Kathy Hart Wood: Calm Certain Confident

As part of, Professional at Anything BUT Golf, Kathy Hart Wood is joining the show talk about how she helps golfers find the state of mind where they can think clearly and make your best physical swing at that moment in time.  As she says - this is usually calm, certain, or confident. 

Kathy is a former tour player, top teacher, and a certified life coach.  She helps golfers of all abilities through coaching, her podcast - Think Above Par, and her newly published book, Mastering Your Golf Brain: A Guide to Self-Coaching.

Our minds are more powerful than we give them credit for.  We can be limited by our own self-beliefs far more than the clubs we play or the mechanics we deploy.  Conversely, how many times have you heard that someone "gets more from less" or outplays their skill level?  As Kathy says, they play more shots from a play of being - Calm, Certain, or Confident.  

Transcript

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Jesse Stakes: Hey, everybody! Welcome to making sense of it all as part of our series of being professional at anything but golf. I am pleased to have Kathy Hartwood. She has the podcast think above par, and she does a tremendous amount of coaching for professionals and people like you and me. Kathy, thank you so much for joining us.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Thank you, Jesse, for having me. I'm excited to be here and talk to your audience.

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Jesse Stakes: Absolutely so

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Jesse Stakes: high level before we even get started. Tell my audience what you do for folks as far as on your on the coaching side of your business.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Well, I help people manage their minds around the game of golf so that they can perform better. Basically, it's about taking the talent that you have right now, currently, whatever it is, whatever you own. Not that we're not trying to work on that and be and improve, because that's really what golf's all about. But taking what you own from the range

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Kathy Hart Wood: out onto the golf course. And that's where people really end up getting in their own way, and, you know, really affecting their experience and their results on the golf course. So I help them manage your mind around all that.

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Jesse Stakes: It sounds so simple when you say it.

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Kathy Hart Wood: It is actually very simple. It's really just 2 steps to do it. But it's not easy. So there's 2 different things. It's simple, but not necessarily easy.

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Jesse Stakes: Fair. I can. I can. I can accept that answer.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Good. So, yeah.

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Jesse Stakes: So you also do a podcast. And that's kind of how we met was, I was introduced to you through one of your listeners, one of the people that know you. Your podcast is called, think above par. So if people are, you know, if people listen to this or inter, they end up interested in it. Tell tell them a little bit about your show that you do as well.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah. So it's just me. I just talk for usually about 10 to 12 min. So they're really consumable bytes of information. And I just share tidbits on different scenarios, on how to

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Kathy Hart Wood: really master your golf brain out there so that you can perform better. So you could go through that and select all kinds of different areas, whether it's, you know, you know, anxiety. 1st tee jitters confidence to, you know, always having blow up holes. You'll find a topic in there that you can tap into and listen to, and you know, listen to. On the drive to the golf course.

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Jesse Stakes: I I love that because, you know, it's and a lot of my audience will relate to that where you know, people are always pushed to listen to business publications or listen to motivational things. You know, people talk about motivational, motivational Mondays different things like that. But when

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Jesse Stakes: when they take on a Rec. Some they consider a recreational activity, a lot of the times, or a semi competitive activity. They don't necessarily think to get themselves in the right frame of mind. So I think that that's tremendous. I'll make sure that I put links below when I when I when we when we push this interview out. I'll make sure that they have access to that, because what better way to get ready for your run of golf than to get your mind right on the way to the course.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah 100%. I mean, that's really what we ultimately are challenged with the whole time. You know, most people just think it's the the answers on the range, or hitting golf balls or taking a lesson. But it's really about. If you get your head in the right place, then you can access all your talent. And so it it doesn't. It doesn't really hasn't been given enough emphasis or an importance relative to golf, especially because it's we're playing a sport. And a lot of times people are like, I just need to practice more. I just need to work harder.

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Kathy Hart Wood: But you either make that job easier. Your tail, you know, accessing your talent, you make it harder. And so you get to. You know you get to be intentional about that by

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Kathy Hart Wood: paying attention, which is the key, paying attention and being attentive to what you're actually thinking and feeling on a golf course.

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Jesse Stakes: No doubt. So what was it that made you

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Jesse Stakes: take your career or go this direction as far as focusing on the mental aspect of the game of golf.

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Jesse Stakes: How'd you get started with this.

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Kathy Hart Wood: So I played golf my whole life. I grew up in a golf family. My dad was a club pro, so I used to go to the golf course first, st you know, with him when I don't know really early when I was 7. And so I started competing nationally at 12 and that's pretty good growing up in Buffalo, New York, so cause their season was like a month long. Right? So.

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Jesse Stakes: Right.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah, we didn't get. We didn't get to play a lot of golf. And then I wanted to play college golf. I played professional golf all over the world, and and lots of different tours. But I always had the feeling that I was not playing to my potential. I was always underperforming. And I went to sports psychologists. I went to Bob Rotella and some other sports psychologists trying to help me.

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Kathy Hart Wood: You know, take my talent onto the golf course and have more success, because at the you know that point my career depended on my, you know you. Your score depended on my, you know you got money right.

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Jesse Stakes: Absolutely bar you're doing.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Message.

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Jesse Stakes: Job for you.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah, it was a job. And so, and it was super frustrating, knowing that I could do it. But I wasn't able to take it out there and find the success that my brother, who played on the tour his name is W. Hart. He played on the tour his whole life, and he was having all the success I'm like. Why, if he can do it, why can't he? If you why can't I do it? What's you know what's wrong with me. And so I left golf. I got married. I had kids and I taught for a living I taught for decades. You know, I'm a top 50 teacher still. But

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Kathy Hart Wood: I just really found that. Well, I had a series of events happen that I realized what was actually in my own way what? What it was that was keeping me from playing to my potential, and I started coaching my clients that I taught and helped them, and at some point I was like, I can make

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Kathy Hart Wood: an impact on someone's life so much more by shifting one thought than by changing their grip or changing their setup. And so I just, I

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Kathy Hart Wood: got awarded top 50 Lpj top 50 teacher, and that next day I quit teaching, and I just put I put everything into just helping people with this area. And it's I love it. I I impact lives way more just like I thought, than I than I ever did, shifting someone's swing, or how they hit a golf ball, and they take it not only from the golf course to their everyday life, so I love it.

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Kathy Hart Wood: They're back.

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Jesse Stakes: And how cool is that that you had the passion, and you had that vision to where you you were brave enough to step away from something that you were excellent at. To think that you could be better, and you could have more impact than something else. And you had that much confidence in yourself and in the idea to do it. How cool is that.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, no, it was scary. It was for sure. Scary. Our people were like, What are you doing? You know, it's like, and yeah, I just you know, now I I it's I. I absolutely love what I do.

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Jesse Stakes: That's that's fantastic. So so you know, shifting to my audience, the people that we're doing this for are for those, you know, those people that are professional at anything but golf. You know they they do something else for a living. They either picked up the game later in life. They picked it up, you know, as as either recreation or something that you know. Maybe clients told them. Hey, you want to play golf with us, and they, you know, and it's 1 of those things to where now they've you know again.

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Jesse Stakes: as a you know, as either a young adult or a a middle aged adult. Now they're trying to take up something that you'd like. You said yourself. You played this game your whole life, and it's something that you know. It's something that maybe not, was instinctual to you, but it's something that th those patterns and everything were ingrained so early in life that it's you don't necessarily think twice about it, but even yourself. You said that as a professional you had issues as far as making sure that your mental game was right.

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Jesse Stakes: What? How do you approach those people, the people that are picking it up later in life, those people that are, you know, that are my core audience. What's the difference between working with those types of people and working with professionals or people that are aspiring to be a professional at the game?

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Kathy Hart Wood: not much okay, other than other than your talent and your your ability, your capability on what you take out to the golf course, but I coach people from tour players to people who shoot in the hundreds.

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Kathy Hart Wood: and anxiety feels exactly the same way for both of them. Fear feels the same way. Frustration, disappointment, shame. They all feel the same exact way. It doesn't matter whether you're shooting 67, or you're shooting a hundred 7, so it is about processing those emotions and tapping into the thoughts that are creating it and being realistic about your expectations. Right? So a hundred 7, someone who shoots a hundred

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Kathy Hart Wood: isn't expecting to shoot 67, right? So that's okay. As long as we keep our expectations in check, you still get to manage your mind, and you still get to shift your experience on the golf course, because bottom line, everything we do and don't do is based on how we get to feel so. Your listeners are going out and playing golf, not because.

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Kathy Hart Wood: you know, they're trying to get a tour card or make money. It's because of how they want to feel at the end of the round. They want to feel fulfilled or successful, or you know that want to have a level of enjoyment. And if that's your goal and your mission and your passion and your reason for going out and playing, then you get to

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Kathy Hart Wood: you. Get to create that experience for yourself. What happens is we get stuck thinking that a number or a score or a shot is what creates that experience for us. And it's not true. It's really what we'd end up thinking about it. So I tell people, you know, it's 2 reasons that you'd maybe want to start working on the mental part of the game or focusing on it is that you either have the talent on the range, and you just can't take it out to the golf course

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Kathy Hart Wood: a different person shows up. You're like, Who's that guy who was just striping it on the range? You go to the 1st tee, and you'd hit this big banana slice out of bounds right, and you start off your ground that way, and then you can't. You get the rug kind of pulled out from underneath you, and you don't know how to put it back underneath. And your experience shifts right? You're like it's frustrating to know that you can do it, and you can't take it to the course.

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Kathy Hart Wood: The other person is

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Kathy Hart Wood: the person who spends a lot of their time on the golf course. So especially in retirement communities, or they are playing college golf or professional golf or junior golf, or it's just their social circle. All revolves around the game of golf, and they're not enjoying the experience of playing golf. That's mental, as well, you know, and I can help them with that, I would say, one of the biggest frustrations with people who are professionals.

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Kathy Hart Wood: As I've coached and coach

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Kathy Hart Wood: from trial lawyer, from trial lawyers, doctors, you know, bankers, Wall Street guys, right big professional jobs where you're when and it doesn't matter. You don't have to have that kind of job. But I'm just saying where you're successful, where you have an image and identity where you're like. I know how to do this. I know how to how to be good at this and succeed at this, and then you go out to play the game of golf.

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Kathy Hart Wood: and you're like, I suck like a different person, is there? And it really messes with your identity on how you, how you view yourself. That's where golf becomes. That's where the mental part becomes a struggle when you're out there playing same thing with former athletes, like people who are really good at playing another sport. They're they get very frustrated in the game of golf because they're not playing. It's a sport, but I'm not playing at the same level. I used to be able to muscle my way through.

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Jesse Stakes: Basketball.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Or football, or soccer.

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Jesse Stakes: Right.

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Kathy Hart Wood: But and on the golf course I'm struggling, and it's messing with my identity. And that's another area to work on this part of the game.

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Jesse Stakes: I. It's funny you say that because, as you were talking, I was thinking just that because I played baseball at a at a pretty high level through college. And then I decided, after an injury, I decided, oh, I'll just take up, you know, golf. It's a stick sticking a ball. It's staying still. It's gotta be easy. And it was that exact thing that you said was, I felt like, this is something that I should be really good at really fast, and and it was. It was quite the opposite, and I found myself to be very

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Jesse Stakes: middle of the road to poor at the game compared to what I saw myself as as an A, as a prior athlete. And so that was an absolute struggle mentally for me when I first, st when I 1st picked up the game, because I was like this shouldn't be so hard.

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Kathy Hart Wood: 100%. And that's it's it's really important to address it, not from an instructional standpoint, too. When you have a former athlete, because their expectations are high, and they they need to shift about how the the ball gets up in the air and how you know it's not muscle necessarily like where you could do brute force or swing super hard right.

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Jesse Stakes: Right.

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Kathy Hart Wood: It's about managing your your golf game there, but also the mind, and that's your expectations and your identity of yourself.

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Jesse Stakes: No doubt. Well, and you know one of the other things that I find, and there's a lot of people that are in sales that are in business that were athletes at 1 point during their youth, especially, most most people experience some sort of sport when they're young.

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Jesse Stakes: But when you're young, like all of those neuro pathways and everything learning motions is much. It's much more natural. It's much more you're not. You're not necessarily thinking about it. The way you do as an adult like it's it's not. You're not looking for steps per se. You're just looking to either emulate what you're watching, what you're you're just kind of repeating what you're seeing through your eyes or through what somebody's telling you.

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Jesse Stakes: whereas an adult, when you try to learn something, learn a language, learn how to do something I feel like. It's so much more difficult to learn as an adult than it is as a child.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah, I would make the analogy to skiing. Okay? So I I skied very little when I was younger. Okay, buffalo skiing is like, you know, going down a small hill, but I skied in Buffalo, but then I went out to Colorado as an adult and took up skiing, and it was really challenging for me. Because of one thing, we have life experiences and we have fear. Right? We have. And so when, as an adult, too, we have our brains. We think

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Kathy Hart Wood: more. We have expectations. We have fear we have. You know, anxiety. All those things when you're younger, though they don't get in your way, and those are some of the things that get in the way as an adult. Besides, the obvious that you just talked about like being that you know you're you have more neural, you know you have plasticity in your head, or you're more. It's easy to absorb new information. But as we get older. We still have it, but it's just not as much. But yes, taking it up later

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Kathy Hart Wood: in life is more challenging because you're also learning a whole new language. When you take up the game of golf.

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Jesse Stakes: Right. I always think it's interesting, like when you go out like you go out and play with play with somebody's kids or things like that, and you watch some. You watch like a 7 year old or an 8 year old putt, and they put with no fear. They just they just look at it, and they putt, and it's like, and then you watch an adult who's, you know.

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Jesse Stakes: a 1520 handicap. Just anguish over a you know, a 10 foot putt, and it's like, I always think it's like, if you could putt like an 8 year old and like you're you're so much better off.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Well, also, if you watch an 8 year old they get super excited when they make a pie.

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Jesse Stakes: Yes.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Making a putt. They're like going. Yeah, well, I should have made that putt right. So it's a tough.

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Jesse Stakes: Fair.

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Jesse Stakes: dull expectations, right.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So.

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Jesse Stakes: I don't mean to put you on the spot. But do you have like a do you have a favorite story, or somebody that you know, just a an anecdote for my for my audience. Someone that you felt was one of your one of your favorite success stories.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Well, I I have a lot of amazing success stories from winning club championships to to all kinds of Champs State championships. But I think one of the things that really

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Kathy Hart Wood: resonates with me the most. And one of the things that I say. It's how you do one thing you do everything. So what golf does is, it has a tendency to rip the Bandaid off and expose your ability to manage your mind. So, in other words.

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Kathy Hart Wood: you know, you have off of the golf course. You have just all kinds of time to manage any kind of fear or anxiety or anger that you might have. I? I tell people picture driving in the car right? You can sit in the car and be pissed off that you get stuck in traffic for as long as you want to, you know suffer at your own expense by being ticked off, that you're stuck in something that you can't control. But on the golf course you just have a couple of minutes, maybe, before you hit the next shot, and if that

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Kathy Hart Wood: is affecting your next shot you're not going to perform well, right? So it exposes so many different ways that golf

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Kathy Hart Wood: does or that life, and how you manage your mind, and it exposes yourself on a golfer. That's why golf is mentally challenging. For 1, 1 of the reasons why golf is mentally challenging. So I have a thing that I say. You know the 2 simple steps for you managing your mind on the golf course is to

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Kathy Hart Wood: figure out your best state like how you perform your best. What place are you in? You know? How are you feeling when you're playing? You're having that beautiful, amazing day that you wish every day was like that. And for most people they would say they're relatively calm, right or

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Kathy Hart Wood: certain or confident. So I call it the 3 C's. You want to be calm, certain, or confident. If that is your best state, that's how your body feels, and you can swing freely and think clearly. Right then you're gonna be able to take most of your talent out onto the golf course. So

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Kathy Hart Wood: then the second step is to hit as many shots from there as possible. That's why it's simple, right? It's just like, figure out your best date as many shots from there as possible, because that's when our bodies relaxed and we can swing freely. It's not easy, because we have to be really aware of when we're not in that place. We have to be really self aware which a lot of people aren't. This is like something that we can practice. So I have

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Kathy Hart Wood: a number of clients. So my my point is is that the job is to go out and hit as many shots from calm, certain, and confident as possible. If you do that, then you're gonna have a chance of making your most of your talent coming out on the golf course. So I have a lot of clients who have kept track

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Kathy Hart Wood: of their of the number of shots that they hit from calm, certain, and confident. And I had this one woman who

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Kathy Hart Wood: and sometimes it's overwhelming for some people. So if it is you could do it for like 3 holes or 9 holes, or 18 holes. But some people like numbers and charts, and you know all those things. So she had an inverse relationship, and a lot of other clients who did this had an inverse relationship between the number of shots they hit from concert and confident to their score. So she started out, for instance, at about 56 being Ccc. Of 56% of her shots, and her score was in the upper eighties.

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Kathy Hart Wood: and she worked her way down to 72%

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Kathy Hart Wood: and got in the low eighties. And she eventually got to 97% of her shots being concert and confident, and she hit. She shot her lowest score ever in the mid seventies, and I have a number of students have done that. So that's probably the biggest impact that your listener or anybody can make is to start. Be really aware of how you're standing over the golf ball, and try and hit as many shots from concert and confident as possible.

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Jesse Stakes: So I think that's amazing. I think that's I think that's a huge thing that we need to kind of open up here a little bit so calm, certain, and confident.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Or I should say, or I always say, and but it's actually or because we don't have to be confident. Confident is, no, I yeah, I said, it no worries. But, I said, confident is a luxury. If we get it, run with that sucker cause. That is the ultimate place that we want to be, and there's a difference between being confident and self confident. But I'm not going to get into that right now. You always get to be self confident, but confident in actually what's going to come out of your bag that day, but you always always can tap into being calm or certain.

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Jesse Stakes: So how do you get there as far? And I don't mean that in such a broad, a broad way. But like when you're dealing when you're when you're talking with somebody, when you're when you're kind of doing an intake for a new client like, how do you? How do you decide. Or how do you figure out

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Jesse Stakes: where that is for them? Like as far as when you're

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Jesse Stakes: and I don't mean to get too granular, I guess, but it's like when you're like when you say it to me, calm, certain calm, certain, and confident, or or confident like th. Those things may mean something to me, or they may. I may think I know where I'm at, or I may think, you know there, there may be a little bit of a wall up to to where, you know I don't want to appear weak, or I don't want to appear like I am not

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Jesse Stakes: certain about things, or I don't want to appear that I am not calm, because I might look at that as a weakness. So how do you break down that wall with people? And how do you get them? To really, truly

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Jesse Stakes: become self aware over what makes them calm, certain, and or confident.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Okay, so it's so funny. So those are emotions. Okay? And emotions show up in our body as vibrations. And those vibrations either allow us to move our body you freely, or they get in our way. So, for instance, anger would be is an emotion that

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Kathy Hart Wood: some people would find being in this in a sport and an acceptable emotion. Right? It's it's just an emotion we get them all. But it it's not whether it's acceptable or or not, it's about. Does it allow me to swing freely and usually anger? You know something that we might feel in our jaw or neck? Usually gets in the way of us

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Kathy Hart Wood: swinging freely or thinking clearly, too. Because are we? Are we getting to a different part of our brain? Sometimes when we're we're angry, or we have fear

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Kathy Hart Wood: pressure. We'll feel in our shoulders and in our arms, and we feel tense. Right? We might rush.

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Kathy Hart Wood: We don't take our time. We don't think clearly, because we might be in the back part of our brain a little bit of a fight or flight kind of state, so emotions are not when we start judging emotions. That's where we get where we get in our own way, like we think one emotion is better than another. Just make them all neutral. You get them all as a human like. Does it serve me, or doesn't it serve me as the question not am I weak because I'm calm. I'm smart because I'm calm, because if I am calm or relaxed, or you can be motivated or determined, any

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Kathy Hart Wood: anything that serves you. It doesn't matter. I just pick that. I would say 99% of people would pick those 3. That's why. And it's easy to remember but there's others that work. Hope, by the way, works?

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Kathy Hart Wood: So it's not about. So I going back to really, really, your question is, I ask you to be self aware. Where are you? Where? What's not working? How are you feeling when you're hitting shots that don't represent your talent, and you gotta get self aware, and then that

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Kathy Hart Wood: this, that those emotions are always created by a thought, we think, where we give away our power on the golf courses, we think they're created by a situation. So, in other words, I have a hundred yard shot over water, and I'm nervous, and you'll go in. And afterwards you're like, Oh, my God! Every time I have a hundred yard shot over water I get so nervous I'm like, no, you don't. A 100 yard shot over water does not create nerves. It's your thought that I might go in that creates the nerves.

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Kathy Hart Wood: and the only thing that you can really shift is that thought you got to decide something different, to create an emotion that's going to serve you on the golf course, and most people are very disconnected. I, for sure was between the connection between a situation like that. My ball in a divot, my balls plugged. People are watching me, you know. I have a 3 foot putt to win the match, whatever those are situations, those are just facts.

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Kathy Hart Wood: And then we get to think what we want about it. So it's either serves us or doesn't serve us, and that's where you get to shift and pivot mentally on the golf course over and over again as many times as you need to to create the result that you want.

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Jesse Stakes: I think it's absolutely fantastic, everything you're saying. I think that you know, as people are listening to this.

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Jesse Stakes: there's no way that if they're interested in playing golf if they're interested in being even just a even, just a little bit better at what they're doing, that this doesn't apply, because more than any irons. You buy, more than any driver that you pick up more than any putter that you choose to use.

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Jesse Stakes: Your mind. You are the are the person who's going to be in every single shot.

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Jesse Stakes: every single situation. And if you can improve yourself.

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Jesse Stakes: it's going to be the best thing that you can do to improve your golf game. So that being said, if somebody lists is funny, if somebody's listened to this and they say, Okay.

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Jesse Stakes: I recognize the value in this.

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Jesse Stakes: Where do you recommend that? They start like as far as when you're when you're trying to say, Okay, let me let me. You know I need to start somewhere, and and they know that this is something valuable. What do you? What do you say to the person.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Okay. So I would start with just being aware, like, take a take an extra scorecard and just get really curious on how you're feeling over the golf ball in different situations.

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Kathy Hart Wood: That self awareness in itself is amazing. It's going that can be in itself, that can shift everything for a lot of people. So were you nervous? Were you anxious? Did you have fear? And sometimes we don't want to look there. But you're you're you're what's the word I'm looking for? You're denying yourself when you don't want to look there. I mean, it's there. So you might as well look, you're just

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Kathy Hart Wood: yourself, and you're hurting yourself. You're not serving yourself, and if you don't think tour players know how to do this, they they that's how they get to perform under that kind of those scenarios, and they get to shift. Not all the time. It's not easy, right? It's what it's a challenging thing to do, because we're constantly working against our own brain. Our brain is designed to scan the universe and look for different ways that we can get in trouble.

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Kathy Hart Wood: and it scans the golf course and looks for water and out of bounds and people and scores and humiliation and embarrassment as ways like you're gonna get eaten by a saber tooth tiger.

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Kathy Hart Wood: and it it points them out to us. And that's why we're always working against our brain. So it's important to go out there and be intentional thinking on purpose. But it starts with self awareness. It's always your 1st step is just to start being aware of. What am I thinking, what am I feeling over that golf shot? Don't judge it, don't, you know, make it mean anything about you? It's just be curious.

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Jesse Stakes: I think that's excellent. You know. It's funny. I had somebody tell me one time that your brain doesn't know the difference between putting don't in front of it, and just say whether you're saying Don't hit it in the water or or water in general, like it's just your brain thinks in positive. So it's if you're thinking about something, then you're gonna you know it's it's that whatever that last thing is in your head that that's what you're left with, and it doesn't matter whether you said, don't or not.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah, it's not really that it thinks in positives. It's where you put your attention. So think about this way. Like, if you were going to ride a bike down a sidewalk that maybe had an edge to it. And you're in your brain. You're like going. Don't go off the sidewalk. You just put your attention to the grass or the rocks, or the rubble right, and the chances of you going off go greatly up versus stay on the path

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Kathy Hart Wood: like, just stay at the center of the path. Now you're putting your attention there. So it's not. It's sometimes easier for people to get their head around. It's where you're pointing your eyes, and when you say Don't go in the water, you point your eyes to the water and boom, there you go.

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Jesse Stakes: Well, and it's and it's all about. It's it's just like, kind of where we started. Here. It's it's training your brain. It's training your mind to to think properly. And so it's just what we do with our bodies. I mean, people go into the gym, they train their bodies, they train a swing when they go on the range, and and really you should be training your mind as well.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Yeah, for sure. Habits, like, you know, negativity is a habit, that's all it is, is you? You play might play with some buddies who are just so negative and beat the crap out of themselves the whole way around the golf course. It's just a habit, and it's so easy, and if that's you, it's just you get to be aware of it and start going on a negativity diet because it doesn't serve you. Yeah.

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Jesse Stakes: I say it all the time. Golf is the only game where you go out, and you'll be around people that if you're shooting a shooting a good score. They're almost. They almost look at you like well, why are you playing so well like it's there's a it's a weird thing around, especially amateurs, and especially people who are, you know, if they're if they're used to shooting in the eighties, it's almost like they're like, well, this isn't me. I don't shoot in the seventies, or I don't play. I don't play that good of a game of golf.

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Jesse Stakes: but it's the only sport I've ever been around where people are not looking for to play as the best they possibly can. Every single time they go out their mind almost fights against them. Sometimes it's a crazy phenomenon. I think that that is only it. Nobody goes on a go on a basketball court and throws up a shot and says, well, I shouldn't have made that.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Like, it's happened.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Exactly. Yeah, it is. And then that's again, that's about being self aware, and that, you know, and and deciding to think. Yeah, of course, that's who I am. I'm a person who holds out from a hundred yards. Sometimes, you know.

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Jesse Stakes: Absolutely. I feel like we could continue to talk forever. I I enjoy. I'm enjoying this conversation. I think we've only scratched the surface. But I'd love to, you know. Reserve the right to call you as a witness again if you don't.

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Kathy Hart Wood: One for sure I'd love it.

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Jesse Stakes: Absolutely. Thank you very much. I would as well if if my audience is intrigued, they want to learn more. They're like, Okay, I'm hooked.

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Jesse Stakes: I I, we're going to put your podcast. At, we're going to put your podcast. At the bottom of this because, I think that that's a great way for them to get started with you. It's called thinking above par with Kathy Hartwood, but also, if they would love to, if they would like to inquire about your services. What's the best way for them to get a hold of you.

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Kathy Hart Wood: I would probably just send me a message on Instagram at Kathy Hartwood. Send me a direct message there and connect with me. And yeah, and I'd love. I'd love to talk to your anybody who wants to learn more about this.

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Jesse Stakes: Awesome, Kathy, thank you so much. This was amazing. I learned so much, and I can't wait to learn more from you.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Okay, thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I can't wait to be back.

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Jesse Stakes: Absolutely.

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Kathy Hart Wood: Okay.