it on, I'll take it. All right? I'm not going to hold myself back. I'm willing to experience anything that comes my way. Just think about how amazing that you could play, that you would be able to let your talent out there.

So when you're, the more willing you are to experience any emotion, not be afraid of emotions, know how to process them, know how to allow them to be there. Not make 'em mean anything, not make 'em mean anything about yourself. Then your competence goes through the roof. So John Rom, and I saw a quote, I read a quote about him dealing with his emotions on the golf course,

and what he said was, what I mean to play better is just letting myself feel my emotions, letting the emotions flow through me, rather than trying to hold myself. He was trying to say, hold himself back, right? He was struggling with experiencing his emotions on the golf course. He saw that those were a problem, and so he just decided to just allow them all to be there,

right? He, he decided to allow himself to experience all of it. So the better you get at that, the more confidence you have. I coach my clients on this all the time. I think it's your superpower skill in golf. The better you are at learning how to deal with your emotions in anything in life, but definitely on the golf course,

you're gonna be able to take more of your talent out there, right? Because anytime we're not in one of those states of being in one of the three Cs, we can't make our best swings, right? And then we, we have, when we're, when we have those fear and that stress and the fear of failure or that, or disappointment,

right? Then we have that, that rides over the whole round, right? Even though you might be focusing pretty well on different shots or different holes, like over the whole round, you're like, it's, it's hanging in there. Be like, what? It depends on what I shoot on, how I'm gonna treat myself, right? So we have this fear of disappointment or failure because it depends on how,

you know, with the, with the scorecard that we sign, right? When you're willing to experience all those emotions, then you're, you can take so much more of your talent out on the golf course. So that second trait of a self-confident golfer is that willing to willingness to experience all the emotions. Okay? So number three, which I have alluded to a little bit before,

is your thoughts about yourself and your golf game. What are the things that you're saying to yourself on the golf course? What do you say about your golf game on the course? It's that, it's that skill of protecting your own confidence. It's that not taking away and chiseling away at your confidence, being very conscious about the things that you say. You don't say things like,

I'm an idiot, that I can't do this and I'm gonna screw it up. That I never do anything, right? That I'm constantly failing, that I can't put two good rounds together. You're not saying those things about yourself because they are chipping away at your confidence, right? You wanna be very protective, like you have a shield around you that is protecting your confidence.

So the things that you say about yourself, the identity that you have of yourself is protected. Self-confident golfers are, are, have a very good identity, self-identity, self-worth, right? They protect that and they say good things about their golf and they say good things about themselves. They're realistic. They don't beat themselves up. They have their own back,

right? You noticing where you start beating yourself down in the process of any round is very important because like I made that analogy last week on the seesaw of confidence, you're either moving yourself closer to confidence or you're moving yourself further away. Just like I made that analogy about Tommy Fleetwood, he didn't take that as an opportunity to beat himself up. He had his own back.

It wasn't worth it, right? He just learned from that mistake that there is no wrong decision, right? We're just learning. He didn't take that as an opportunity to beat himself up. While the rest of the world was saying, you should totally beat yourself up, right? So you want to be very conscious of the words that you're saying to yourself.

Choose not. They are a choice, right? So choose to protect your own confidence. Keep moving yourself on the seesaw towards more confidence versus doubt, right? So those are the three traits of a self-confident golfer. You wanna get really good at making decisions when you make a decision. You wanna have your own back. There is no right or wrong decision until you make it.

So with what you decide to think about it. You either made a good decision or a right decision, or you just learned that's it, and you move on. The second one is, you're willing to experience any emotion. Bring it. I don't bring it. I can handle fear. I'm, I'm afraid. No problem. I got this. I have my own back,

right? I'm willing to experience emotions because I know what it's like to process them and not avoid them. I have that skill. I know how to do it. And the third one is how you treat yourself, your identity with yourself. The words that you say about yourself and your golf game and your talent. You wanna be protective of that, not in an arrogant way,

not where you're not, where you're tooting your own horn, but you're being protective of it. You're having a little self-compassion for yourself as you're learning, or as you're changing, or as you're mo making changes in your swing. All right, my friend. That was a two part series on confidence and self-confidence. I hope you got a lot out of it.

I hope you start taking action today on building your self-confidence. 'cause it is totally 100% available to you. All right, I'll talk to you next week. So listen to, 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.