On Time 2.0

What does it actually mean to be “on time?”

In this episode, Raymond and Chase revisit one of the foundational concepts behind stable confidence and performance: being present.

They explore why being on time is much more than “one shot at a time,” and why the brain’s natural tendency to worry about the future and replay the past makes it so difficult to perform freely when it matters most.

Topics include:

– Why anxiety pulls us into the future
 – How past failures become future fears
 – Why being off time is a form of multitasking
 – The relationship between presence, performance, and flow state
 – Why confidence is not certainty
 – How trauma, bad experiences, and embarrassing moments can linger in golf
 – The role of mindfulness training in performance
 – Why scrolling, distractions, and constant stimulation make focus harder
 – Practical ways to become more present on the course

Raymond also explains why the brain is designed to prioritize avoidance over pursuit, why “just focus on the target” is often incomplete advice, and how mindset creates the space necessary for golfers to access their skills under pressure.

Whether you’re struggling with tournament nerves, overthinking, yips, confidence issues, or simply want to understand what it means to truly play one shot at a time, this episode provides a deeper look at one of the most important skills in golf—and life.

Follow us:
 @gbtspodcast
 @chasecoopergolf
 btspmindset.com

Transcript

Raymond Prior (00:09.571)
Welcome to the Gulf Beneath Surface Podcast. My name is Raymond, your co host, and this is on time two point at least to start with. And with me as always is my co host Chase Cooper, man of the people. How you doing, my guy?

Chase Cooper (00:26.865)
I'm doing great. I feel like it's been what, three or four years since we started this podcast now. And like one of the first coup we kind of laid out the the framework of stable confidence and what it meant. And on time is one of the first pillars. And we're not I I'm not gonna say the most important pillar, but but it's really difficult to perform your best if you're not on time. And I've sent a lot of my young players to the pot to that that

particular pod and it was like, man, that was that was many moons ago, man. We've slept a lot since then and hopefully retained a lot of knowledge from all of our great sleep as we've learned about in all of our naps. I've been taking a lot of naps since the last episode. So I think it's just good for us to kind of go back into what being on time means and and how you what the research shows and how you coach it and how I've been talking, talking to my players about it. And we'll

We'll we'll give the on time pod a refresh and and and give our listeners some new some maybe some some new updated information.

Raymond Prior (01:23.042)
Yeah. Before we do that, I did have a question that we did not answer in the last podcast, and that is people want to know if you're successfully off that narcotic of your afternoon gallon of sugar caffeine.

Chase Cooper (01:35.567)
I appreciate you guys thinking about my health and worrying about about how many Coca-Cola's I drink. Here's what I will say. I've been very good. I I have had a couple of Cokes when I go to the movies every once in a while at a restaurant. I did have a Coke last night. We sat down and had a we ate at a nice Mexican restaurant and I did have a c I did have a Coke. but I have been very good. your boys lost about 20 pounds this year, and some of it's because of my my addiction to pickleball and then a lot

Raymond Prior (01:37.92)
Ha ha ha ha.

Raymond Prior (02:02.433)
Your other your other addiction? Yeah.

Chase Cooper (02:03.698)
A lot of it is my lack of Coca-Cola soft drinks. I have not had a Coke where I just go to a gas station or go to a sonic drive-in and just get a big old sugary drink to get me through the day. That has not happened in five or four or five months when we started this. I think it was first of February when we started this. I have not had one of those since. It's just been when I sit down at a restaurant, it's like having a glass of wine. I've had a couple of Cokes since then.

But I would say I'm at the most I've had is about one Coke a week. And I've I've been for the most part I've been very good. I've got to be careful though, because those Cokes are tasting better to me. So I'm trying to I I you know, when I first had one it didn't taste as good. And water's not tasting as good. So I'm I'm trying to catch back up on my on drinking water all the time. So I make sure that those those Cokes still taste very sugary like they did when I came off of the came off of the addiction.

Raymond Prior (02:55.105)
Mm. A really great example that small changes compound and that full blown abstinence from something is not necessarily the goal. So you've lost a lot of weight having exercised more and not drank the caffeine sugar water as much. It doesn't need to be no part of your life, but it not being a habitual part of your life has certainly led to some long term again, small changes compound and add up over time. So good for you, dude.

Chase Cooper (03:22.438)
My you'll you'll laugh at this. My daughter, she's very sassy. She's a little nine year old sass. And she there's one day she came and she goes, Dad, I think you need a Coke. I was like it's like, thank you. I will shout out you two. You when I texted you and said I was I was giving it up, you said make it as difficult as possible to fall back into the into the loop. And getting Cokes out of the house, obviously. I I I I always remember coming home from teaching all day and I my mouth would water. I just wanted to I could

I could hear the the emotions and the sounds and pouring a coke on on ice like I craved it and now now I don't think about it at all when I pull into the house and and and it's it's been it took a while but we got it done. So we're we're definitely off the off the addiction.

Raymond Prior (03:57.069)
Mm-hmm.

Raymond Prior (04:05.294)
Look, making meaningful behavior change for us as humans is not a matter of willpower. If you're doing that, you're fighting your nervous system and chances are you will lose unless there's pretty extenuating circumstances and most behaviors in our lives are not extenuating, meaning life and death type of stuff, where it would just like really force us into change. Meaning it would make it easy for us to change. Most of it is you're gonna have to do it on your own.

And in which case, then willpowering against our nervous system is not the way to do it. It's not a I'm a strong enough person or not strong enough. Your nervous system is designed to maintain the behaviors it is getting reinforced for, whether negatively reinforced or positively reinforced. So the way to do that is to make it as difficult as possible for yourself to continue to engage in a behavior that you want to change, and as easy as possible as it is for you to.

start a behavior that you actually want that is more beneficial for you. So that essentially it's like don't rely on trying to not give in to temptation because that is probably the worst possible way for it to and the research on behavior change is so clear. Those that rely on cold turkey and willpower are the least likely. It is possible, but the least likely means those that have a system in place that make it as easy as possible then for make a change

And as difficult as possible for them to stay the same are the ones that are most successful over time. And that becomes more sustainable change over time. And that takes time for your nervous system to recalibrate its reinforcement schedules for behaviors where something can be a part of your life, but bot be a driving force in your life.

Chase Cooper (05:46.483)
It's funny, I think about we both have we've joked about this, we both have golden retrievers and I think about some videos where you'll see on Instagram where or on social media where a golden retriever they'll put a like a a piece of food or something right on the table about head high for the dog and then they'll they'll have a video and they'll leave the room and the dog like looks around and looks at it, looks around, looks at it, and and they always take the take the food. And it's like if you'll eliminate the food, you know, you don't give it a chance, it's never gonna do it. But if it's sitting there in front of you long enough, you're probably gonna buy it.

Raymond Prior (05:58.563)
Mm-hmm.

Raymond Prior (06:04.204)
Yeah. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (06:12.62)
Yeah. So there was a time again, there's a little bit of a tangent, but might be really important for listeners because w a lot of what we talk about on this podcast is if I wanted to change to get better at golf and enjoy it more, what would that look like? Right. So there was a while ago where they ran these studies on kids where they put these marshmallows in front of them and left the room. And it was a measure of basically delayed gratification. And the initial research, the conclusions or the interpretation of that was

Well, any kids that can just grin and bear it and not eat that marshmallow, that would set them up for a bunch of success later on, essentially like they were developing this delayed gratification muscle. Well, it turned out that that's only partially true. What that actually was kind of also a demonstration of is like, well, how bad does this kid really want a marshmallow in the first place? If you brought a kid in there that hasn't eaten in five hours, the likelihood of them being able to withstand that is very low.

Or if they lived in a place where like you gotta get what you can get while you can get it, and that muscle has been and that is a survival and a thriving mechanism for them, they're not gonna do this. So this isn't like is your str kid strong enough or not strong enough? Now there is something to be said about teaching ourselves and if you're parenting, teaching your kids to delay gratification. Can we hold off on something impulsive to set us up for something that is more longer term? But it's not as simple as just grit your teeth and just don't eat that thing.

Chase Cooper (07:37.116)
Yeah. Right.

Raymond Prior (07:38.329)
That's not really how our nervous system works. It's how it can operate in sometimes, but not really how we change behavior or develop behaviors. It's more about a reinforcement schedule. So the idea of discipline in the traditional layman sense of I just force myself to do things that are good for me without and and just willpower my way through them is technically not really true. What happens is everyone is technically disciplined, meaning

Chase Cooper (07:55.666)
Tougher wheelpower. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (08:04.736)
I'm really oriented and it's very easy for me to do certain behaviors. It's just a matter of how productive those behaviors are for me. Some people are crazy disciplined about playing video games and not doing their homework. And their parents would say they're undisciplined. I would argue they're very disciplined in one area. They're not disciplined in the area that you would want them to be. Some people are very disciplined in our modern world about worrying about everything and very undisciplined about being a little bit more present more often, which we can get to.

Chase Cooper (08:15.566)
Well.

Raymond Prior (08:34.744)
So again, this isn't a weakness of character. It is a what have I learned and been reinforced in me. And if I wanted to change that, it's not as simple as just don't do that, go do this. And and oftentimes people behavior change, they are set up for failure because that is the model or the mindset that they're bringing into it. Where if I can't keep my hands off of food that I really want, that means I'm not strong enough to change my diet. It's a very all or nothing mindset and it's a very

incorrect mindset in terms of how we would change something as simple as what we eat and how often we eat it. And if anything, our nervous system is designed to push back. We call this a double down, when we make changes where it wants to go back to what is familiar and predictable, whether that thing is healthy or unhealthy for us. So that is the withdrawal you get when you are not drinking caffeine sugar water in the afternoons anymore. That's the withdrawal you feel when you take away

Perhaps scrolling through social media so much. That's the added cravings you have when you're trying to change your diet. That is your nervous system going, Are you sure you really don't want this thing that we've been doing that is very predictable and feels good in some way in a short term sense? That is oftentimes the first step you'll get. So if it's I just need to white knuckle my way through this, you probably set yourself up for failure because again, you're gonna be fighting your most the strongest feelings that you have by just trying to resist something that's right in front of you, which would be a

Chase Cooper (09:41.254)
Yeah. Go ahead.

Raymond Prior (10:01.368)
Pretty hard thing to do.

Chase Cooper (10:02.822)
And then, you know, g let's say getting off that coke addiction, getting off the video game addiction, fast food, whatever, whatever habit we're trying to get rid of, again, from a research standpoint, how long does it typically take?

Raymond Prior (10:15.04)
It can it can vary. So depending on again how deep the dependency is, what kind of also psychoemotional needs that's for us. So for example, let's say something like anxiety. We know it's not helpful for performance. People don't feel good when they're anxious all the time, but there's a psychoemotional need in there of at least I'm feeling kind of safe and certain from a future that is unknown and could potentially be threatening to me. So there is some layer of I think I

feel like I'm doing something to protect myself from stuff that I don't want to happen. Right. And then you go into something where like, okay, now there might be also a physiological, neurological, and chemical adaptation to what I've been doing. If you've been smoking cigarettes for 20 years, your brain has been learning to create nicotine by what you or or fill in your acetycholine receptors with nicotine. And then you take that away, you're going to experience some significant withdrawal.

Chase Cooper (11:10.97)
One hundred percent.

Raymond Prior (11:11.362)
Right. So it can vary. Most of the research shows that for changing an external behavior like the Coke you drink or whatever, the more consistent you are with not doing it. So essentially, if I stop doing it as frequently as possible, you could have significant change anywhere between fourteen and thirty days. If you're talking a more complex behavior, which might be your all-out diet and your exercise together, or perhaps

the approach and mindset I bring to my golf or anywhere else in my life, like you could be talking potentially like weeks to months. And that is assuming that you are committed to it and consistent with it. Committed meaning again, not white knuckling it, but making it a priority that you are paying attention to. So it can change. There's some research though that basically shows that as long as you don't go back to the other thing, you're talking like a matter of like 20-ish days.

Imagine like if it wasn't a complex behavior, something as simple as like changing your grip in golf, which feels pretty funky. If you legitimately did not go back to a grip that felt more familiar and predictable to you, your nervous system would adapt to the new grip and it would start to feel like your new normal pretty quickly. Right. So it's a relatively simple behavior, just how you hold something and then your body will adjust to how you move around it. But it will feel better, meaning not so awkward and unpredictable within

Anywhere from hours to days, provided you don't r have any regression toward it. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (12:38.3)
Go back. And then that's that's age related too, the younger the younger the faster. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (12:43.852)
Perhaps. w d and again depends. So we've had talk on the podcast before about contextual interference. So the younger we are, the less contextual interference we need to make neurological changes. It doesn't mean that we don't want any. We do. Like you wouldn't want kids just block practicing constantly, but they will make changes faster in block practice, for example, than older people will. The older we get, the more contextual interference we need. We need some block practice.

To establish what we're trying to establish. And then after that, I need to change the context because that creates the scratchiness in my neural pathways that forces them to change because I need more scratchiness as I get older than when I do when I'm younger, when my brain is designed to create new neural pathways, versus when I'm older and it's designed to preserve neural pathways. So it needs more, we call this limbic friction, which is the feeling we get between something that is currently the standard.

And something that I want to change to, it needs more of that the older we get. So if when people are like, I'm too old to change, no, you're not. But the conditions with which you would need to create that change in are scratchier than it would be for a 15 year old, whether that's a new golf swing, learning a new language, learning to eat and drink differently, s or learning to think about things and feel things differently as well.

Chase Cooper (14:07.602)
Good stuff.

Raymond Prior (14:09.199)
Okay. All that being said, let's talk about being on time, which is Raymond's favorite way of just saying being present in what we are doing. And to be very clear before we start, being present means that I am focused on what I'm doing when I'm doing it. It doesn't necessarily mean that I'm relaxed. Doesn't necessarily mean that I'm comfortable. Doesn't mean that I'm certain. It doesn't even necessarily mean that I'm in control. And it doesn't necessarily mean I'm

I I am where I want to be or feeling what I want to be, but it just means that I am in it. Right.

Chase Cooper (14:42.938)
And we're not necessarily confident. We don't feel great about it any

Raymond Prior (14:45.676)
Not well, if confident you mean trusting that the future's gonna go a certain way, no. If confident you mean I'm willing to pursue what I want without any tasks competing with that permission to live and perform freely, despite whatever I might be experiencing in this present moment, then yes, this is the what you know, being on time or groundedness is one of the roots of

Chase Cooper (15:02.032)
Yes.

Raymond Prior (15:09.708)
being more stably confident because if I'm not actually present in the thing that I'm doing, it's very difficult for me to have permission to do that freely. Right.

Chase Cooper (15:17.222)
Yeah, I'm definitely talking about old confidence, the the guaranteeness of of everything or or or or knowing the future types types.

Raymond Prior (15:21.676)
Yeah, right. And if you think about being on time, again, I'm just in the thing that I'm in. What that means is my verbs are different than when I'm projecting into the future, right? The verb is I'm trying to pursue the outcome I want, or trying to create the outcome I want, or just trying to be within the experience that I'm in, not trying to, and here are different verbs, control, project, forecast, avoid.

Or even like insure or even believe in the future, which if we look at all these verbs, it's not that they're bad. They are pulling me away from the thing that I'm actually in right now. Right. So if I tell you believe in yourself while you're in something, I'm actually asking you to attend to a time frame where you have or you have not figured out whether you think you can actually do this thing. Or if I tell you, you know, trust.

What you're doing, if that trust is you need to feel a certain way about the future in order to then pursue freely in the thing you're in right now. I have just given you a task that again is pulling you away from what it is that we're doing, right? So then we might say, okay, well, why is being on time or being present in what we're in so important? And the answer isn't because this is where we're most comfortable.

Or we're most relaxed necessarily. What it is is it's the highest state of human functioning. Because when we are actually present, we are far more likely to be only asking ourselves to do the one thing that is actually in front of us without interfering tasks. So for our purposes of our conversation today, we are talking about flow state, which is the optimal state of human functioning, as just a frame of reference.

Well, the optimal state of human functioning, the number one characteristic in it, which by the way, this flow state is what everyone's really chasing, like what that the zone, what it feels like to be in that. By definition, the number one characteristic people report in that and what brain activity and dopaminergic measurements show us is they are immersed in the task at hand. So by definition, if I want to be immersed in the task at hand, that means I need to not have tasks that would pull me toward the past or toward the future.

Chase Cooper (17:13.756)
The zone, as some people call it.

Raymond Prior (17:37.123)
And if you think about so much of what makes us anxious or makes us angry or what disrupts what we're doing right now, it is us adding tasks to things that would pull us out of being on time. So I'm either behind time, focused on things that have already happened, or ahead of time, worrying about projecting, perhaps even excited about things that have not happened yet and may never happen because the future is always uncertain.

Or some combination of both where I'm going, dear God, do not let my past potentially play out in my future, in which case I am both behind and ahead of time, technically. Right. So if we think about this, the analogy we've used on the podcast before is if there is a time, I'm wearing two watches. One of them shows the time of the actual time that the earth is in right now. And the other one is my psychological time.

For human beings to perform closer to their best more often, we want these matches, these watches matching, meaning they're synced. And the way we do that is we have to take our psychological time and match it to the worlds and sync it to that because the world doesn't sync to our time. Right. So, all that being said, when we are present, here's what's happening behind the scenes. Psychologically, it's so much easier for me to single task and apply whatever skills or knowledge or information I have.

to the task at hand. So I'm using my skills more likely for what they are actually designed to do, which any golf swing is designed to move a golf ball from where it is to where we want it to go as best we can. It is not designed to try to guard us from a future of things that we don't necessarily want to happen. Right. So essentially am I using the tools, the knowledge, the skills, whatever I have for the thing that's actually in front of me.

Neurologically, what's happening is our dopaminergic system is pairing to the effort and the focus that is being applied right now. So it is becoming more paired to what I'm doing, when I'm doing it, and my brain rewards me for that. So for anyone who's been in flow state, and you feel how easy that feels, like suspiciously easy it is to perform and just kind of not get bothered by stuff, and how good.

Raymond Prior (19:48.633)
Good it feels to be in it, even though it might be uncomfortable and it might be really challenging. Dopamine is the neuromodulator of motivation, of pursuit motivation, and for what it means to be on time. And it has a significant impact on how we experience the passage of time. Meaning it feels like it slows us down when things are going too fast. And then when we're going and we're done, it feels like it went by that fast because I'm so present in something that I don't necessarily need to encode.

How this current event is in relation to a past event or a future event that I'm not actually giving much attention and energy to in the first place. So that's why flow state feels a certain way. Notice flow state is not necessarily comfortable, but it feels really good. There's something rewarding in it. That's the dopaminergic response to. How about just being the thing that you're doing without anything in the past and anything in the future? Neurologically, what we see other than the dopaminergic chemical response is.

Our brain activity is this very low frequency, low intensities, our alpha theta waves between four and 12 hertz. That is only a reflection of the number of things that I am actually asking myself to do. And by the way, whether they are more internal or external. So if I'm dwelling on the past and thinking about the future, I need to think more. So just a reminder from Raymond to anyone listening human beings do not overthink. It is impossible for our brain to overthink. We only think

in direct proportion to the amount or the intensity of the things we are asking ourselves to do. So if I'm asking you to figure out why you made that mistake that you shouldn't make and how it is that you need to be performative and angry so that everyone knows that you're upset with how that shot went, or I'm asking you to worry about whether you're going to three putt before you even hit your first putt, that requires way more thinking than just how about you just hit the shot in front of you and do your best with it. Right.

So when we are present, it isn't some magical state where we feel no pressure, where we are unbothered by anything, or we feel totally comfortable and certain. It's just a state where we are only asking ourselves to be invested and immersed in the thing that we're doing. Our brain rewards us for that as we start to do that more often, and we become less emotionally and intentionally attached to things in the past and future, mostly outcomes. And then also our brain activity.

Raymond Prior (22:14.014)
only needs to be what it needs to be. So I am now actually focused on the task at hand. So now we're talking about on time and on task, meaning I'm in the time frame that I'm in and I'm only asking myself to do the thing that's in front of me. That's the power of being present. So we'll put pop a pin in that and then we'll kind of talk about a lot of the mechanisms that that are behind it or at least leading into it both psychologically and neurologically and then maybe perhaps how our habits in

impact that but we'll pop a timeout here and just pull a couple of threads.

Chase Cooper (22:46.704)
Yeah. So the first thing that I I kind of took away from that that I don't know if I've ever really completely thought about was like this idea that worrying about the future, fear of future is anxiety. And the research is clear. We've talked about this ad nauseum on here about it's hard to perform our best when we are worried about the future, when our future is feels like it's at stake. Cause now there's threats and how the brain processes threats and all that stuff. But the other thing that kind of hit me is

We also have have talked about on here a lot that the brain doesn't do a great job of multitasking, especially complex things. Like we can talk and move our arms and that kind of stuff, but to be worried about the future and control the club face and hit a perfect shot and do all this stuff is really difficult for us to do. And then the you know, the brain tends to kind of take over. And so I never really viewed being off time as multitasking more. I didn't really kind of kind of make that correlation, but it's

That's crazy because now, yeah, like we had a tournament here this last week and some it was a twelve to eighteen eighteen year old tournament and there was there was a cut to go make match play. And so the twelve to fifteen year olds had a division of the fifteen to eighteen year olds. And a couple of my twelve year olds played worse than they've played in a long time. And it was fascinating to talk to them because the whole thing they were worried about the whole time was making the cut. Making the cut, making the cut, making the cut. One of them played good the first day and then played terrible the second day. I like, what was your goal the second day? Make the cut.

Raymond Prior (24:02.806)
That's right.

Chase Cooper (24:09.53)
Really? Okay. So how did that work out? What was the goal in the first T? Well, I was thinking about making the cut and then I hit the right trees. And then my whole I was like, Well, I can't make bogey here. And now we start getting to A versus V and like it just just got way off way off track. And I talked to him about multitasking, but I never really thought about it as like, if I'm off time, then my brain practic 'cause now I've got a task at hand to do right now, but I'm also thinking about the future. And so now that is it by definition multitasking. And I hadn't really really put that together.

The other thing that I do tell my players all the time, and and and I got this from a coach when I was younger, but like my favorite saying when talking about on time is no future, no past. Like w where are we at right this second? And are we hitting this shot without bringing the past into it and without without worrying about the future? And so I you know, I think the next point I would I would ask you, Doc, is from a future standpoint,

Talk about the research a little bit and some of the research talking about anxiety, how anxiety is built to help us live live a long life sometimes, but not necessarily to help us with golf. And then also how the past could possibly affect us positively, but how we can't always rely on it.

Raymond Prior (25:22.488)
So if we're talking about anxiety as a survival mechanism, it's our most basic survival mechanism. And it is trying to get us to worry about and protect ourselves from a future before it happens, because that would be the most efficient way of trying to survive it. Right. So our nervous system is designed first and foremost to keep us alive. But as we've mentioned many times on the podcast, it's not very good at d delineating between what is a physical threat to my life and limb.

And what is just a perceived threat or a threat that stings for a little bit but doesn't have really a long-lasting effect. For for example, something like social threat. And again, it's not that all embarrassment, all of these things, which again, these are all subjective experiences. So the degree to which they are threatening can vary greatly, much like life and limb. But life and limb is a little bit more straightforward where like if you are injured enough, you are likely to die and or lose some level of physical functioning. Like it's tough. Like so.

Chase Cooper (26:00.987)
Embarrassment.

Raymond Prior (26:20.524)
That mechanism is in there. And by the way, we had very anxious ancestors. In fact, you could make an argument that anyone living right now, you probably have a long line of cowards in your ancestry, right? Because there was a very dangerous world that our ancestors many hundreds of thousands of years ago had to navigate. And if you were all out pursuit all the time without any basically all gas and no brakes, you would die very soon. And maybe or maybe not, you would pass on your genetic code.

Chase Cooper (26:31.516)
Yeah.

Raymond Prior (26:50.828)
But the internal mechanism behind anxiety is can I get you to worry about something before it has even happened? So if what I'm doing is a pursuit-based, thriving-based thing right now, anxiety is a massive distraction. I'm always multitasking with an infinite number of future possibilities that might go the way that I don't want to, that yes, may indeed include some discomfort.

And a lack of control and a bunch of experiences that I don't like. So if anxiety is driving my experience, not that I'm just feeling it or thinking it, but I am doing things dictated by anxiety, by definition, is going to be almost impossible to be present on time. You'll always be ahead of time. And that is going to disrupt what we know for sure from research it is that anxiety is the great performance disruptor. Right? I would venture that most golfers would prefer.

That if I gave you an almost impossible golf course to play, but I could remove the anxiety, or a pretty playable golf course, all through anxiety, they would take the former option and not the latter, because the actual conditions of playing a difficult golf course are far less disruptive to them than the actual self-imposed disruption of anxiety.

Chase Cooper (28:04.346)
And and quick shout out to our stress, nerves and anxiety pod that we did many moons ago too. Great Raymond did a great job of organizing all those and talking about the difference between what is stress, what is nerves, and what is anxiety.

Raymond Prior (28:17.166)
That's right. Those are not the same thing. To your other part of your question, which is what about in my past? One of the things our nervous dis nervous system, excuse me, is designed to encode is painful memories and painful experiences as things that are protected from in the future. So I have a pretty let's just again think about our ancestors. I almost get eaten. They just designed to encode that experience as that was close.

Chase Cooper (28:39.954)
Right.

Raymond Prior (28:44.918)
Do not let that happen again because you would be closer to like so. Basically, that was potentially threatening. Let's avoid that potential threat going forward. And again, super helpful survival mechanism. But again, if we are in our modern world trying to pursue and thrive in the things that are important to us, basically this becomes a constant this thing from my past, whether it's a shot on a hole that I don't like, a hole that has been traditionally difficult for me.

Don't let that play out. Now every time I come to that situation, I am operating, not just experiencing, but operating out of anxiety, which is again a massive disruptor to our performance and our experience. One of the things we know for sure is that when we do things through anxiety, the experience feels work. It is a psychological and neurological and physiological state void of dopamine, meaning it's just adrenaline. So it sucks. It hurts, right?

Then on top of that, the mindsets we create around that now encode failure in a certain way about whether that is something that must be continue to be avoided at all costs in the future, and on and on and on. Hence the layers of anxiety and why that becomes such a performance disruptor. The past being guarded against in my future, the most intense layer of that is trauma. Trauma is our ultimate.

Do not let that thing from your past or somebody else's past that you saw was intensely painful play out again in your future. So we can you see you can see there is such a thing as golf trauma, and the trauma in our lives also can transfer over to golf, you know, because again, golf doesn't isn't just about did I score well or not? It's a social game. People are watching, we are making investments. Like there is risk involved with even playing casual golf for most people. But if you're playing competitive golf, it's more than just the competitive risk.

Inside the ropes, there's a lot of things. Your livelihood might be attached to it, you know, relationships with other people, oftentimes not that the world is best in that transactional way, but it is the reality of the world in many ways. So when this is the case, what we might say is all of these responses, if I don't deal with them or address them, I'm always going to be operating through a certain lens of that is pulling me off time.

Raymond Prior (31:02.816)
And by the way, I'm probably getting some neurological and physical physiological reactions to that that are gonna make it harder for me to execute freely because I'm just gonna feel worse. Now, again, we don't need to feel good to perform well, but it also doesn't help to feel awful, right? And a trauma response feels terrible. It is designed to do that because the worse it makes you feel, the f less likely you are to engage with something that might repeat that painful experience from the past. Hence, you're it's gonna be very difficult to be off time.

Chase Cooper (31:12.194)
Okay.

Chase Cooper (31:23.814)
So

Raymond Prior (31:31.647)
I'm sorry, on time, if you have not dealt with all the things that pull you from being on time. And I'll just finish this by saying there's a significant body of research that shows you can train focus all you want, but if your psychological framework is shaped in a way that pulls you away from being present, your nervous system doesn't really allow you full access to being present. So we used to think it was focus your way into being present. Now we understand that mindset is the key.

If your mindset is not conducive, meaning opens the window to be present, you don't really just train your way into doing it. So there's a layer of mindset that matters far more than just telling yourself to be present.

Chase Cooper (32:13.308)
And you touched on that in l in the last episode about the the visual cues to try to get rid of the the yips. If we could stay on target, then we could eliminate the yips and it doesn't it doesn't always work that way.

Raymond Prior (32:24.428)
Nope. The basis of the yips is anxiety. And for some people, it might be trauma, which again, anxiety and trauma are closely related. They are they're working in concert to try to protect us from things. So if I tell you, just hold a target in your head or just make a free swing even, but there's there's an underlying task of do not let this go a certain way or feel a certain way, you don't really have access to that pursuit-based task that is actually in your present because the priority is avoiding something potentially happening in your future.

Chase Cooper (32:27.014)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chase Cooper (32:39.1)
Believe in it, just believing yourself.

Chase Cooper (32:54.342)
Yeah. And that's the part that's the part that no one else has talked to talked about that like just this idea of how to the brain, bad golf shots can be traumatic events. And, you know, the research is clear. The brain is designed to remember more of the bad stuff than the good stuff. And like I use the analogy, I've always used a car wreck analogy, also a food poisoning analogy. If you had food poisoning at a local restaurant, how long did it take you before you're you you could go back to that restaurant and I'm gonna say eat freely? And a lot of times it's like I I still can't go back.

Raymond Prior (32:54.732)
Right.

Raymond Prior (33:23.662)
Still can't. Right. Yeah. So fo food aversion is a similar form where something I ate something and it made me feel a certain way, or there was a certain level of consequences with that, that again may be very, very specific to where I was. Like I ate gas station sushi from there on that day prepared by that person, then my brain generalizes to we just don't do gas station sushi anymore. The problem being, what if that's what if that's the path that you need to take to get to where you want to go?

Chase Cooper (33:23.992)
Or yeah. And that's it's it's

Chase Cooper (33:41.744)
Yeah. Right.

Chase Cooper (33:53.607)
Yeah, right. And and and in golf, what if I have to hit a soft pitch over a bunker that I had a bad experience with a few months ago? And and talk about too, Doc, like w I get asked this a lot. How well what if I hit my last drive really well? And I'm like, okay, if strategically it makes sense, if the last seven iron from 175, you flushed it and it went one seventy eight, now you have a hundred and seventy eight yard shot 30 minutes later, then I have no problem with you using the past.

at times to make a better strategic decision. But what I don't want my players to do is use the path past to to give them more confidence or less confidence on this next shot. So talk about kind of the research on using the past to possibly help at times, but not always relying on it.

Raymond Prior (34:37.016)
Look, the the bottom line is that past outcomes or experiences that we want and find desirable can indeed help influence the permission we give ourselves to do something freely.

Chase Cooper (34:48.284)
So so like if I've made a thousand three footers in a row on the practice screen as a way to practice, I can sometimes use that to my advantage. The problem is, is if I've missed three or four three footers in a row on the last hole of a tournament, the brain tends to grab onto that and I don't always have access to the belief that I can make it because I d is that is that correct?

Raymond Prior (35:09.846)
A little bit. So what we might say is desired and more enjoyable experiences are more subject to specificity than generalization, meaning context matters greatly. And so if you leave your permission to perform freely in the hands of context, it's going to be unstable. So for example, if I roll in 300 three-footers on the practice screen, my brain recognizes, yo dude, you can do this.

But when I get onto the course when it counts, it's not asking can you? It's asking, will you? And the answer is never, yeah, for sure, for anyone, for the most part. And it also understands the context is different. I haven't seen this pup before. I know I've hit a bunch of three-floors, but it's not this one. So again, it's those past outcomes that are desirable are more susceptible to specificity. It needs to be closer to that. Meaning in that context, closer, basically recency bias.

For it to really have juice for me to go, you got this, go do it, versus an unwanted event, in which case my brain goes, it's far more generalizable, meaning this looks close enough. And so, therefore, as I tie more and more outcomes or past experiences to tell me how to operate right now, I am subject to a massive over-emphasis of negative, quote unquote, negative events being overgeneralized.

And the access to desirable outcomes that I want becomes crazy, crazy specific and contextual in a way that I might not have access to that now, which is why, for example, you could practice and go, if I hit five good ones in a row, I'll be all right. You hit four good ones and then the fifth one's just like, meh, and I I gotta reload. I gotta do five more. And so essentially, like there is a point where like you cannot get enough good outcomes that will generalize enough into the future.

And that is regardless of how your sk if anything, if your skill level gets better, it becomes less and less accessible because the margins get smaller and smaller. And what is a quote unquote good outcome versus a bad outcome? Again, the threshold for that just becomes narrower and narrower as you get better. So this isn't I'll go beat balls and hit so many good shots that I'll never miss ever again, or that I'll always feel like I can do this, because that's not how our nervous system is designed to encode and interpret both desirable and wanted events.

Raymond Prior (37:33.321)
and undesirable events. So again, what we see in the research is people that rely more and more on this is what happened in my past, that will tell me how to operate now in pursuit of my future, actually end up more likely to be an avoidance of certain future because their past cannot predict their future in a way that their brain is conducive to. well if that happened then everything's going to be fine. In the same way that our ancestors, let's say you were walking around

No saber-tooth tigers anywhere for a month, and then one day you almost got eaten. Which one would your nervous system really gravitate toward? It would be that one day, despite the fact that 99% of the time you are absolutely fine. So if I'm going, I will only go pursue these berries if I have a 30 to 1 ratio of positive to negative. That's not actually a ratio that is sustainable for our nervous system to tell us to go perform freely. Now, again, is it nice?

When we see a whole bunch of shots that we like and we go, man, I just feel like I can't miss. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. By the way, if you have that, ride that wave until it bucks you, right? But if I need it in order to perform freely, I am now tying myself to something that is not controllable, not super predictive for my nervous system, and easily replaced by something that is not so good.

Chase Cooper (38:53.87)
So when you say ride it ride the wave, that's what I was just writing down. So s so it's kind of like the swing thought that I've got a swing thought that works until it doesn't. And then the putter that I switched that doesn't yip anymore works until it doesn't. I remember when I was fighting my yips quite a bit. I went to armlock and I was like, this is good. I can I can do this. And then I had one day where I felt yippy and it was almost like food poisoning. I almost couldn't pick it up again. Like I was like, it doesn't work anymore. It's like lost. I I can't I can't do it. Like

Raymond Prior (39:04.814)
That's right.

Raymond Prior (39:15.278)
That's right.

That's right. So despite many days, perhaps even weeks, and putts of smoothly executed putts, one day of a little bit of anxiety or you drop kicked a putt, which by the way, maybe you just duffed it, maybe it was anxiety, maybe it was you know, the ball, maybe the ball was in a little bit of a hole in the green, who knows what it was, automatically it just wipes out all of that. And again, that's not a hey, you need to forget your bad shots and remember your good ones. That's not how our brain is designed to organize events in our lives.

Chase Cooper (39:31.974)
Right. I felt it. It was definitely Yeah. Right.

Chase Cooper (39:39.845)
It did.

Raymond Prior (39:48.343)
Right. So what that means is the more I say when I'm gonna be present, it is dependent upon something from my past telling me what I think is gonna happen in my future, the more difficult it is for me to be present, and therefore the more difficult it is for me to attend and get immersed in the task that's in front of me when I'm doing that.

Chase Cooper (40:08.028)
So it's okay to rely on or or to use some recent success to to make a better strategic decision or or to, you know, I remember I had a big putt in a college tournament and I was like, Man, you've made thousands of these. Just step up and hit it exactly how you've hit those last thousand putts.

And it did go in, but it doesn't mean that we're gonna just re our confidence and our belief systems are gonna rely on that success because we don't always have access to

Raymond Prior (40:38.444)
Yeah, but I would even argue that in that experience, what you did was not try to guarantee yourself of the outcome. What you reminded yourself is I know what I'm doing to execute this. Go do it a certain way. Not you need to know for sure it's gonna go in. Right. So that was you, that was actually you going, This is how I'm going to do this right now. So is this how I'm gonna operate in this moment, not I made it in the past, this one's gonna go in, you're good to go, bud. Right. So

Chase Cooper (40:52.314)
Okay. It's not giving me the guarantee of the bank.

Chase Cooper (41:05.948)
Yeah and

Raymond Prior (41:06.452)
Very key takeaway for anyone listening. We often base our confidence off of what it is that we think we are capable of doing. I can win, I can make putts, I can hit good shots. When we are under pressure and the stress is high enough, our brain is not asking the question, can you do this? It's asking the question, will you do this? And there is no amount of past success that can answer that question with a definitive absolutely yes.

Other than sometimes we feel it from time to time, but feelings, life past outcomes are fleeting. So they are not reliable sources. When they are available to us, great. But the vast majority of the time they're not. Very few people tell me when I was in a position to be the most success in my life, I was super comfortable and totally certain. Right? If anything, you're facing the most amount of uncertainty and the most discomfort to that point because the stress is the highest and the stakes are the most meaningful to you.

Chase Cooper (42:04.294)
And I and to your point, I remember thinking I remember thinking that this this putt means a lot, but I just remember thinking I've hit a ton of these putts. I'm gonna go through my routine and it I remember thinking it's a right edge putt, and I'm gonna hit it right edge and I'm gonna let it go. And I I didn't think like it has to go in or I must make it or it I've gotta guarantee that it's gonna go in. I remember thinking, I've made a bunch of these, here's what I'm gonna do to try to make this one.

And you know, and I used my we've we've been drilling a ton of putts every day on the practice screen. So I used that as like I've made a ton of them. So I'm gonna go hit this putt. What I would have said confidently at the time, but now I would say with as much freedom as I can and I'm gonna stick to my process and I'm gonna I'm gonna basically die with my process. And if it if it's not good enough, then okay, you know.

Raymond Prior (42:52.056)
That's right. That so Chase, I would actually describe that as very confident, meaning this is how I'm gonna do this, regardless of whether this will or won't go in. Right? Because this is what gives me the best chance to be successful, and this is what I have trained, and I'm not going to abandon that just because this putt matters an awful lot to me. So there is a layer of acceptance to that of the future. It may or may not go in. There's also a layer of very clear pursuit. This is how I'm gonna do this thing. And then

You know, good for you that it went in. But the bottom line is you were not going, I know for sure I'm gonna make this putt, in order to give yourself permission to do it. If anything, you went, I actually don't know if it's gonna go in. But I'm gonna do it this way because that's the way that I've been training, the way that is consistent and authentic to me, and also gives me the best chance of the outcome I want without a guarantee. So hence stable confidence, self given permission to perform freely without the need for a guarantee. Right. And yeah, go ahead.

Chase Cooper (43:50.195)
So I was just gonna say to so to recap the you know, obviously worrying, fearful of the future doesn't give us the best chance to play freely. We're trying to protect against things that haven't happened yet, trying to protect against future threatening outcomes, basically. worrying about the past tends to again, we are our brain is designed to protect us from future things happening. So if

If we worry about the past, the past then the brain's like, Okay, well if that happened, then that's more likely to happen now. So then it turns into future future anxiety. And what we're trying to pr trying to guard against is needing the past to be successful to give us the best chance to to bring freedom and confidence to to

Raymond Prior (44:30.638)
To give us permission to do something freely right now. That's right. So the more that we might say this, so we've talked about A-shaped and V-shaped thinking. Go people can go back a couple episodes and get into that. A shaped thinking creates multitasking that exists in the past and the future, and it creates consequences that don't technically exist. And therefore our brain would encode that as, uh-oh, we better worry about this, and then therefore we are either trying to force and control outcomes or we are trying to avoid.

outcomes and experiences that we do not want coming from that. So again, my access to being immersed in the task in a pursuit-based way with permission to do that from a self-given way, not possible with A-shaped thinking. Again, not because we're not strong enough as humans, because our brain is not designed to allow us to do that. Okay, so if I must not get close to a saber-toothed tiger because I will for sure get eaten.

Which again are all assumptions that are longer term, wider spread, and more personal than they might be. They could possibly be that, but it's not for sure. And a task that I must attend to, then whatever pursuit-based thing I'm doing right now goes on the back burner, or might be like lost in the shuffle altogether. Right. So whether that's I must not embarrass myself in front of these people, or else I shouldn't be out here in the first place.

Then the pursuit-based task of just hold this target in your head and go make a swing at it, not available to you. Right. Contrary to that, what we see again, mindset matters most for being present is when I think about things as preferences, they are not necessarily things I have to guard against. If I would prefer to be comfortable, but I'm tolerating of being uncomfortable. If I would prefer people to think certain things about me, but I'm more than willing to accept that they might not.

Chase Cooper (45:55.622)
No never never gonna happen.

Raymond Prior (46:19.256)
For whatever reasons, I justify that. Or if I would love to hit great shots and shoot great scores all the time, but I don't need to, then what happens is now I have access to well, what do you want to do right now? Right. So if I don't need to avoid saber-toothed tigers at all costs, then my brain goes, okay, well, if that's not the primary task, what would you like to do right now? And then of course, if I'm not adding consequences that technically do not exist that are overestimating the level of threat.

it's also going to make it easier for me to prioritize what I'm doing now. This is not necessarily easy for us as humans, but the way we think about things, the core beliefs we have about stuff and the shape they come in determine how wide the window is for us to actually be present in any moment that we're in. Or the other way to do that is I have to hope the context does it for me, which again is not a bad way to be present.

Chase Cooper (46:54.928)
Right. Right.

Raymond Prior (47:14.914)
But it is just a way that you're not really gonna thrive and experience the things that we really want to, like playing against other people, winning tournaments, hitting shots under pressure. Because again, you're what you're doing is you're just opening the margin for error and in decreasing the potential for consequences, which is why a lot of people just love hitting golf balls on the range or only playing with the people they're comfortable with or the golf courses that they like, which again, nothing wrong with that.

But if that's not what you actually want, what that means is now I have to be willing to face some of the things that I typically don't face in a different way so that I can actually be present in the thing that I want to do in the way that I want.

Chase Cooper (47:51.652)
And then the two or three times a year where your mechanics are so dialed in that everything's easy, you can get through it. But

Raymond Prior (47:57.174)
That is a context that is available to us sometimes, just not all the time. Now, again, the more skilled you are, you know, we used to think again, long time ago, I mean, sports psychology has really stepped in it a couple of times in the past. They used to think like the way to confidence is just get so good at a skill that you just feel like you can't miss. Turns out it's the opposite. The better you get, the more fragile your confidence becomes in that thing because the margins for error between what we typically

Chase Cooper (48:02.15)
Yeah. All the same. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (48:23.719)
describe as good or bad or functional or not functional gets a lot smaller. So what a fifteen handicap would go, wow, that's a great shot for me, might be an atrocious golf shot for a professional golfer. Again, not to say that one is good or bad, but the margins for error and the consequences attached to each of those. So there's no amount of skill you can gain that will create that will answer the question for your nervous system will you do this in a way that is desired in a way that can guarantee that. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (48:26.706)
Sass. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (48:37.83)
Yep. So much smaller. Yep.

Chase Cooper (48:52.39)
Yep. Okay. So we've we've defined kind of what the goals are. We want to stay on time, no future, no past. We're not trying to multitask. We're not trying to feel comfortable. How the brain kind of tends to protect us against the threats in the future, which it could be a golf threat, could be something we don't want to happen on the golf course. It feels like it's life or death, even though it's not. Now there's things on the golf course that we can have happen that are uncomfortable to us.

And that, you know, we could lose our card or we could not make the make the team or some bad things, but they're not really ever life or death threats, even though that's how the brain wants to wants to shift it.

Raymond Prior (49:28.313)
Yeah. And those are are meaningful consequences to us. I do not want to downplay that if your job or your or you're going to play golf with let's say it's a corporate outing and there are important people like and their opinions of you may impact, you know, the business you do with them or so on and so like those are indeed meaningful consequences. Right. Like there's not like there's none, but they aren't necessarily life and death, but that doesn't mean that they don't register to us. They do. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (49:53.265)
You'll feel them and they don't feel good. so now how do we, what are some things we've talked about connected breathing in the past, mindfulness training? What are some things you recommend to help us be to want to be more on time more often or to make it easier to be on time more often?

Raymond Prior (50:06.509)
Yeah. So a couple of things. First is again, mindset matters most. So start there. what are the what is the what do I believe about this that would create tasks and consequences that are not about being immersed and pursuing in the present? That'd be the first place to start. So for example, if my belief is you must not be judged by other people or else whatever they judge you as, that is what you are.

If I don't address that, then again, everything is downstream from that and be fighting against it. So mindset matters most when it comes to being present. The second though is we do train ourselves to be more present more often. Mindfulness training, the research shows us, is by far the most efficient way to do that. And what we are learning to is connecting to two things. One, the physical sensations of actually being present. So like a breath-centered mindfulness practice isn't about relaxing. It's not about being comfortable. It's

What is it that I can feel right now that tells me I'm in the moment that I'm in? So essentially, what can I physically, tangibly bring my attention and awareness to that is on time? Right. And what we learn is that our thoughts will indeed drift sometimes and we notice those shifts in focus and then allow it to anchor back to some physical sensation. It just so happens that our breath is always available to us and it's something that we can feel when we're paying attention to. It's not the only tangible.

point that we can bring our focus to to actually be present, but it is one that is oftentimes omnipresent for us, which is great.

Chase Cooper (51:34.706)
And and when we're doing the breathing exercises, again, it's not to relax. It's to feel if I take a big deep breath, I feel my lungs expanding, air coming out my nose. I hear

Raymond Prior (51:41.368)
might feel my abdomen expand, I might feel air air coming in and out of my nose. What a breath. So swimmers tell me all the time, I get present when I'm in the middle of a race going, crap, what am I gonna ooh time out? What does my breath sound like right now? Right. And it's gonna for them it's gonna they have earplugs in so it's amplified, but it's also bubbles. They can also feel their breath when they exhale. Oftentimes they feel bubbles moving down their frame as they go. So that's just one example. But

Something that goes, this is actually happening right now in my life. or what I'm feeling right now brings us to being present. It's not a technically not a relaxation routine. Now, oftentimes we feel better when we are present because we are not so worried about the future or dwelling on the past, but that is a byproduct of a shift in focus, much more than it is while I was deep breathing and that, you know, triggered my vagus nerve.

impact between my parasympathetic nervous system and so on and so forth. Like we're oftentimes in settings where our parasympathetic nervous system can only, that is our down regulating half of our nervous system, can only do so much for us. And those because the stress is high enough. So if I'm leaning on a breath-centered practice to calm me down, oftentimes that's not really going to help me very much. What we're looking for is a shift in focus from off time to on time. go ahead.

Chase Cooper (53:04.924)
So so we we make these breaths. One of the things I I'll do a lot of times is I'll rub my fingers together, like a big deep breath and just kind of feel I'm focusing on the feel of my breaths. And so, you know, some some some thoughts on when to do it. I'll do it first T when I'm feeling jittery, you and obviously that that's that's some little resets in competition. You know, I I I have a feeling you're gonna talk about like how do you get your players to maybe do some some

Mindfulness mindfulness breathing exercises to again get the brain more wanting to be on time more often.

Raymond Prior (53:36.602)
Yeah. So one of the well the from the big picture, what happens there's and by the way, there are multiple ways you can train mindfulness, a variety of different practices. For anyone who's interested, you can check out the mindfulness section of my book so that we're not taking up a ton of podcasts with it. But what it's training our brain is to be present more often instead of trying to fly off time. And eventually what happens over time is our brain starts to rewire in a way where it starts to crave being present, particularly when we establish this.

before we go do something where we are likely to experience being off time. So that means I have five minutes of mindfulness before I go to that big meeting or before I go even warm up for my day where I'm essentially setting the tone for my nervous system that we're gonna be in this thing when it's going on rather than I'm gonna go start worrying about stuff before I've even done it. Right. So again, it's not an end all be all by any means, but it's kind of like warming up your body before you go hit golf balls.

then you're not using golf balls to try to actually be warm in the same way that if I actually establish groundedness and being on time before I go do the thing, I'm not using a bunch of golf shots to tell me whether I should or should not.

then also another layer of mindfulness is we start to learn to see thoughts and feelings about being off time, meaning that's a thought from the past, that's a thought about the future, that's a feeling I have about a thought from the future, or that's a feeling I have about a past memory. And we learn to create space between them where they can exist, but we don't need to do anything with them. In our last podcast, we talked about can I learn to see my thoughts as just thoughts and feelings about something, not facts.

Not precursors to the future, not commands that I must follow, and not things that I actually have to do anything about. And what that means is that our thoughts and feelings from the past do not become another task that I need to attend to. And whatever they are about does not need to become a task that I attend to. Hence, easier for me to be immersed in what I'm doing when I learn to see those thoughts and feelings as just off time stuff, not on time stuff. Okay.

Raymond Prior (55:48.708)
So then what we start to do is start to develop one of the things that tells us people are more likely to be present is they have a higher value for being present, meaning I value the present moment more than I do my past or my future. I give it more value. And if you think about it, Chase, again, this is a bit of a thought exercise. The most important moment of any of our lives is the one that we're in. Any moment that we've already had is over. Any future moment is only imagined. So I can't go back and change the past.

I cannot get to the future before it. So everything that is moving forward in my life is hinging upon what I do in the moment that I'm in right now. And so if I see it as the most valuable moment in my life, it starts to devalue my past and the future, which means doesn't mean that those aren't important to me, particularly my future. But what it means is I'm not giving that more value than the moment that I'm in. And typically humans gravitate toward what they value the most.

Chase Cooper (56:25.383)
Two.

Raymond Prior (56:45.465)
So although my future might be very important to me, and there are things in my past that were also important to me, they're technically not relevant to what I'm doing right now. So if I value my present moment the most of all the time frames, it does keep that window a little bit wider because my nervous system, again, is designed to gravitate toward what do I value the most. Right. So

And then what we can do is now we need to start to shape these into skills that you can have on the golf course. So for example, that might be as I'm walking from the range to the first T, I'm connecting with my breath, just trying to feel it and just be present instead of trying to worry about what's going to happen during my round of golf. Or even I'm super excited because I'm in contention with four holes to go. And can I just feel?

what my feet are like in my shoes, not to try to turn off being excited, but to just hang on, you are excited about what might happen today. But can you value what you're doing most right now as you get there?

Chase Cooper (57:42.141)
a birdie birdie birdie three holes in a row and have a par five coming up. Like yeah.

Raymond Prior (57:46.04)
Exactly. Right. So or, you know, as simple as like oftentimes I'll create these physical dividing lines with players where I'll be like, You don't pull a club out of your bag until you have established being present. It's not the club out of the bag that makes you present. You establish being present and then you pull a club out of your bag. Because again, I want to be in the time frame that this shot exists in before I've even decided to step into this thing. Or

Something of that nature where I go, there's gonna be some type of mindful grounding interaction before I go do the thing that I do. Again, I'm not trying to get comfortable with this shot necessarily. I'm trying to be present in this and I'm not gonna move past this physical threshold until I have established that.

Chase Cooper (58:32.242)
Well and and and remember too, like a lot of my players on the on time. They're like, Yeah, I was close to being on time. I'm like, wait a minute, it's twelve o'clock in zero seconds. Were you ten seconds ahead, ten seconds behind, a second ahead? Were we on time?

Raymond Prior (58:42.563)
That's right. That's right. And again, our nervous system doesn't really have the tuned sense of is 10 seconds different than 10 minutes down the line or 10 hours down the line? If there's something in the future to worry about, it will create an urgency for that. Or it doesn't really know the difference between 20 years in the past or 20 seconds in the past. If that is something that must be guarded against in my future, both immediate future and long-term future.

Chase Cooper (58:56.57)
Good too.

Raymond Prior (59:12.823)
It's going to create the avoidance-based tasks around that. And then what gets pushed back is the pursuit-based task that is in front of me right now, whether I like it or not. Right. So all those being said, there's quite a few layers that we can and levers that we can pull on about how to be on time and be present more often for us.

Chase Cooper (59:34.012)
So how do you you know, I always I always wanna give our listeners a takeaway. how often, how much time for mindfulness training? How mu I know I know you're you dive into this, obviously this is this is your job and what you do for a living, but how often do you practice mindfulness training on your own? And what what is the what is the research shows? What do you ask your players to do?

Raymond Prior (59:54.436)
Research shows that five to six minutes a day is the minimum prescribed dosage. And it's not about really long, long bouts of training groundedness. It's about stacking days. Similar to if you're trying to get off of Cokes, it's not about, you know, can I just drink a ton of water for a couple of days in a row? It's like, can I just start to decrease the amount of that I do? And it's small things compound. So with mindfulness training, we want some type of if eventually we get to the point of a self-guided practice.

five to six minutes a day. And you can toggle between different types. You can do a single point, which would be like a breath center practice or more contemplated practice where you just sit with your thoughts and feelings without doing anything with them. And the research shows us that earlier in the day tends to have a stronger effect because it kind of sets a tone.

In a similar way that a workout earlier in the day jump starts your metabolism more than it does in the afternoon. It doesn't mean that an afternoon workout or an afternoon mindfulness session isn't valuable, but it just doesn't have the same juice to it, which is okay. but we can be mindful in many ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be a formal practice. For myself, I have one in the morning as part of my routine, but I also I walk the dog and I work out without headphones now to just sit with my own thoughts and feelings to s let basically let.

whatever needs to run internally, run, think through stuff, maybe not think through stuff just because it pops up, et cetera. So there are many different ways that we can be more mindfully attuned and train ourselves to just have thoughts and feelings without it pulling us away from what we're doing. And then a big thing I know a lot of people aren't gonna like this, but the opposite of mindfulness training is scrolling through your phone. It is just training your focus to shift, to shift, to shift, to shift, to shift. So for young people,

Who spend who are the people who spend the most time on their phones, by the way, or for anyone who you're man, it's just really hard for me to be present, even if I'm not really in a state of threat or stress. You might go, well, what in my life is training my focus to just want to jump to the next thing? We live in a world where most of the things we interact with are training us to chronically multitask or valuing the next thing more than the thing that we're in right now.

Raymond Prior (01:02:11.585)
in a way that is trying to make us feel stuff that pulls us off time, which is anger, self-righteousness, and anxiety. So if you spend a lot of basically the research shows it's very difficult to stay focused on something if in everywhere else in your life you're doing stuff that is training the exact opposite. Okay. So it would be important for people to also consider what am I doing in my life that is just like really pulling my focus elsewhere. And just so happens that our cell phone and the way that apps are designed, the way that social media is designed,

Even the way that TV channels move through stuff. It's, you know, we're looking at things on multiple screens all the time. We're never really sitting down and just focusing on one thing at a time. Very often in our lives where that would be sufficient training to then take that to a golf course. You know, it'd be kind of like the equivalent of like I only practice with this training aid and then I go out on the golf course and I'm like, I feel pretty lost. Like, yeah, that would make sense.

Chase Cooper (01:03:05.692)
Yeah. Is it is it something where in a perfect world would you get your players to do it for more than that? Thirty minutes a day, like is more better?

Raymond Prior (01:03:15.297)
Not necessarily. There's a basically, I think most of the research demonstrates that past twenty minutes a day, there's no extending effect. Like basically you're at maximum benefit, you know, unless you're trying to be a Buddhist monk. But I wouldn't recommend that lifestyle for anybody who isn't really bought into wanting to be a Buddhist monk. But if you were doing five minutes a day, or perhaps doing five minutes a day twice a day, because one is just my part of my morning routine and then another one is before I need to go perform or practice.

Chase Cooper (01:03:21.682)
Didn't give you any more. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (01:03:31.014)
Yeah. Right.

Raymond Prior (01:03:43.408)
You know, for anybody who's doing golf instruction, I'd be like, yo, dude, two minutes of just having someone just sit and breathe for a bit would clear out a ton of space for them to actually be focused. But most people are coming to a lesson, they're on their phone, they're checking their email, they're scrolling through social media, they're chatting with this, that, and the third. And then I ask you to just jump in and start hitting golf balls. Like, haven't really effectively transitioned my focus to like, what are we doing right now?

would be really important too in the same way that a lot of people like if I just go from my car where I'm on the phone, I'm doing whatever, I'm scrolling and checking emails on the way to the first T and then I'm like, okay, I need to go focus and be present through this round of golf, it's a tough ask.

Chase Cooper (01:04:20.934)
And then checking my phone the whole time on the golf course.

Raymond Prior (01:04:22.519)
Yeah, that that too. Right. And again, far be it for me to tell anyone what kind of golf experience you want. Like a lot of people are like, golf is just like a vessel for me to hang out with friends. I do want to scroll and do betting and have drinks and the music and the whole thing. And by the way, that is an awesome golf experience, provided that's what you really want. But if you're talking about I want to play better, play more consistently, score more consistently, and maybe see how good I can be at something, what we might just classify those as like those are kind of just distractions to your performance. So if

Chase Cooper (01:04:30.278)
Yeah. Yeah.

Raymond Prior (01:04:51.661)
performing well is a priority for you, then there's a certain level of presence that is probably required for

Chase Cooper (01:04:59.014)
Yep. And I definitely think it's a good one for me. And and a lot of our coaches that listen to this is like our kids that come in and they'll check their phone a couple of times during the lesson and check Snapchat. It's like, Hey, let's just do a quick little reset and set for two minutes and just just allow the the brain to flush out a lot of the a lot of the noise.

Raymond Prior (01:05:15.331)
Yep. It's not uncommon now that you're getting into more because like there's again, there's like these waves of things in in the world. And one of the backlashes now is like on phones and how distracting they are. Where many of the corporations I do consulting with, like they do if you're in an executive meeting, like you do not bring your phone into the room. A lot of the college teams I work with, like wherever practice and play happens, no phones are allowed where

You're just removing that thing. Again, making it as difficult as possible for yourself to get distracted by something and as easy as possible for you to just be in the thing that you're in. And again, those types of things can help train us to be a little bit more present more often. So, you know, if you're not at the point where it's easy for you to just leave your phone in your bag and not use it during a round of golf when you actually don't want to be.

than leaving it in a car is a it's very difficult to be on the thirteenth hole and get into your phone if it's not with you the whole time.

Chase Cooper (01:06:08.794)
One hundred percent. And and it is an another topic for another time, but it is a I think a negative the fact that all these tournaments now are requiring players to enter in their scores on their phone because now they're texting and Snapchatting and looking at it social media and like just

Raymond Prior (01:06:18.32)
Yeah.

Raymond Prior (01:06:21.69)
Yeah. Well, we we could do a whole bunch of episodes on the monetization and monopolization of youth sport and what that has what those priorities have done for the quality of the youth sport and the experience for the kids. But I would argue most youth sport experiences, because they are a business, do not actually prioritize the children's development and their actual experience in that. In which case then, yep, we're gonna need kids to

interscores so that we can so the parents who are paying all the money know exactly where their kid is in relation to somebody else and all that stuff. So that's that's a topic for another podcast maybe.

Chase Cooper (01:06:58.352)
No for sure. Well I I

For sure. Well, I tell when I when I do some of the mental game spills, I tell a lot of the parents and the kids, like, you know, there's a lot of sports psychology out there talking about being present one shot at a time and like, you know, the this one is is has been around for a long time, but I I love how you explain it deeper and, you know, the difference between multitasking and being off time and and the consequences of all that. And so I think this is

a little heavier or a little deeper dive into just being present and just taking one shot at a time and the importance of what that actually means and why when you don't we run down some pretty slippery slopes when it comes to performing and playing our best golf. So

Raymond Prior (01:07:40.421)
Yeah. Well, like holding a pursuit-based target in my head, saying play one shot at a time is technically correct. The massive caveat to that is is there anything else that I'm valuing or asking or requiring myself to do that would keep me from doing that? And as humans, we do that a lot. And I'll just remind everybody: our nervous system is not designed to shove one pursuit-based task.

Chase Cooper (01:08:01.267)
A hundred percent.

Raymond Prior (01:08:08.81)
over an avoidance-based task. If it could, we would have died as a species a long time ago, right? So if you're going, don't get judged by other people, just hold this target in your head. Your brain is specifically designed to hold that do not get judged by other people task above try to actually hit this target. Because if it didn't, you probably or your ancestor would have gotten eaten by something and you might not be here. Right.

Chase Cooper (01:08:13.98)
Yeah, right. Right.

Chase Cooper (01:08:33.906)
We we we all wouldn't be here. No, that's really good. Good stuff. Good stuff.

Raymond Prior (01:08:37.646)
Yeah, all of our cowardly ancestors we have to thank for being alive, but we also have to thank for the way our nervous system is designed that it makes it pretty difficult to pursue freely if we are bringing a bunch of stuff to something the other way. So is it technically correct? Play one shot at a time, just be present? Yes. Or hold a target in your head or an intention of a target head? Technically, yes. Assuming your psychology and your awareness have plowed enough room for that to actually be able.

Chase Cooper (01:08:58.076)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (01:09:05.756)
Yeah. More more room and to explore and to be curious and to just go play. Yep.

Raymond Prior (01:09:09.924)
That's exactly right. You know, essentially, like if you think about how we started to flourish eventually as a species, it was a series of human beings for whatever context and circumstances there were who went, if we go out of this cave, we might get eaten. And I'm going to be willing to accept that risk because we can't stay here. We're not going to grow if we don't. Right. We can't pursue growth better, whatever we need to, if we're also guarding against this thing. So eventually some of our ancestors went.

I might die, but I'm willing to accept that. And they were the ones that ended up ultimately doing those things. So now we have a mixture where we have capability of doing both, which is really important. But the brain has not evolved much in like hundreds of thousands of years. So we still have this kind of like brain that is designed for a world of scarcity and pretty significant cost to life and limb for taking on risk.

Chase Cooper (01:09:39.035)
Let's go.

Raymond Prior (01:10:03.362)
And now we're in a world that doesn't have that. So again, we have to remember like our brain is not designed for us to go play golf freely necessarily. It can as long as it's also not being used for what it's actually designed for, which is don't do anything that would be threatening to me.

Chase Cooper (01:10:15.516)
Keep us alive. Yep. And golf to a lot of my students feels very threatening and that's that's why we're here.

Raymond Prior (01:10:22.144)
It feels threatening to a lot of people in a lot of ways. And so does a lot of things in our lives. Like we we have a question that we're kind of getting into probably in our next podcast, which is like, what if I'm finding out that I'm not good enough? And that is a real threatening experience, or at least can be a threatening experience to anybody who's doing something. So to pretend that that's not a thing and just go focus on a target or just play one shot at a time while that existential crisis is running in the background.

Chase Cooper (01:10:24.924)
Yeah. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (01:10:52.08)
Really difficult.

Raymond Prior (01:10:52.324)
brain your brain is not designed to allow you freedom in those situations.

Chase Cooper (01:10:55.9)
But if you can at least pursue freely and answer that question and the answer is you weren't quite good enough, that feels a lot better than knowing you never cave it your best shot. And that's what we'll we'll dive into that.

Raymond Prior (01:11:04.078)
Yeah, we'll we'll we'll get into the layers of that existential crisis perhaps in the next podcast too.

Chase Cooper (01:11:09.158)
Yep. Awesome doc. Good stuff. at GBTS Podcasts, BTS Mindset dot com at Chase Cooper Golf. keep sending questions in, give us feedback, let us know any topics you guys want us to cover. Throw a review on there every once in while. Raymond needs some free dopamine. He's not getting any on social media, so he needs some needs some needs some reviews every once in a while.

Raymond Prior (01:11:12.452)
Yeah, man. Where can they find us?

Raymond Prior (01:11:31.664)
I prefer my dopamine earned. Thank you very much. Unless it comes in the flavor of pepperoni and green chili pizza. In which case then send it all. If we ever get sponsored by my favorite pizza place from my hometown, we are in big trouble, my guy. Yeah.

Chase Cooper (01:11:39.534)
Chase Cooper (01:11:49.074)
You're in big trouble. I I am too, 'cause now I gotta drink a Coke with the pizza, so I'm in big trouble. All right. As always.

Raymond Prior (01:11:52.943)
Yeah, yeah. Anyways we would like to thank everyone for joining us and we will see you next time on the Gulf Beneath Surface Podcast.

Chase Cooper (01:12:01.565)
Thanks guys. See y'all.