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.
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Think Above Par | Your Mental Caddy for Golf Mindset & Performance
Hidden Golf Thought Errors that Keep You Stuck
•Kathy Hart Wood•Episode 211
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Ever catch yourself saying, "Here we go again" or "I always struggle with my putting"? These are thought errors, and in this episode Kathy dives deep into the mental missteps that can sabotage your golf game.
Learn to identify and shift these harmful patterns to transform despair into hope and underperformance into success, both on the course and in life.
Whether it's overcoming habitual negativity or reshaping your mental approach, Kathy provides actionable strategies to help you steer clear of these common mental traps and play your best game yet.
If you ever miss a shot on the golf course and hear yourself going, see, I knew it, or here we go again. Or something good happens and you say that rarely happens to me. Or maybe you hear yourself saying I always do that. These are thought errors. And I'm going to show you how to find them and shift them in this episode. Let's go. 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 golf friend! Welcome back to Think Above Par. I am so happy you're here and listening. So I'm gonna jump right in and just share with you that I want to talk today about thought errors. And I want to give you some ways that you can find some of the thought errors that you have in golf. And as a bonus, you can start looking for them in your day-to-day life. So basically, what a thought error is, it's an irrational or inaccurate thinking pattern that can negatively impact your perspective and your actions, often leading to self-defeating beliefs and behaviors. So in golf, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This means that you can start creating habits and patterns over and over and over again in your golf life. So you have an inaccurate or irrational thinking pattern. This is the definition of a thought error, and it negatively impacts you. And often they are not necessarily based on reality. They can be overly negative or exaggerated. And what happens is we buy into it and we just believe it. And the way that I talk is once we have these beliefs, anytime you have a belief, if you know steer, you know, the way that I help you with self-coaching is that a belief, even though it's a thought, because we repeat it so many times, we think it's a fact. We think everybody on the planet would agree with us. We think, of course it is. It's true, it's non-negotiable. And for me, and why I'm doing what I'm doing, my thought error that I found playing golf was that I'm always gonna struggle with my putting. I would have told you everybody on the planet was gonna believe that, right? I told I would have told you I could have gone to court and convinced a jury that I'm always gonna struggle with my putting. So, because of that, it became a S, which is a situation when I said that before, right? It's a situation, it's a fact, it's non-negotiable. So that means I can't change it. And that's what happens when we have beliefs. It's just basically a thought that we repeat over and over again until our brain believes it so fully that it thinks it's a fact. And once something is a fact in your head or belief, right, it it's non-negotiable. You can't change it. So you get stuck in these little thought errors. And I want to talk to you about some really common ones on the golf course that you might notice and recognize that are relevant to you. And once you recognize them, it's really helpful if you do know steer. If you do, if you're not familiar with it, I talk about it in a lot of my different podcasts, or you can reach out to me and I'll I'll give you some different ways to learn it. But it's helpful to know steer because it's a self-coaching tool. Actually, you can go and get my book. I'll put make sure the link is down below, and I talk about steer in my book, Mastering Your Golf Brain. And I have a workbook that accompanies that. So that'll be in the links below. And that's a way that you can learn more about Steer S-T-E-A-R, which is basically a coaching tool. But once you find one of these beliefs that you have up in the S line, right, which means it's non-negotiable, and you move it to a thought, that means you get to change it and shift it. You get to start changing your results and the way that you show up and how you feel, which is a big deal in golf and in your day-to-day life. Okay, so the way that I caught my thought was I noticed myself saying, Here we go again. So I would go out and putt, and I'd hit a wonky putt. And when I say a wonky putt, it just didn't feel right. It wasn't a very good role. I was hesitant. It just really wasn't very a solid putt. I didn't feel very good over it. I was overthinking, like all these things. And I would hit a like a crappy putt. I miss it, probably a short putt, and I go, here we go again. The rest of that story is here we go again. It's going to be one of those days that I'm going to struggle with my putting. Now, what would happen is then the rest of the round, of course, I'm going to struggle with my putting. So that really felt like despair and hopelessness. Right? Why try? If I'm always going to struggle, if it's always going to be hard, why would I try? And so then it would become a self-fulfilling prophecy because the rest of the round, of course, I'm going to struggle. I'm not looking for anything other than that. Because I have this thought, here we go again. So that's the first one I want you to look for is here we go again. If you have that, if you know what I'm saying, where you start hitting duck hooks or your ball starts slicing a lot off the tee, and you hear yourself here, here we go again, you have a thought error in there that I want you to examine and look at. What is the thought? I'm a person who does this, or here we go, this always shows up, and here it's coming again. That means you're stuck with it the rest of the round, right? And the round's gonna stink after that. I can promise you. I've done that a lot of times. Okay, so here's some other ones. So we can have some thoughts that are very catastrophizing. This is a category of a thought error, and catastrophizing means like this is gonna be a horrible round. This is gonna be one of the worst days of my life. It could be like I knew it, as like let's say you made a double bogey or you had a blow up hole and you go, Yeah, I knew it. It was time, bound to happen. We go into just assuming a worst-case scenario. I never play well in the rain. I never play well with Betty. We just catastrophize. This is gonna be a horrible day because this is my pairing and this is my tea time. So I want you to listen for those where we catastrophize and we make it the worst possible scenario for ourselves and our outcome for the day. It could be a form of all or nothing thinking where we're just seeing situations as only good or bad. There's like nothing in the middle. So that could be I always do that. I never get out of the bunker, I never hit this shot, I never par that hole, I never have a round without a double bogey. I always have a round with a couple three putts. So we end up having these rounds or these thoughts or these shots or these holes where there's no middle ground in the big words. It's not like we do it sometimes. We just do it all the time or we never do something. Right? So you want to listen to your all or nothing thinking. Another way we could do that is by discounting the positive. So let's say you had a good hole, you're playing well, and you might sit there and go, Yeah, I never do that. I never hit this many putts, or I never get out of the bunker, or that's not like me. I don't par the first couple of holes. You have a thought error going on. What's underneath it? What and when I say what's underneath it, if you say to yourself, yeah, I never par the first couple holes, you have a thought. Your thought thought error is that I'm a person who doesn't par the first couple holes. I don't get off to a good start. You have something that's going to create some self-defeating beliefs and behaviors and create some negative results for you on the golf course. It's not necessarily true, it's not necessarily based on reality, but it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy for you. We can do some labeling, which means that we label ourselves or apply negative beliefs to ourselves. So I'm just a person who does I chili dip these usually. I normally skull it out of the bunker. I'm a choker, I'm a duck hooker, I'm not surprised. Kind of attitude or thought, you have a thought error behind there that you want to take a look at. So let me go through these because I kind of bunched them all together. So there's good, you can catastrophize, you can have all or nothing thinking, you can discount the positive, which I talked about, like that rarely happens to me, or you can do some labeling, labeling yourself. Yeah, or others, by the way. So let me just run through them like some of the common ones that I thought of. And I know you'll come up with lots of other ones yourself that you might hear, or you can hear it in other people. Sometimes that's easier to do. Here we go. This is going to be a shit day. I knew it. Here we go again, which was mine. Not surprised after you hit a shot. I always do that. I can't help it. It's just the way I am. Could be I never do that because you did something well and you did something positive, right? And you discount it. That rarely happens. Also, meaning like you discount it. Maybe you made a birdie or you you know part a par three that you never par or hit a green. I'm usually a 90 shooter. You play better than that. You're discounting yourself. I usually chili dip these, I usually skull these, I'm a choker. These are thought errors that I want you to listen for on the golf course. And then there's going to be versions of these in your day-to-day life. Right? Once you find them and you hear them, I want you to recognize how they do become a self-fulfilling process prophecy, how they're not very positive, right? And they create some very self-defeating behaviors in yourself. Okay, now what do you do about it once you find them? So for me, I noticed the thought, here we go again. I was like, here we go again. Well, why do I keep saying that? I said, what am I saying? Here we go again too. And then I, because you got to ask yourself, like, here we go again, what? What is your thought about that? For me, it was I'm always gonna struggle with my putting. So here we go again. I'm not gonna putt very well today. So once I find that thought that I'm always gonna struggle with my putting, I then get to decide to pivot on that thought. I get to decide to think something different. But if you do not see this as a thought, if you think it is a fact, if you argue for it, if you want to come to me, yeah, Kathy, but it's true, I always struggle with my putting, right? Then you're gonna get stuck with it. And you're just gonna keep struggling with your putting. And the way that you get to decide if it actually is true, and this is what I had to do literally in my head. I said, if I could go to court, right? I said, I kind of jokingly said that I thought I could go to court, but like really when I put myself in court and I had a jury in front of me that I told them I'm always gonna struggle with my putting, could I sell them? Could I get everybody on the jury to agree with me? Because I had some other thoughts in there. It's like a suck at putting, it's the worst part of my game. Saying it was the worst part of my game, by the way, was true, right? So it wasn't useful because it was the bottom stat that I had. Something's gonna be at the bottom, something's gonna be the worst part. It just wasn't useful for me to say to myself, but I suck at putting, right? I'm always gonna struggle with my putting. When I had those two thoughts, I thought, well, well, you know what? I have 34, 35 putts. There's a lot of golfers who would take that number, let's say, if that was my day. So it's not true that that's horrible. It's just, it's me and my thoughts about it and my standards for it that make it horrible. So once I could create a little space around that and knew it wasn't a fact, because not everybody on the planet would agree with me, not seven billion people on the planet would agree with me that I'm always gonna struggle with my putty and that my putty's horrible, because there's some people who be like, I would take 34 putts in a heartbeat because I have 40 putts, right? Then I got to shift. Then I got to find how that thought wasn't true, that I was creating my results there. So you want to look for evidence in there that maybe you're not right. How are you not right about that thought? Especially if you have some of that all or nothing thinking where there's no middle ground. Is it true that you never get off to a good start? Never? Is that true? Right? It's not true, then it's sometimes I get off to a good start. That thought is so much more productive and will create better results for you because you're gonna look through the lens that sometimes I get off to a good start, right? So if you started the round and you're like, well, you know what? What's true is sometimes I get off to this a good start. It's not true that I always bogey the first couple holes because I don't always do it, right? Sometimes I bogey one, sometimes I par some, but I have that all or nothing thinking in there, and it's going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy for me. So then you get to start the round with the intention of shifting to this different thought, this other thought where you're being intentional, right? A thought error is often an unintentional thought that we kind of let to let go rogue. And we've let it have a life of its own, it's just repeated itself over and over again, and we just keep seeing more and more evidence of that thought. So we believe it harder and harder and harder, right? So if I said to myself, I'm always gonna struggle with my putting, and I go out and I go, here we go again, I'm defeated, I play golf from defeated, which should have been a red flag for me because that's not calm, certain, or confident. I then I will, of course, not putt well. Nobody putts well from defeated. So I'm like, see, right? That's another one. So if you go see, which I did all the time, see, I'm always gonna struggle with my putting. So then, of course, I got evidence. My brain loves to be right. Your brain loves to be right, it loves to say C, right? Because that means that you're looking through a lens to see evidence of a thought that you have. That thought gets to be positive or negative, that thought gets to serve you or not serve you. But when we don't pay attention, when we're not self-aware, we have these thought errors that just keep repeating over and over again. That we get to shift. So, what I want you to do is I want you to start discovering them for yourself. Listen for them on the golf course. Listen for some of these thoughts and examples that I gave you, and you might find some that you have for yourself that are different. There's a gazillion that you could possibly have in golf, or you could be here all day coming up with the ones that I've heard, but listen for them and ask yourself, is that true? And if you are a stubborn person who wants to argue for it, if you want to argue for, I'm always gonna struggle with my putting, I always bogey the first two holes, I always chili dip on this hole, I never par number seven. If you want to argue for that, you get to keep it. That's what I'm saying. Not a problem. Decide you want to keep it. But if you want to shift it and you want to change it and you want to get a different result, you gotta ask yourself, is it really, really true? Could I prove that in a court of law? Will seven billion people on the planet agree with me? And if the answer is no, then you get to shift that thought. And the what I shifted it to was it's possible that I could putt well today. And I believed that because I put it well in the past. I told myself, it's possible I could putt well today because I put it well in the past. And so I went out and I decided when I was gonna hear that thought, I'm always gonna struggle with my putting, I'm gonna go, nope, it's possible I could putt well today. And I just kept pivoting to it. I kept pivoting to it. And that was my intention. I set that intention every round. Even when my brain said, Yeah, but you're really gonna struggle with your putting. I'm like, nope, I see you, I hear you, I know what you're doing, but I want to think this other thought instead. I'm gonna start letting go of this one. And that's what you have to do because it's a tug-of-war in your head. You're gonna have cognitive dissonance, which means you're gonna have that other, the one thought you want to have and the thought that you don't want to have, and they're gonna be in a tug of war in your brain. And what most people do is they give up the rope and they let the other thought, the old thought, the one that doesn't serve you, the crappy thought that's producing bad results that feels crappy, you let it win. You don't need to let it win. You just gotta hang in there and keep repeating it. And you gotta let that thought become louder and you gotta let that thought become more consistent, but you have to be intentional, which means you have to do it on purpose because if you do not set an intention, that other thought is just there by default. So it comes up. So we've got to be intentional when we go out and play. All right, my friend. So I want you to find your thought errors that you have on the golf course. Listen for it in other people, because a lot of times it's easy to hear in other people and we don't hear ourselves. Ask yourself, is it true? Ask yourself how you could be wrong about that, and then decide to shift and decide to pivot, and then you repeat it and you repeat it until you let go of that thought error. Because your brain will look for evidence of the other thought, which is what happened to me with my putting. I turned it around in 10 days and it was something that I struggled with my whole life, and I didn't realize that really what I had was a thought error. If someone had freaking told me that when I was in college, my my whole golf career would have been totally different. But I discovered it later in life, and that's okay because now I come and share it with you because I do not want you to go another day with these thought errors that don't serve you. All right, my friends. If I can help you with that, then anyway, I encourage you to go to KathyHartwood.com, reach out to me, check the resources below, different ways to work with me or connect with me so that I can help you find your thought errors and help you master your golf brain. All right, have a beautiful week, and I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Bye.
