Podcast Transcript
Josh Nichols
Dr. Izzy Justice, what happens to our golf swings under stress?
Dr. Izzy Justice
Josh, first of all, thanks for having me. So I love that question, but if you’ll allow me before I answer that question, let me rephrase that question.
And so when people use the term stress, I don’t know that we really understand what that term means. I know we know what it means colloquially. It means I don’t feel good. You know, something doesn’t feel right. I feel icky. Again, I’m just using a lot of cliches to describe something. And I think part of the challenge with the mental side of the game is that we are using an outdated language, even the language that we’re using isn’t entirely accurate. Now note, I use the term outdated, not incorrect. So to say that I’m stressed is not incorrect, but it’s just an outdated term.
So let me ask that question again. So when someone says I am stressed for whatever it might be, I got to make a par putt, you know, to say par, or I got to get up and down, or it’s the first T or it’s a difficult bunker shot, or I’m just coming off two double bogeys in a row, whatever the case may be. So stress from a neuroscience perspective is essentially two things and if you know what they are then it’s easy to understand what you have to do. So number one the quantity of the thoughts that you’re having are now higher and there is a scale it’s not low and high.
You can have two thoughts, can have four thoughts, you can have 20 thoughts, and you can have 100 thoughts. So there’s a scale to the quantity of the thoughts that you’re having. And not all thoughts are bad. Some thoughts are good.
And so when the quantity of the thoughts in general is high, and then number two, when the intensity of the thoughts is also high. So there’s a difference between I got to make par versus I got to make par. Otherwise, mom’s going to yell at me. Otherwise, I’m going to miss the cut. Otherwise, I’m not going to make money. Then I got to do this tomorrow. Then I can do that tomorrow. So in the neuroscience world, call that a spike.
If stress is defined as a higher volume of thoughts and a higher intensity of thoughts, then the opposite of that means if I don’t want to be stressed, I want to have fewer thoughts. I want to have lower intensity thoughts. Right. So the reason our swing goes off when we are stressed is because when we have more thoughts and when the intensity of the thoughts in the brain is very high, then the communication between the brain and the muscle is disrupted. There is a neuromuscular disruption.
Now keep in mind, and this is a key point I think your audience should know, muscles do not act independently. Our body is a slave to the brain. So think of a quadriplegic. A quadriplegic has a perfectly functioning lower body and a brain, but the communication between the brain and the body through a spinal injury is severed. And therefore that person cannot move anything below their neck because that signal, move my hand, move, you know, grab the stop, walk over here, do that. That signal cannot go through.
So just remember all motor function, especially sequence motor function, like a golf swing. That’s a sequence. You go back and then you go forward because you want to generate force. But motor movement like walking or a golf swing, that’s coordinated by the brain. When even we do something as simple as walking, Josh, we don’t walk randomly. Like we don’t walk into a wall. You know, like our eyes navigate us. They tell us, there, go left, go a little bit left, jump over this stone or this whatever it is. So there’s this input that the brain is getting, which it then uses to tell the body what to do from a motor function.
Now, you add in a target, like a hole where you want to putt or a fairway that you want to hit. Now it’s not just motor sequencing, but it’s a target oriented. I have to sequence my swing in such a way that I want to fade the ball off that or draw the ball there or land the ball, chip or pitch the ball right there so that it goes towards the hole. That requires an additional set of sensory input. When we’re stressed, that sensory input, what I want to do with this ball, where I want the ball to go, the target is now in competition with, got to save par, I got to, you know, do this after the round, or I’m worried about this, or I’m worried about that, or my playing partner keeps talking in my backswing, whatever the case may be.
So now you see the more thoughts they are, there’s more competition in the brain. And therefore that signal from the brain to our muscles basically gets disrupted. And in golf, as you know, if your club face is just a half a degree open, if you come in a half degree out or in, you know, now your dispersion gets much, much wider. So essentially, you know, if you are capable of hitting any golf shot, any golf shot, and my definition of if you’re capable of it is you can do it on the driving range, you’ve done it before, then the only way that you cannot do it when it really matters on the golf course is if that quantity is higher and the intensity of those thoughts is higher.
It’s the only way. There’s no other way. Obviously, unless if you’re physically injured as well, but outside of that, you know, it’s really the intensity and the quantity of the thoughts in your brain.
Josh Nichols
Right. Yeah, the your physical game doesn’t change. Your body doesn’t change, your muscles don’t change from range to course, your mental state changes, the quantity and intensity of your thoughts changes, and if you just kind of control for everything else, that’s the only thing that changes, then clearly that is the thing that is the cause for struggles, right? The age old why can’t I bring my game from the range to the course is boiled down to its simplest thing is the quantity and intensity of your thoughts, right? Is that fair to say?
Dr. Izzy Justice
Yeah. And I would go further, Josh. I would say not just range to the course, but I say hole to hole. I would say front nine to back nine. I mean, how many times have you talked to people who’ve said, I had a great round until I got to 15. And I realized, you know, I’m about to break whatever 80 or 90 or par or something. And they end up with double bogey, bogey, bogey, or something crazy like that. It’s happened to me as well. And so it’s not just range to the first tee, but it’s hole to hole.
We forget, Josh, that golf is a mental marathon. It’s a mental endurance. I used to do Ironmans. My half Ironman used to take, I don’t know, six hours. A full Ironman can take 15 hours. But that’s a physical endurance test. You are swimming, biking, and running. But think about it, like between the time that we warm up, play a round of golf and then whatever, it’s five, six hours. And you know, you’re out there. And so that’s a long time for your brain to have attention.
And I always tell, I wrote about this in my first book. I’ve written lots of books, 10 books, but three of them are in golf. In my first golf book, which was, I don’t know, 12 some years ago, I said the real test in golf is about 12 minutes. 12 minutes spread over five hours, which is really those 30 to 40 seconds before each shot. And frankly, it’s not even that long. It’s about the 10 seconds before each shot. In the 10 seconds before each shot, where is your brain? Where is that quantity? And what is the quality of the thoughts that you’re having? What is the quality of the sensory input that you are giving yourself? Are you choosing to look at the dimple on the ball? Are you choosing to see the cloud or the tree where you want to hit the ball? Choosing to see the blade of grass where you want the ball to roll over, or are you over the ball saying, make sure your elbow is here, make sure your shoulder is there, make sure you finish tall, whatever those thoughts are.
So just remember, every thought carries with it a charge. So one of the things that somehow, I don’t know why we haven’t learned this, but the brain, the language of the brain is electricity. Right. And if you think about it, Josh, it has to be electricity. It couldn’t possibly be something else. It cannot be light because we’re opaque. It cannot be gravity because it’s too slow.
The example I give everybody is imagine if you’re taking a walk. Okay. And about 10 feet in front of you, you see something black. Now that visual input 10 feet away from the light goes to the black object, then it travels with light to your eyes. From your eyes, it goes to your brain and your brain gives it a label that is a snake. Now it recognizes not a stick, it’s not a ball, it’s not a cow, it’s a snake. In addition to giving that label, it then says danger. Right? Not only does it then say danger, it then says jump, turn around and run. All of that in what? A second and a half. Now what can facilitate that level of external stimuli, collaboration in the brain, and then a boom, a microsecond motor function to escape that danger?
So electricity is the language of the brain. And that’s why the thoughts, each thought has a charge to it. So if I say, for example, I want the ball to roll over that blade of grass just below the cup, I’ve measured these thoughts. That thought is like a 10 hertz frequency. It’s a low. On the scale from 1 to 100, 10 is low. If my thought is, I better not leave it short, that thought is around 40 hertz. So now it’s, now there’s more thoughts in my head because the memory of, you know, I better not leave it short, just think about it. How did that thought come to your head? Because you left a few short before and it wasn’t fun and it wasn’t good. So your brain is reminding you, yo bro, let’s not make the same mistake again. Cause it wasn’t fun when we made that bogey or whatever it was.
So the quality of the thoughts that you have in your head in the last 10, 15 seconds before each shot is the test of golf. I will concede the point because I work with a lot of wonderful, wonderful household named golf instructors. We have had this debate countless times in a very healthy way. And so, well, you know, if someone is coming up to end, how are they ever going to have a good shot? So I concede the point that there is an element of technique. You do want your body to be lined up correctly. For example, you do want your grip to be good, whatever good means, you know, you do want to, you know, so there’s some basic things that are important and their positions in the backswing that are more efficient than others. I get all of that.
But when you’re playing golf, that’s not the time that you’re going to change any of those things. Whatever you got is what you got. And so the best way to tighten your dispersion on the golf course, no matter what your handicap is from, and again, I told you earlier, I work with some of the best players in the world, but no matter what your handicap is or a tour player or whatever it may be, you know, the quality of your thoughts in those last 10 seconds is the ultimate determinant of the quality of the shot that you’re going to hit.
Josh Nichols
Is the goal to, so like with the snake example, obviously you are arguably in that second and a half, you’re in pure flow state, right? You’re not overly analyzing, overthinking, second guessing, self doubting. You’re just, you see stimulus and you respond to it, right? It’s a totally subconscious, unconscious,
Dr. Izzy Justice
Reactive. I would not call it flow state. I would call it reactive state.
Josh Nichols
Okay, got it. So is that a state that we want to try to be in? I know that’s not what you were getting at with that example, but is that the sort of place we want to be in when we’re hitting, like during the second and half of hitting a golf ball?
Dr. Izzy Justice
I understand. Yeah, yeah, so I get the gist of what you’re saying. So again, let’s go back to language. I think language is very important, right? So believe it or not, there’s no such thing as flow. There’s no such thing as being in the zone. Like there is a thing called an eye, a nose, a ear, a liver, a kidney, heart. Those are real things. There’s a border. You can see them, you can weigh them, you can measure them. There’s an input, there’s an output. But I understand why us as human beings came up with these terms, because we’re trying to describe something that we don’t understand. So there’s nothing in the human body called flow. It is not a thing.
And from a neuroscience perspective, flow is the combination of three biomarkers. Now, this is not according to me. This is according to some neuroscientists actually out of Canada. It’s a combination of your heart rate, the electricity EEG being low, and the oxygen levels in your brain. When those things are relatively in collaboration or at a lower state, you know, then people describe, they call that phenomenon I’m flowing like ideas are coming to me now. They’re using the term flow because they don’t know what 10 Hertz is but I caution you and your audience from using cliches or words like that because flow implies that you are the inflow or or not inflow whereas in reality, if you think about what is really going on is the thoughts in your head, you can measure them.
Like we’ve been able to measure electricity in the brain for almost a hundred years. Now we’ve only been able to measure electricity in the brain wirelessly or what I call functionally for about 20 years. This is a new thing. Meaning functionally means while you’re doing something. Typically we were measuring electricity in the brain in a clinical setting. You had Alzheimer’s, you had a concussion, you had brain damage, you had to in a very still in a machine under an MRI, and there was a delay in what the machine is measuring versus what’s going on in your brain. So there’s no way to measure what someone is doing over a pot or a free throw or throwing a football or creating something. But over the last 20 years, we’ve created technology that is wireless, which is a game changer. Wireless means that I can put something on your head and stand 15, 20 feet away, and I can see in real time, like in microseconds, exactly what’s going on in your brain.
So the flow thing that you’re describing is actually around 10 hertz. So let’s go back to that scale. When we’re sleeping, we have between zero and five. Now think about that, Josh. It makes sense. Because when you’re sleeping, what are you really doing? Are you walking somewhere? Are you talking? Are you solving a puzzle? Are you talking to somebody else? There’s not that much activity in the brain. There is activity, but not that much. So the recordings show up low.
Now if I’m yelling and I’m screaming and I’m throwing something and I’m blah blah, I’m at 80, 90, 100 hertz. Why? Because there’s so much stimulation, there’s so much consequence and my non-verbals are screaming, you know, so that’s 100. So all the magic seems to be happening around 10. So now if you’re at 20, right? You could argue that I’m a little bit flowy, but you’re a lot closer to being in what you would call flow. I don’t use the term flow, but that’s okay. It’s all good. Like I honor past knowledge, you know, right? I mean, past knowledge is not wrong. It’s just a little bit out. Exactly. So, but if you had 50, well now you’re a long way.
So I think it is very helpful to have a language and a framework that gives you a sense of how far I am from where I need to be. If in those 10 seconds, for example, I am thinking about what I just made on the last hole, right? So let’s say that I just walk off a green and I make, tap in for double. And I go to my next tee shot and I’m over the ball with my driver to hit this tee shot. And my thoughts are, I cannot believe I just four putted. Now you’re at 80, 90 Hertz. Now the odds that you’re going to hit a good drive is like 5%. You may, but you will have gotten lucky. But it’s good to know, this is what I’m thinking. I am a million miles away. If I make a double bogey and I walk up to the hall and I say, okay, I got this, I can handle this situation, you know, do whatever you can. Well, I’m not a 10, but I’m probably around 20, 30.
But if I go over to the next tree and I’m looking up in the fairway and say, I’m going to hit it right there from that tree. I’m going to fade off there. I want the ball to finish there and I can really feel the tension in my grip. Well, that’s 10. So that if people are aware, like I don’t think that thoughts should be judged. I think they should be reported like the weather. If it’s raining, it’s just raining.
And I always tell people, if you look at the weather forecast and it said that during a run of golf, it’s going to rain, would you not take an umbrella or a rain jacket with you? Of course you would. Why? Because you’re preparing for something where there’s a possibility that something can happen. I am telling you that by virtue of being human, there is a hundred percent chance that you are not going to be at 10 Hertz for five hours. Therefore you need skills to take with you, just like you would an umbrella. Like, if there’s a 50 % chance it’s going to rain, people are going to take an umbrella. I’m telling you, there’s 100 % chance that your brain is going to not be a 10 for most of the round. So we need new skills, new tools to understand a language, to understand how the brain works. Because like I said, your brain is not the 15th club. It is the club.
And I’ll give you one more kind of food for thought. If I gave you a set of 14 clubs, Josh, I say, hey, Josh, I got this 14 clubs, any club that you these clubs, they’re so spectacular that all you have to do is when you’re over the ball, just say what you want to hit and how far you want to hit it and it’ll hit it for you. These are the most amazing clubs, but there’s just one problem with this club. There’s only one problem with these amazing clubs, and that is they only work well if they’re in a good mood. Would you take those clubs?
Josh Nichols
That’s interesting.
Dr. Izzy Justice
I think most people would say no, if it’s only going to be like, how am I going to know if it’s in a good mood or not? Yeah. But that is the level of standard that we have accepted for ourselves. When I’m in a good mood, I’ll play. And when I’m not, all right, I’ll have a few bad shots. So we have accepted a standard of our brain that we would never accept with any equipment. You would never buy an iPhone, an iPhone 20. If it says, is the most amazing iPhone in the world, it can do anything you want for you. But only if it’s in a good mood.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Right. If it’s unpredictable like that, yeah. I see, I see. I think that’s where we’re heading is probably with conscious products. But that is so interesting because when you, how do you know or do you have an explanation for why don’t three put this is a higher frequency than focus or you know, let’s put a good role on it. Why is that, why is one higher frequency than the other?
Dr. Izzy Justice
Absolutely, I do. Yes. And that’s a very, very, very good question. So, you know, the brain does not do random. Nobody is wirelessly sending you a thought. Okay, so all of our life’s experiences are stored in only one part of the entire human body, not your nose, not your liver, not your kidney, not your pancreas, your brain. That’s your hot drive. Okay, so, when it is the job of the brain to store inventory, number one, but more importantly, to prioritize negative inventory.
Now you may say, well, that’s awful. Why should the brain prioritize negative inventory? Believe it or not, that factory setting is very good. If thousands of years ago, I was in the Serengeti in Africa in a cave and I was out with my children, and we suddenly saw for the first time this beautiful animal with this amazing hair. And we said, let’s go play with it. And suddenly it ate one of my children. Right. I’m going to make sure that that never happens again. The next time that I hear a lion, smell a lion, taste a lion, I’m going to grab my kids and run the other way. I’m going to tell everybody about it.
So negative inventory is useful for us because it, or rather the prioritization of the storage of negative inventory. So when we have a negative thought, your brain is retrieving a lot more inventory, number one, so the quantity goes up and the intensity of it was not good. It was not a good experience that you three putted the last hole. So let’s go back to where we started, the stress. So I told you stress is two things. So negative experiences inherently, because they retrieve a lot of inventory in order for you to have what we call a memory or an engram. Sensory input, right? That goes to a different part of your brain. That goes to your sensory cortex, to your thalamus.
But sensory input, like if I’m looking at a tree, like what did that tree ever do to me? Like nothing. It’s just there. It’s neutral. It’s something that I’m looking at right now. So there’s nothing attached to it like there is to something in the past or worse, something in the past with a negative consequence.
Josh Nichols
Neutral. There’s no story, right?
Dr. Izzy Justice
And you’re, yeah, a story. And when your brain retrieves that memory, you’re done. Because so we call it in the neuroscience world, we call it a surge, a surge of electricity. So many guys come to see me and girls because they have yips. The most common one is putting, but I also see a lot of chipping and I also see a lot of driver. Not that many drivers, but I see a lot of putting and I see a lot of chipping yips. I just remember what I said is, you know, there’s no motor function, whether you’re putting or chipping, that isn’t coming from the brain.
And so I find people sort of fixing the wrong problem. They’ll change their grip. They’ll change their product. They’ll go to a long potter. They’ll go left hand low on chipping or they’ll start using seven irons or whatever the case may be. But it doesn’t fix the real problem. And the real problem is so to use a late term and I don’t like to use late term, but I will for your show that the scar tissue. So there’s no such scar tissue means your tissue is scarred. That’s not a thing again, right? So the inventory that your brain has as soon as it grabs a putter is a quantity and intensity of a lot of missed puts. There’s no human being that I know of. I don’t even know how many people have come to see me, I would say in the hundreds with these kinds of yips. Not one person randomly got it.
Meaning, yes, it did show up one day, but it showed up because you were putting poorly because you were duffing chips or you were chucking them or you were sculling them 50 yards across the green, a chip. And now every time that you have, you know, a wedge in your hand to chip, your brain says, whoa, remember that last time when you hit it, when you sculled it 50 yards off the green, like, and your body started laughing at you. So that is a surge of electricity. And I’m like I said, once that surge happens, the quantity and intensity increases, it’s very hard and that’s why the hands shake.
So one of the first questions that I ask when someone comes to see me with the yips is I say, do you have the yips holding a fork or a pen or when you’re driving? If the answer is no, well, that alone should tell you that it is very situational to that one club. Now, if the hands are shaking everywhere when they’re eating food, when they’re taking a shower, when they’re driving, with all 14 clubs, well, that’s a neurological issue. That’s different, right? And so that’s a different problem. So we have these, that’s what I keep saying.
The quality of the thoughts that you are choosing to give your brain in those 10 seconds before each shot is the ultimate test of the game of golf. Right now, I granted if you’re a 20 handicapper, you may not know how to hit a fade. You may not know how to hit a draw. You may not know how to read a green. I get that part. Right. But you still hit over hit a golf ball and there’s still some type of a dispersion to your shot. I’m saying that just whatever your dispersion is, it can be tighter. Now for a single digit handicapper like me, you know, my dispersion is maybe 30 degrees either way, left or right. But I know if I’m at 10 hertz, it’s going to be 10 degrees. But if I’m at 40, 50 hertz, it’s going to be 60 degrees. I could be out of bounds as easily as I could be in the middle of the fairway.
Like you said earlier yourself, Josh, like during a round of golf, or for that matter, during one single day in your life as a human being, your weight doesn’t change. Your height doesn’t change. Your knowledge doesn’t change. Your skill doesn’t change. What changes? Well, really about three times every second, your brain is changing. And remember in golf, it’s almost like the 18 stadiums, the 18 arenas, right? Even though it’s one round of golf. It’s not like basketball where you’re on one court or football or soccer or baseball. You, we are going from one hole to another where the entire visual input is different. I mean, if I’m playing defense on basketball and the next go around, I’m playing offense. I’m still on the same court. Right. So, and I’m reacting in golf. I’m not reacting. No one’s moving where I have to move with them.
Josh Nichols
Right, it’s proactive, not reactive, right.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Yeah. So it’s very still. And that means that the awareness of where your thoughts are much higher. If I’m playing basketball and I’m playing defense and the guy that I’m guarding suddenly goes right. Like I don’t, in my mind, I don’t say, he went right. Let me turn my body. Let me go follow him. I just naturally do it because I’m usually using that sensory input. My eyes are getting my body kind of like the snake to quickly move so that I keep guarding him. But in golf, nothing is moving. So that means that your thoughts are much more dominant. They play a much higher role. That’s why when people say golf is the ultimate mental game, they all are. Competitive sports is very mental. But golf in particular is very, very, very mental.
You know, I played in a member guess recently and the guy that we were playing with was a two handicap. And I was playing to a six. And the first hole, my partner made like a 40 foot birdie putt. And we won the hole. On the next putt, I chipped in. Now, as you know, a 40 foot birdie putt and a chip in are both luck. You know, like, I mean, we were trying to get it close. We weren’t trying to make it, but I mean, they went two down out of the gates. And he played good golf. He hit every fairway. We were all over the place. And I could see him on the third hole just like spike. I could see moving faster and suddenly his swing got faster. And I saw this two handicap guy not hit a single fairway the rest of the seven holes. Now you cannot tell me that that’s a skill issue. That means he served so high because he was, I think they were in shock that we were playing so badly the first two holes, but we won them. Now that’s the nature of match play, right?
So, but my point is that golf, golf, golf can do that to you and we can do that to ourselves. Again, I’ll say this and I apologize for the fifth time, the quality of the thoughts that you’re having in those last 10 seconds is the test. That’s what we need to master.
Josh Nichols
So if it really just comes down to what are you thinking in those last ten seconds and quantity and what the actual thought is, both of those are the culprit. What do we, well I don’t wanna get to okay, then what do we do, but what about, I don’t know, would you say, I know you said the brain doesn’t do random. Right. It’s not literally coming from somewhere outside of you. It’s originated within your brain, but what do we do when within those ten seconds we’re flooded with a high quantity of not super great thoughts. If they weren’t our choice, what can we do? I guess my actual question is, yeah, is our goal to reduce the quantity of thoughts? Like is that truly our goal? Is I need to have as few thoughts as possible?
Dr. Izzy Justice
I don’t know that I would frame it that way. I think you’re generally on the right track. I think the goal is to have the right thoughts. So, and sometimes that might be one thought, that might be two thoughts. So, I’ll give you and your audience something fun to go do. Okay? And I actually have had tour players do this. So, go player, even nine holes. Just go play nine holes, but it has to be by yourself.
Go play nine holes by yourself. All of the listeners, if you’re listening, do this drill. It’ll really help you. Go play nine holes by yourself. And every single time after you’ve hit a shot, that that shot is perfect. So it has to be after. So a perfect shot, by definition, is what you wanted to do and what the final result is identical. That’s a perfect shot. Okay, now I don’t know how many you’ll have. Like you might have three, you might have six. I mean, I had a guy that had about eight or nine, but it’ll be somewhere around there. Okay. You know, I think 15 is probably the max, you know, but it doesn’t matter. And you are never going to know before you hit the shot because obviously your intention of every shot is to hit it perfect. But you’ll only know after, after you have hit it. He was like, ooh, that was pureed. That came out exactly the way that I wanted to. After you’ve hit that shot, quickly write down on your scorecard on a piece of paper what you were thinking in the last 10 seconds.
Now, I’ve done this. I’ve done this dozens of times and people have sent me, my clients have sent me what they were thinking. Do you want to guess what those thoughts were?
Josh Nichols
I it was very, it was a small amount and it was very focused sort of, yeah.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Give me an example. Guess. Just guess. Just for fun.
Josh Nichols
That’s where I want it, I want it to go there. Right? Yeah.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Yes. Yes. The number of times that the word there that people wrote down like there. Sometimes it was feel the fade or feel the draw over that stuff. So it’s not hard to figure out what the thoughts are. Then I have people take that inventory, write them down on an index card and put it in their yardage book and say, after every shot, these are the types of thoughts that you need to be having.
Now for a good player, it’s different. Like one of my good players, a tour player, you know, he says, feel the fade. He doesn’t, that’s his only thought. And sometimes he’ll say, feel the fade off that, off that tree or the cloud or whatever it may be, or feel the draw. So everyone has a unique language because everyone’s language is different and their skill level is different. But everyone has hit a good shot. Right? And so that is one of the best ways for people to understand what are the kinds of thoughts they need to have on that 10 seconds.
And if you are having negative thoughts, which does not make you flawed, it does not make you a bad person if you’re over the ball and you’re saying, don’t hit this out of bounds. That just makes you human. Well, you know, look at that card or remember, there. So I call it acknowledge and replace. Acknowledge that negative thought and replace it with your thought.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. So it is as, it’s as simple as, or is it as simple as, okay, during these ten seconds, it’s almost like hit it there, hit it there, hit it there, and you’re just kind of trying to block out any, you know, invasive, intrusive thoughts that are trying to slip their way in, but you’re trying to fill the chamber, is it like that? I’m overcomplicating it.
Dr. Izzy Justice
No, I would… This should not be… Yeah, yeah, I… When you’re over the ball, if the thought of there is already there, then you don’t have to do anything. You know? So I think every shot is different. The consequence of every shot is different. You know? So I would just say, just keep inventory. And you know, I always tell people that you may not control the thoughts you’re having, but you can always control the last thought.
You control the thought that you have in your head before you start that back swing or that backstroke. That is 100 % within your control. The thoughts before that you may not control. But that last thought you can say, okay, there and then you can start.
Josh Nichols
Yeah, that’s very practical to say, okay, here’s your job on every golf shot is before you, maybe before you step into the ball, your final feel the fade or hit it at that leaf or whatever it is. Mine lately, and I wonder what you think about this, is mine lately has been go down swinging. So it’s a reminder to swing more freely, to not, the opposite would be swing guidy, swing scared, right, try not to do something.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Yeah. That’s why I’m saying it is very dangerous for me or anyone like me to tell you what those thoughts need to be. That’s why you should go do that. Go play those nine holes and come up with what and it may change like next week. It might be something else or a month later might be something else. But this to me is good practice. You know, is again, don’t do this on the range. Do it on the course. But whatever the thoughts are that allow you to hit a good shot, those are the ones you want to have. And for you, it’ll be different. For a 20-handicapper, it’ll be different. For a tool player, it’ll be different. For a client of mine that I know extremely well, that I talk to every day, multiple times a week, I mean, it’s going to be different. So I don’t think I should be telling people what they need to be because it might be different. But they know.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. And there’s general buckets of thinking that tend to be better. It’s kind of pursuit oriented as opposed to avoidant. It’s could be external but it’s like an action to do, right? It’s not something to not do, usually, right? Yeah.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Correct. Yes, always. Always, yeah. And look, it might be different per shot. For your driver, it might be something. For an iron, it might be something. For a chip, it might be something. For a bunker player, it might be something. For a putt, it might be something. But whatever they are, I think this to me is a very valuable… If I had a magic wand, I would make every golfer of every level go do this at least once a month, if not twice. Build that vocabulary of what those last thoughts are that have worked for you. And again, it only applies to perfect shots, not almost perfect shots.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. You gave, I forget which one of your books this was. It might have been your most recent one, Life Explained. There’s a trash bag in the stream analogy, which I really liked. But the, if I can butcher it, it would be you’re sitting on your back porch, you’re looking out you’re at a river and it’s peaceful and you’re having your drink of choice and it’s just a blissful experience and then out of nowhere some randomly a trash bag comes washing down the stream and stops at your shoreline and now there’s a trash bag there, right? So yeah. So the idea is you can remove the trash bag and show up and do it every day. Or you can go upstream and figure out what’s going on here. I need to stop the supply of trash bags. So when we talk about this last ten seconds or pursuit oriented thought or the final thought before you pull the trigger, whatever, is that a trash bag on your shoreline exercise or is that an upstream source of the trash bags? It is, okay.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Upstream source. Absolutely. Yeah. Look, that analogy metaphor. I’m basically saying that. You know, every single day, no matter what we’re doing, whether we’re playing golf, whether we’re in a relationship, whether we’re being a parent at work, whatever it is, you know, there are problems and challenges and we forget that, you know, upstream where everything starts is really your brain. It’s your brain that dictates everything. And it’s very labor intensive and cognitively expensive to pick up that bag of trash, i.e. solve problems every day. If you learn how to use your brain, it doesn’t make problems go away. It makes your ability to solve them infinitely easier. So the quality of your thoughts over the ball, if you’re managing them throughout your round, become easier.
You know, it’s not a, you know, people always say, like there’s some switch that you turn on when you go play golf. And some people have actually said that to me, when I go play golf, just forget about everything. And I’m telling you, that’s not possible. You made people do it one round or maybe two, but the brain doesn’t work that way. I mean, the brain was three and a half pounds. It’s the size. I mean, it’s nothing. Everything is there. It’s so small. Like there’s no, I mean, there aren’t hundreds of rooms where you can say, this part of my life is over here. That part of my life is over there. This part of my life is over here. It’s all together. That’s how the brain works. That’s how we make sense of things. That’s how we give context to a situation, which is everything. So like I said, don’t think of your brain as the 15th club. Think of your brain as what controls all of those 14 clubs.
Josh Nichols
Right. Yeah. Yeah, your other book, Your Brain Swings Every Club. And you said earlier your brain is the club. All of the information, every golf swing is downstream of the brain. So
Dr. Izzy Justice
Correct. Every shot that you have is based on the quality of the thoughts that you have. And that’s why I remember I’m old. I don’t know. You look a lot younger than me, but I remember back in the 80s and 90s, they used to say it was a very common thing in golf was, you want to build a golf swing that can withstand pressure. And I always thought that that was fundamentally flawed. Why did you just fix pressure?
Like, I mean, changing a golf swing, that’s a motor sequencing that you’re changing. That’s a lot. Why not just teach someone how to deal with pressure so you don’t have to change the golf swing? I thought it was a very ass backward way of saying on Sunday afternoon, you know, but it’s that way in every sport. I work with basketball players and they’ll tell you that the fourth quarter is a different game of basketball than the first three quarters. I work with NASCAR drivers here in Charlotte and they’ll tell you the last 50 laps is a different race than the first 250 laps. I work in tennis and they’ll play as a time in the fifth set is a completely different game of tennis than the first four sets. So, but that’s when inherent in the nature of it, the thoughts go up because you know, it’s about to end. The result is going to be final.
Josh Nichols
Yes. The story gets stronger.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Yes, the quantity and intensity goes higher. So why not deal with that? And so whether you’re a 20 handicapper, 15 handicapper, you know, if you’re playing well and you’re about to break whatever your best round and you know it around hole 15, all right, then your thoughts go up. There are thousands and thousands of stories of that kind, but what changed in the first 15 holes versus the last three?
Even Greg Norman, when he lost at the Masters, years later he confessed, he said, I couldn’t feel my hands. How is that possible? The only way that you cannot feel your hands is if the thoughts in your head and the quantity are so high that the input from your hand has no competition. So sensory input is always a slave to thoughts, because sensory input is very low frequency. Because you’re just feeling something now, whereas your thoughts, they have a story, they have a drama, they have consequences, they have other stuff going on. Sensory input versus thoughts is like a knife to a gunfight. It will always lose, unfortunately. I wish it wasn’t that way. But it is that way because, again, of the electricity, those thoughts are much higher charged. Their polarity, as we call it, is much higher.
Josh Nichols
So your job is then on the one hand it’s kind of, and I think about this a lot. There’s kind of, there’s like a macro big picture change to make and then there’s the micro in round kind of tools to use. So the one we’re describing sounds to me more like it’s a micro in action tool to use, but then there’s the macro’s kind of story. What does this, you know, the final set of the Wimbledon final championship match, why does, you know, you need to change how you view why you see that as so important and you know the back nine on Sunday of the Masters, it’s got all this story. So in order to have a generally lower frequency in your brain is to maybe change the way that story is landing on your brain.
Dr. Izzy Justice
No, no, I think I think you are complicating things and I think that’s way too hard. I think, yeah, I again, I mean that in a collaborative way. I don’t mean that in any negative way, but look, in my last book, which is called Life Explained, my last chapter of my last book is called Occam’s Razor.
Josh Nichols
Me complicating? No, I wouldn’t do that. No. Yes.
Dr. Izzy Justice
I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but I used that as a title of chapter 10 because basically it says, or he said that because life’s challenges are complex, we inherently believe that the solutions must be equally complex. Well, in reality, that’s not true. And in most cases, the solutions are quite simple.
I think the game of golf is already complex. I think the easiest ask of self is to say, I need to be perfect for 12 minutes out of five hours. That’s a reasonable ask of self. I mean, we can do that. And even in those 12 minutes, it’s not even 12 minutes, really, because 12 minutes includes your pre-shot routine. It’s actually less than that because a golf swing is what, three seconds, four seconds? So it’s really just those five seconds before a shot or 10 seconds before a shot. And you say, okay, I’m over the ball now. You know. Am I seeing the target or am I thinking about the last hole?
And then do you have the discipline to not start that backswing when your thoughts are not about the target and what you want to do with the ball? Like, it’s that simple. I think anything more complicated than that is too complex.
Josh Nichols
Hmm. Yeah. So like, you know, let’s just think maybe step outside of golf slightly, but you know, the idea of kind of traditional talk therapy or something where you’re kinda you’re addressing your past, you know, childhood traumas and story and things like that where the things that just have totally changed and affected the way that you go about your daily life, the way that you interpret people’s nonverbal communication, whatever. And I know you’re not saying therapy is a hoax and I, you’re not saying that, but is it as, could someone, do you think it’s as simple as someone, no matter what someone has been through, no matter what their past or their story says, it’s as simple as choosing to think different in this moment?
Dr. Izzy Justice
Yes, yes, 100 million percent yes. Absolutely. I have the kind of trauma that I wouldn’t wish on my enemy. I do. I was abused by my father from the day that I was born. I was beaten by my brothers. I grew up in a racist country. I’m a brown man, as you can see clearly. I came to America with $17 in my pocket, alone, in 1986. Like, if you want trauma, I can give you my list. Right. But at the end of the day, I, and not that I’m a special human being, I’m not. I’m as flawed as any other human being. I go to the bathroom like anybody else, but I pick the moments where I got to be my best version. I don’t try to be my best version all day long. My average is good enough for average moments.
Now, for example, this podcast is important to me. Right? So the 30 minutes or so before this podcast, I went and I did meditation and I prepared myself and I said, let me get my brain waves down. Let me get towards 10 Hertz. And I made sure that I was prepared for this moment. Now later on, I’m going to have dinner with my son who is going off to college in next week. I’m not going to see him all fall. So guess what? That’s game time for me. That’s as important as me being over a putt trying to save par. So before that, I’m going to do the same thing.
That to me is an easier ask of self. Right. My trauma is not going anywhere. And I was a slave to it for too many decades. I mean, it took me decades to say. And, you know, I look, I think there’s a time and a place for therapy and psychotherapy and medication and those kinds of things. And if you are a harm to yourself and if you’re harm to others and if you cannot function in life, then yes. Those and others are wonderful interventions to have. I’ve partaked of them all.
But this idea that I have to be perfect to do perfect things is deeply flawed. Our average is good enough for average. When I’m driving, I don’t have to be perfect. When I’m taking a shower, I don’t have to be perfect. When I’m cleaning my house, I don’t have to be perfect. Like I don’t. When I go to the grocery store, I don’t have to be perfect. So I think we’ve got to let go of this illusion.
And in my own personal life, since I’m telling you everything, I might as well keep going. Like, I’m at a point in my life now, I’m almost 60 years old, where I own the least amount of things than probably in my early 20s. From age 25 till about age 50, I accumulated things. And I have nothing but regret. I wish I could go back and slap the heck out of myself. Why did I need two watches? Why did I need a bigger car? Why did I need 20 shoes? I didn’t. I didn’t. So one of the biggest shocks of my life is that if you know how to use your brain, you almost need nothing. Nothing to have a rich human experience.
If you don’t use your brain, because if you get your, if you do your best in the moments that matter, that’s happiness. Whatever moments that matter, like this moment matters to me. Dinner with my son tonight matters to me. If in these two moments I can say afterwards, you know what, my best version showed up. That’s a good day. I sleep well. I have a kick in my step tomorrow. Let’s go.
So I don’t try to be perfect all day long. I had a doctor’s appointment this morning. I had to go into town. There was big traffic there. I was average. It’s fine. I was, I mean, I didn’t try to impress the doctor or the nurse. You know, I don’t need to know who I am. I’m just average Joe Schmo and I’m fine. I found a parking spot that was average. I didn’t find one right next to the door. Like, fine. I’m saving myself for the moments that matter. And in order to do that, I literally, look, I need food, I need water, I need shelter. But beyond that, you know, I wish I could convince people in general, not just golfers, that you need literally almost nothing to have an amazing life experience.
And in golf, you know, I played with a guy who was a scratch golfer, a wonderful man. His irons are from like 2003. But he eats them great. You know what I mean?
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The best players I know are, they’ve got the weirdest bag setups and old, yeah, hacked together. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Yeah. Who cares? You know, and they’re not buying new foot joys every year. They’re whatever the case may be. Now, look, I’m not saying this as a judgment. I’m not judging people that do that. I’m not saying, if you go buy new shoes and new clubs every year, you’re a bad person. That’s not what I’m saying. More power to you. I’m saying that in order for you to be the best version of yourself, don’t be under the guise, under the falsehood that you have to have a lot of money or a lot of things.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. I think of, you know, Victor Frankel, right, in the Holocaust, right? Where it’s the idea of you can’t control what happens to you, but you can control the attitude or meaning you give to what happens, right? It’s right. So at any given point you can say I’m alive. I am here. How do I want to be right now? Right. I can, no matter what my past has been, golf specifically, no matter how many bad putts I’ve hit, no matter how many bad chips, approach shots, drives, how many rounds I’ve blown, how many great rounds I’ve had, whatever, no matter who’s there.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Sure, meaning of life. Marcus Aurelius also. I don’t even think it needs to be that complex. I don’t even think you need to think that. I just think that you need to think when today do I need to be the best version of myself? And that moment, I’m going to monitor my thoughts. That’s it. Why think about what happened yesterday or, you know, the meaning of life or be a stoic or a philosopher or psychologist or neuroscientist. And the moments that you need to be your best, like I said, for me, I mean, it’s dinner tonight. It’s two thirty here. I mean, it’s in about two and a half hours. I want to perform. I’m doing this as well and have as much discipline. Now, I want it to be organic, obviously, you know, I don’t have like a cheat sheet of what I’m going to say and do kind of thing. But, you know, look, we are making the game of golf and life way too complex. It’s not that hard. You need very little to be happy. Pick the times that you need to be your best and just get those thoughts to be much more sensory oriented.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Okay. Dr. Izzy Justice, this is awesome. I love the way you think about things. You’ve set me straight today in a, as you said, collaborative way. You’re great. You’re great for the game of golf. It is super cool. So you’ve written a ton of books and produced a ton of content. Where should people go to keep up with what you do? Where do you want to send people?
Dr. Izzy Justice
Thank you. So drizzy.com is my website. My social media handles are all there. I’m on Instagram and Twitter and I don’t manage that. Somebody else does. It is me, but somebody else is doing it for me because I’m too old and lazy. But my last two books were both best sellers. I’ve written 10 books. One of them was in golf. The brain swings every club. And I love that book. It’s my favorite book because I mean that title. The brain does swing every club. And then my 10th book that just came out, which also was the bestseller is called Life Explained. And that’s sort of non-golf. That’s just about life in general.
And I talk about all of these things and I have done, I think I’ve done more functional, functional, not clinical brain scans than anyone. Over 22,000 and counting. So I’ve looked into the brains of people in those 10, 30, 40 seconds before they wanted to do something amazing, anything. I know what the brain looks like when they do do something amazing versus when they don’t. And I’ve taken all of that data over the last, let’s see, 11 years now, 12 years now, and my job as a nerd is to take complex information and simplify it.
You know, I think a sign of brilliance and intelligence is not the complexity with which you understand something. It’s a simplicity with which you can explain it. And so it took me a long time to write these two books because I worked hard literally over every sentence to say like, this needs to be interpreted one way and it’s got to be the most simplistic way. Like I want a, you know, a 12 year old to read this and a 92 year old to read this and get the same meaning. So those two books, if your audience is interested, are one for golf and one outside of golf are really good reads and it’s a labor of love, obviously. But thank you, Josh, for having me on your show. I really appreciate it.
Josh Nichols
Yeah. Yeah. My audience is certainly and I’m prone to do this too. We want to take in all the information and overcomplicate things as because we think more information equals better, but almost never does it, right? So your mission to simplify things down to its core, here’s what you need to be doing when things matter the most. Here’s how to do your best when it matters most. That’s, I love your mission.
Dr. Izzy Justice
Thank you.
