High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 409: The PAR Approach for Optimum Performance with Dr. Joe Parent, Mental Game Expert and International Bestselling Author of Zen Golf

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, my name is Cindra Campoff and I'm a small-town Minnesota gal, Minnesota nice as we like to say it, who followed her big dreams. I spent the last four years working as a mental coach for the Minnesota Vikings, working one-on-one with the players. I wrote a best-selling book about the mindset of the world's best and I'm a keynote speaker and national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. And I am obsessed with showing you exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your goals and dreams. So I'm over here following my big dreams and I'm here to inspire you and practically show you how to do the same. And you know, when I'm not working, you'll find me playing Ms. Pac-Man.

Starting point is 00:00:45 Yes, the 1980s game Ms. Pac-Man. So take your notepad out, buckle up, and let's go. This is the high performance mindset. John Kabat-Zinn said, the little things, the little moments, they aren't little. Winnie the Pooh said, the things that make me different are the things that make me me. And Dr. Joseph Parent, who we have on the podcast today, said, you can't know for certain if it's a bad round until the round's over. Let go of the poor result you had on the last hole

Starting point is 00:01:19 and you'll have a better chance of enjoying the hole you're playing now. This is Dr. Cinder Kampoff and thank you so much for joining me here today on episode 409 with Dr. Joe Parent. If you know that your mindset is essential to your success, then you are in the right place. And today I'm grateful that you're here. We have Dr. Joe on the podcast and I read his book Zen Golf several years ago and I loved it and I'm so excited for him to be on the podcast today. I know you will learn a lot from this episode and gain some wisdom and for those of you who don't know I'm a keynote speaker and mental performance coach

Starting point is 00:01:57 where I work with organizations, teams, and businesses as well as one-on-one with clients. So if you are looking for someone to help you level up in 2021 or be your best more often, just reach out to me at cindra at cindracampoff.com. That's my email address there. And the offer is always there. Today's guest is Dr. Joe Parent, who's an expert in performance psychology and applied mindfulness, working with athletes, actors, artists, and executives. His books have sold more than 1 million copies. In the field of athletic performance, for example, he has the singular distinction of coaching both a man, Vijay Singh, and a woman, Christy Kerr, to number one in the world golf rankings. Golf Digest magazine honored Dr. Parent in their list of the top mental game experts in the world golf rankings. Golf Digest magazine honored Dr. Parent in their list of the top mental game experts in the world. His international bestseller Zen Golf, Mastermind the Mental Game,

Starting point is 00:02:53 introduced mindfulness as the foundation for excellence in golf and has sold more than half million copies. Reviews call it highly original and exciting, a book that has become a classic. Other popular books authored by Dr. Parent include Zen Golf, How to Make Every Putt, Zen Tennis, The Best Diet Book Ever, and his latest, A Walk in the Wood, Meditations on Mindfulness with a Bear Name Who. In this episode, Dr. Joe and I talk about his PAR system of continuous improvement, what he sees the best in the world doing and how we can replicate that, how mindfulness is a state of being and a practice, how your mind can be like a time machine and what to do about it, his ninja system of behavior change, and why you need to give up control to get control. Now you can find the

Starting point is 00:03:47 full show notes over at cindracampoff.com slash 409 for episode 409. And I'm very excited to share this one with you. Make sure you share it with someone who needs to hear this today. You can copy and paste the link wherever you're listening, text it to a couple of friends. You could post it on social media and tag myself and Dr. Joe. And if this is the first time that you are here on the podcast, please hit subscribe so you don't miss any episodes in the future. And without further ado, here's my conversation with Joe Parent. Dr. Joe, thank you so much for joining me here on the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I can't wait to talk to you.

Starting point is 00:04:31 There's so much that we're going to cover in this interview, and I'm just grateful to spend time with you and to learn more about your principles. One of the books I read many years ago was Zen Golf, and I'm really looking forward to talking to you about this as well as your other great books that you have. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be on here with you and to meet you face to face, if not in person. Yes, exactly. It feels close to in person. So, Dr. Joe, just get us started and tell us a little bit about what you're most passionate about. Number one, you know, I got started in college. I was always a science and math whiz in high school, and I went to Cornell in the School of Engineering. But something happened while I was there there and I decided I wanted to focus

Starting point is 00:05:27 on what was most important to me. And I realized that it was less important to me to invent a cleaner running engine to reduce air pollution, but better to help people have cleaner running minds to reduce mental pollution. I like it. So working with my own state of mind and others. So I transferred into psychology. And I knew I didn't want to go to abnormal or clinical psychology and become a therapist. I felt like ordinary people have enough stuff going on. So I majored in social psychology. That was my focus. Not long after that, I got involved and interested in Eastern wisdom traditions. Okay. Particularly Buddhism.

Starting point is 00:06:19 Yeah. I met a couple of my main Buddhist teachers and was introduced 50 years ago. So, you know, before it became currently involved to mindfulness practice, mindfulness and awareness practice. That's what has been the base, the basis of everything that I've done. So initially it was working with mindfulness and awareness practice for presence and self-discovery. Okay. Also for stress management. The, the golf connection came. Okay.

Starting point is 00:07:01 When I was teaching a program and a young golf pro came to attend it to learn about mindfulness and i said you're a golf pro this is cool let's go out on the golf course because i'd played since i was a teenager but but wasn't that good um and we get on the course and he says okay tell me what my mind is doing on the golf course and i said i got a deal for you i'll tell you what your mind is doing on the golf course if you tell me what my body is doing on the golf course. And I said, I got a deal for you. I'll tell you what your mind is doing on the golf course. If you tell me what my body is doing on the golf course. He gave me some instruction. I helped him understand the mental game. And that led to him inviting me to do clinics with him. And that was really the stepping stone to my getting into sport psychology. I'd already been working with individuals and with businesses consulting on communication skills and leadership and stress management and handling the challenges of change.

Starting point is 00:08:01 And working with habit change based on mindfulness principles but then to to take this out of the out of the office and onto the golf course that was fabulous so so that has been my passion for the last 30 years and started working with pros for the first time about a little less than 25 years ago. Not long after I started, one pro led to a higher level pro led to a tour pro. And then in 2002, just shortly after Zen Golf came out, I started working with Vijay Singh and helped him get to number one in the world in the middle of Tiger's reign. He was the only one who broke through in a solid eight-year period when Tiger was number one in the world. A few years later, Christy Kerr got in touch with me, and I was very gratified to help her get to number one in the world as well. So it's been a privilege to work with great athletes in that way. Now my sister has been

Starting point is 00:09:15 writing and editing children's books for Disney for over 20 years. And a woman editor at Disney had read about a Japanese practice of getting back to nature. And she said, and it involved mindfulness. So she contacted my sister and said, I know your brother teaches mindfulness. Would the two of you like to write a book together? Because getting back to nature, the perfect character for that is, does a bear live in the woods? Yes. Winnie the Pooh. Oh, wonderful. That lives in the woods in the hundred acre wood. So she had this title in mind and my sister and I wrote this book called A Walk in the Wood, Meditations on Mindfulness with a Bear Named Pooh. Now, my wife, who I met through my sister, is a graphic designer for Disney, and she is the designer for the book.

Starting point is 00:10:15 So she did the art and the interior design and did a beautiful job. Now, this book is kind of my baby because it's my latest book and it's for everyone. It's for kids, I like to say, from four to 104 because who doesn't like Winnie the Pooh? And it's really for families because there are stories of Winnie the Pooh. And then between the stories are adult language instructions in meditation, mindfulness, kindness, gratitude, compassion, forgiveness, patience, all these different virtues that are family values. So this is really a book for parents to read to their kids. And then as the kids get older for the kids to read to their parents and actually do the practices together

Starting point is 00:11:12 at whatever age is appropriate. So, so that's, that's kind of my baby. And, and it is all about mindfulness and kindness. And don't we need more mindfulness and kindness in the world today? Yeah, for sure in the world today. And I'm also thinking, you know, I have two boys and even having it more in my own family would help us a lot. And I know help them continue to thrive. So what a gift. And I can see that why it's your baby. If it's, you know, people that you love, you get to contribute with them. That's really wonderful. So the book is Walk in the Wood, Meditations on Mindfulness with a Bear Named Pooh. So I'm also thinking, Dr. Jo, what you said about like your work just grew in golf.

Starting point is 00:11:58 That's because you were doing good work, right? And it's like, if you weren't doing good work, it wouldn't have spread to some of these people that you helped contribute to their success. So tell us a little bit about, since your practice is mindfulness based, and I think a lot of the listeners know what mindfulness is and might even practice it. But tell us what that means from your perspective and how you might help people use it in their life and in their work and in their sport. Yes, and I think you'd be surprised that there is a mix and a lot of people who really don't, haven't heard or don't know what it is.

Starting point is 00:12:42 But mindfulness, if you think about just the word, first mind, so it's working with your mind, full, your mind full. Now, usually the word mindful the meaning would be paying attention. And that is exactly what mindfulness is, it's paying attention. But more than that, we can use mindful in another word, and that is your mind is full of your experience the past or the future with regrets about the past and hopes and fears for the future and it fills our minds with all sorts of unnecessary anxiety but this practice is

Starting point is 00:13:37 to shift your attention and be mindful or pay attention to what you're experiencing in the present moment in a continuous stream moment to moment to moment for as long as that lasts yes so mindfulness is both a state of being and a practice so the state of mindfulness is presence. The practice of mindfulness is noticing when you're someplace else, that your mind has wandered and gone to the past or the future. And I try to explain that your body is always in the present. Its location in space is here. Its location in time is now. Your body is always in the here and now. But your mind is a time machine. Yes. is now your body is always in the here and now but your mind is a time machine yes it can go to spend a lot of time in the past and future for our peak performance and this is the performance podcast yes for the peak performance your mind and body need to be synchronized same place at

Starting point is 00:14:41 the same time focusing on the same things so the only place you can do that is the here and now, because that's the only place your body can be. Training is very, very simple, easy, as my teacher said, easy to do, hard to accomplish. And the easy to do part is just noticing, waking up. There's a moment when we all wake up from a daydream. Otherwise, we'd go off in one and never come back. But waking up from the daydream in that moment, we make a choice. Do we continue on in it? Do we go into a different daydream? Or do we

Starting point is 00:15:19 come back to what we were doing? Because the interesting thing for me is the ancient Indian language from 2,500 years ago, the word to describe mindfulness is sati. And it means remembering what you are doing. Oh, perfect. We all have that experience that we headed for the kitchen. We got a little distracted. Yeah. And then we finished with that, went to

Starting point is 00:15:45 the kitchen and we came in and we go, okay, why did I come in here? That just happened to me this morning, Joe. I don't remember what I was doing. That's a lack of mindfulness. So remembering what you're doing is this capacity to keep track and pay attention. The keeping track is the awareness. The paying attention is the mindfulness. So mindful awareness is paying attention and noticing when you've wandered and coming back to that object of attention. Yeah. So that, in a nutshell, is the practice of mindfulness.

Starting point is 00:16:23 Now, the best anchor for that is not just your your body the physical body but the process of breathing because breathing also relaxes you as you know as a sports psychologist when you inhale that energizes when you exhale it see it it activates the uh relaxation part of our system. So nice, full, deep exhalations tend to settle us and relax us because when we're under stress, our energy moves up in our body and faster. We use our breathing to counter that by slowing everything down and moving our energy down, like out of our head and into our body. And that's what people in sports performance and in business performance, and moving our energy down, like out of our head and into our body.

Starting point is 00:17:05 Yeah, good. And that's why people in sports performance and in business performance, they overthink things. They get in their head and they lose connection with their body. Yeah. And that's when performance suffers. Yeah. Oh, I could ask you so many follow-up questions to what you just said. I think, Dr. Joe, like what's. I want to point out is what you said. It's like a skill and a practice. So it's something that you develop. That's makes me think of a skill,

Starting point is 00:17:34 but then it's the practice of being mindful. One other thing, people get confused and here's good news for you. People think, well, distraction is my default mode. I have to find this mindfulness. I have to find this ability to stay present. It's not something that you have to find. It is our natural state of being. Our natural state of being is that our mind and our body are simply here. What happens is distractions overlay that with confusion and take us away. But that's why, because it's our natural state of being, that's why we wake up from a daydream. There's a gap in the thought process. And where do we find ourselves?

Starting point is 00:18:23 Awake. Sure. And we find ourselves not someplace else, but in the present moment. So that's the default state. You don't have to figure out how to be present. You already are. The skill is the training yourself to return to that, to have that intention that I won't just stay in distraction. When I wake from it, I won't go back into the daydream. I'll return to what I'm experiencing in the present. And that's the practice. Excellent. So a couple of questions I have to follow up that is, you know, when you think about goals and goal setting, and I'm thinking about even some of the

Starting point is 00:19:07 best in the world, right? They have some goals and what they'd like to do. Where do you think that fits in with mindfulness? Because, you know, that's maybe thinking about the future. So what are your thoughts about where does that come into the practice of mindfulness? That's a great question. And I want to start by quoting one of my Buddhist teachers who came over from Tibet in 1970 and started teaching in America. And he said, you have your vision and then you adjust. So goals are visions. We need to have a vision. Otherwise, we don't have direction. Okay.

Starting point is 00:19:58 And it said that vision or wisdom and skills are like two wings of a bird. If you have the skills, but you don't have a vision of how you're going to apply them and where you want to and and what you want to accomplish with them they don't help you if you have the vision of what you want to accomplish but you don't have the skills you won't get it done so you have you have to have both together now the the idea of vision is gold is that's your goal and goals are something that aren't necessarily objective or measurable okay objectives are measurable so they are the stepping stones in the direction of your goals and your vision now you can consider a goal being number one in the world sure in a particular that's your goal but you can't go from number 180 to number and one tomorrow you need to have the stepping stones so that that's the vision now what's the difference between getting ahead of yourself yeah and fantasizing about being number one yes staying in the present okay if you you can have a vision and I remember Gary Player visualizing himself holding the trophy at the end of the, of a major tournament, and he saw himself, and he said, Okay, everything I do.

Starting point is 00:21:18 I want to be in the direction of fulfilling that vision. But he didn't just play golf spending the whole time imagining himself hold the tro holding a trophy no that as his inspiration and then yes yeah did the stepping stone so so your your vision for the future and your planning you have to be able to plan but you have to know the difference between I'm in the present and aware of my circumstances in the present and what I can do as next steps. That's a very important phrase, next steps, and know that what I'm doing in the present is planning for the future. But I also know that these plans for the future are subject to change because the future is unpredictable. So I have my vision.

Starting point is 00:22:09 I'm ready to adapt and adjust. And I have my next steps toward that vision. And then after you do the next steps, you pause, re-evaluate, maybe adjust your vision if you need to, and then start again. In Japan, it's called Kaizen or the path of continuous improvement. And I brought that out in Zen Golf as the PAR approach or PAR system, preparation, action, response to results. You prepare. If it's a business presentation or if it's around a golf, you do your preparation or a golf shot. You do your preparation. You visualize what you want to accomplish. You feel and check off the boxes of what you need to do to accomplish that. Then you go to the action part so that's preparation then action is can you act

Starting point is 00:23:06 with minimum self-interference can you get out of your own way and perform to the best of your abilities through commitment and freedom and trust and then the last part is how did it go and that's response to results. So P and R. And the response to results is you reinforce your successes and you learn from your mistakes and adjust your preparation for the next time so you have a cycle of continuous improvement. Your response to results lets you prepare better, act more effectively, and get better results, and then continue to reinforce that. Yeah, excellent, Joe. I was thinking a lot about when you were talking about vision and goals, similar to how I see

Starting point is 00:23:56 it. I think goals should be your motivation and to keep you going and kind of what you said, inspiration. But sometimes people think about the goals at the wrong time, like when they're playing golf or when they're competing or in the middle of a presentation, you know, where that's not the right time to be thinking in the future, right? It's really about high performance,

Starting point is 00:24:18 peak performance is staying focused on the here and now. I have a question about, you know, since you've worked with some of the best, you know, since you've worked with some of the best, you know, number ones in the world, what do you see them do differently? And maybe give us a little insight on like what got them there, if it's like Vijay Singh or Christy Kerr, for example. I'll tell you the theme that runs through for all great players like that, and my personal experience with the two of them. One is passion.

Starting point is 00:24:54 Loving the game. Yeah. Wanting to be the best and willing to put in the work to be the best. And then the second is discipline yeah the quality of the routine and the willingness to commit to it and that level of commitment and and trusting their own skills that's the third part trusting their own abilities. That's the third part, trusting their own abilities. Yeah. Okay, so I watched Christie play and in the LPGA championship. Her routine was the most consistent you could possibly imagine, even after on the last hole, she had an 11 shot lead. And still did her routine to a tee,

Starting point is 00:25:51 birdied the last hole and broke the record for margin of victory in the LPGA championship. And we assessed her tournament and for, let's see, about 260 shots or more, there were only six shots in the whole four days that she did not hit with full commitment. Wow. Six out of the 260. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:26:17 Yeah. Okay. About 98%. So that level is what sets records that level of commitment and trust that level of discipline in the routine both pre and post shot and and when i talked with vj about something he said i don't want you to check on me i will do it if i if i feel like this is going to work for me you can be sure I did it. And we talked about a change in his language and what he was looking at and focusing on before shots. And I didn't

Starting point is 00:26:53 check with him. I checked with his caddy. And I said, after about two weeks, I said, how is he doing on that change? He said, 90%. Wow. After two weeks, that's how willing and able to make those changes. And you can see, you can see that in all, all great players. And this is what I wanted to share with you. They aren't satisfied no matter how well they're doing. They always want to excel and see what could I do better. So they're not complacent. If you want to be a champion, you can't be complacent. I think that's so powerful. And also I'm thinking a lot about this doesn't just relate to golf. I mean, it relates to all sports, you know, but really all people at the top of their game or their top of their business,

Starting point is 00:27:50 you know, it's like this constant never ending improvement. But the thing I heard you say there was always excelling in learning. You know, I didn't hear you say like beating themselves up for the mistakes they made, just like this, more of this learning mindset. Joe, we just, we did a study last year where we interviewed elite. So they're all, they're all pro athletes. We interviewed 18 of them about how they developed their grit. And, and actually the way they described grit was exactly what you said, like passion. They always wanted to get better. They were disciplined. They were willing to make sacrifices you know um so i think that that theme is consistent in in your answer which is cool

Starting point is 00:28:30 and language is important because what just what you said beat yourself up i mean i i have a chapter in zen golf uh yeah fire your evil caddy and i I do an exercise with people and say, what if your caddy just before you teed off said, oh, you know, everybody's watching. So try not to screw up and, you know, just get it over with. I mean, what are you waiting for? I'm sure you're going to mess this one up. And I said, how long do you want that guy as your caddy? And everybody answers, they're already fired. I said, okay said okay now how often have you said those things to yourself and the room there's this murmur oh yeah right you carry this evil caddy around with you judging yourself and criticizing yourself and the key is yeah

Starting point is 00:29:20 language i say i don't say what are your strengths and weaknesses say, what are your strengths and weaknesses? I say, what are your strengths and where are there areas with room for improvement? Okay. You reinforce your success, but you don't beat yourself up for your mistakes. You learn from them and use them as an opportunity. And great players have said, I never learned anything from a match that I won. Only learned when I fell short and what I needed to do to excel even more in that situation. So that's what champions do. Well, and there's so many concepts that I got your book right in front of me with all the tabs I wanted to talk about. You can see the things I highlighted.

Starting point is 00:30:04 And I'm just thinking about a few things that I really liked that I think reinforce what you just said is like, you are not your thoughts. You talk about in one of the chapters there. And then you later on, you talk about like how to get good at a bad round of golf

Starting point is 00:30:18 or how to love a bad round of golf. There we go. And I like that idea. I think that really fits with what you're just saying here is like learning even, you know, if it's not going great for you this relates to golf, but maybe it's a bad day of work, or maybe it's your day starts, you know, bad, whatever bad means, right? That sounds like a lot of judgment, but you get out of bed, and you got a headache, and you think your day is going to be terrible, right? Or you have a tough meeting at the beginning of your day. There's so many ways

Starting point is 00:31:00 that we could apply this idea. Well, I have a chapter I'd rather focus on, and that is who knows what's good and what's bad. Yeah. It's an old story where something happens that seems to be bad, and then it turns out, hey, that was good. And then people get told, okay, so that's good. And then that turns out to be bad. And they say, oh, that's bad. And that turns out to be good. And then that turns out to be bad. And they say, oh, that's bad. And that turns out to be good. The example I give is you miss your flight at the airport and you think, oh, that's bad. I'm going to have to do all these things when I get on the other end and I'm going to miss this

Starting point is 00:31:36 appointment. And you're sitting at the bar and commiserating with somebody next to you. And they say, and what is it that you do and you end up meeting somebody that's a connection that gets you a much better situation and the you know and and and a huge contract of business so who knew who knows what turned out what was good and what's bad so how we think things are going to turn out aren't always that way and and if you have that round of golf, you, okay. One of, one of the things that it usually, what usually happens is you go in thinking, I found the secret. Oh, I got this one swing field, this one key, and that's going to, that's going to take me all the way. Or you think, oh, I got this, I made this comment at a presentation and it went it went over really well

Starting point is 00:32:26 and i'm going to use that in my next one and you get out there and it doesn't hold up and yeah and somehow the ball isn't going where you thought it was going to go and you make your presentation you go and and nobody reacts and then you you panic okay, Oh, that's. And so you say, okay, what can I learn from this? Not to take things for granted, to understand that everything's always changing, not to bring something canned and something that you're trying to copy from a past experience to a next one there is the learning opportunity and you can have one bad round of golf that you you you find and you're working and trying to find your key and you find a key that leads to a dozen great rounds after that yeah how bad around was it was it bad or was it did it turn out it was good that that happened to you because look what it led to. Yeah. That's what I enjoyed about reading that chapter was, you know, it's like letting you wrote, letting go of the poor result you had on the last hole and having a, it gives you a better chance of enjoying the hole that you're playing now.

Starting point is 00:33:36 And you said, you can't know for certain if it's a bad round until the round's over, but it's like our judgment just kicks in, right? So it's learning to soften that voice, which I think is really what mindfulness helps you do. Absolutely. And realizing that judging voice. And I remember I listened to one of your podcasts about judging. Yeah. And the question came up, why is it bad to judge? And the reason is because focus so much on the negative, right? You can roll in six, five foot putts in a row and you, you, you, you missed the seventh one, what stands out in the round?

Starting point is 00:34:22 Oh, I can't miss that easy putt. Wait a minute. what about all the other ones that you could take credit for you see we we have this expectation i'm supposed to do things right yeah it goes wrong it's a big deal i want to say you know what why don't you make a big deal of out of how right things go sometimes? That's wonderful. And give yourself some rewards for doing those instead of always beating yourself up and judging. So that's where I came up with the ideal habit change system. Okay, let's talk about that.

Starting point is 00:34:58 And then I want to go back to Zen Golf because I got these tabs in here. I'm going to ask you about it. But let's talk about habit change this is a uh in zen golf and it's the chapter pebbles in the bowl okay it's a habit change system that i trademarked as ninja n-i-n-j-a and it stands for necessary intention and non-judgmental awareness and and i'll make it very simple okay necessary intention you need to want to change you know we we you know we psychologists have a joke about how many psychologists does it take to change the light bulb only one but the light somebody has to be motivated to have the discipline to change their habits.

Starting point is 00:35:50 But the second part is the easy part, nonjudgmental awareness. And that is, if you beat yourself up, you only feed that habit. You fuel it. So instead, we just mindfully keep track how many times i did a habit i'm trying to refrain from okay and how many times i also how many times i did a habit i'm trying to cultivate and so each time you do it and reward yourself for cultivating but or don't judge yourself for for when you did it but know that your intention is to do less of them you will move in the same way that plants turn towards the sun it's your it's a human being's natural tendency to move in the direction of

Starting point is 00:36:39 their intention if they stay out of their own way and And that's where the nonjudgmental awareness comes in. It's simply being mindful of what you're doing while you're doing it and not judging yourself of what you should be doing differently. Okay? Yeah, perfect. I was listening to an interview with BJ Fogg. I don't know if you read his book called Tiny Habits. And he was talking about... I heard the interview too. Yeah. One of the best ways to reinforce your habit is to celebrate what you just said. And he said, like, think about when you're working, watching your favorite sports team. And at the end,

Starting point is 00:37:15 they scored a field goal or, you know, when at the last shot and he asks the people to think about the audience to think about like, how would you celebrate? And I was thinking that I would, I would celebrate like, yes, you know, with a big pump. So I've been trying to do that when I've been thinking about habits too, and just like reinforcing my own habits is celebrating those, which, which you basically, you know,

Starting point is 00:37:37 said along with the nonjudgmental awareness and not beating yourself up. It's, it's amazingly powerful and it works for physical things. It works for speech patterns and it even works for thought patterns. Like sometimes I'll pre-rehearse what I'm going to write in an email the next day. Okay. So so once or twice it's valuable once i pretty much have it i don't have to keep replaying that thing and it's not but but since we put energy into it it creates a little neural tape loop in our brain and there it goes again so just by saying you know what i'm done with that i don't need to count it. I don't need these anymore. Each time the tape loop starts when I'm because I'm mindful of it. And I set my intention. I simply go up mentally. Oh, that's one. Then time passes. Oh, that's two. And it's amazing how few come back after that. So I encourage you, you can see it in Zen golf, that same, it's in Zen tennis too,

Starting point is 00:38:49 this habit changing system. And it really, really makes a difference. And it's simple. And again, it's painless because it's nonjudgmental. Absolutely. Another chapter you were looking at for Zen golf, you produce what you fear. Tell us about that. Well, that's kind of the self-fulfilling prophecy. And this came up with BJ. One of the first things he asked me was, you know, I've been around a long time. I played these courses a lot.

Starting point is 00:39:20 I know where the bad places are. How do I not think about those and and in fact if you focus on what you're trying to avoid yes you will either go there because your brain has a mistaken image of where you think you want to go or you'll go completely in the opposite direction okay now in golf there's a tendency that we produce what we fear because if we're afraid of missing a putt, for example, we get very tentative and kind of decel. When we get to the ball and get kind of guidey rather than trusting our stroke, we're afraid we're going to miss it, we miss it. If we're afraid of hooking the ball, we kind of don't want to go so far to the left, that's the direction the hook goes, and our body stops moving, our hands flip over, and the ball goes to the left. So very often,

Starting point is 00:40:21 the thing that we're trying to avoid is exactly what we produce. And that happens in business as well. If we're worried about losing a client, we act very needy. And the client sees that and says, if these guys are worried about losing me, what else should I be worried about? Absolutely. And they go somewhere else. So it's important to know what your limits are, be aware of your capabilities, but then trust those capabilities and pre-accept the full range of results. Pre-acceptance is the key to commitment. Pre-acceptance is the key to commitment.

Starting point is 00:41:03 If you can't accept, if you can't handle what's going to happen you will not be able to commit to the path that you took so give us a sense of how that plays out either in golf or life or business well um in golf if you are hitting towards a flagstick but there's trouble to one side of it and And you can't accept that, you know what, if it goes in the trouble, I can handle it. You will not let yourself go all the way through you'll, you'll, you'll stop at the ball, or you'll push it in the direction away from the trouble. Yeah. If you're afraid of, you know, of losing a client, and you say, you know what, I'm gonna, I'm gonna present what I think is best for this client. And if they decide that our company is not the best for them,

Starting point is 00:41:54 well, maybe they're not the best client for us. And then you're going to present with confidence. But if you're worried about saying the wrong thing and the client might leave, you're going to come across tentatively in the same way and you won't be able to make a committed presentation that says, here it is, here's the whole thing. And maybe you're holding something back and not trust you. And it makes me think there's one piece I highlighted on page 104 in Zen Golf. And it was, you said fear produces the tendency to over control. So the first step towards going beyond fear is acknowledging it. We can recognize our fears and learn to choose how we respond, whether then to automatically just react to them. And it makes me think of one other thing I really liked in the book,

Starting point is 00:42:46 which is you talk about giving up control to get control. Tell us a bit about how that's important in your work in general. Well, that's essentially the same thing that if you feel like you have to control things, it kind of means you don't trust it. You know, in ordinary language, If you feel like you have to control things, it kind of means you don't trust it. You know, in ordinary language, what would we describe as a control freak?

Starting point is 00:43:15 That's somebody who feels like they have to make sure everything is taken care of. And they're worried about, they're needing to get a particular result and afraid of not getting that. And that's what I'm saying. Pre-acceptance saying I can handle. Yes, I have a result that I'd like. I have my vision, but I can't tell how everything's are going to turn out. And I can adjust and adapt as things play out because I can't ultimately control the goals. And There's a lot of uncontrollable factors there. Life is, a lot of life is beyond our control. And, you know, your level of success is not going to be as much what happens to you as it is how you respond to what happens to you.

Starting point is 00:44:00 Excellent. So Joe, how would you answer this question? Like what advice would you give to somebody who wants to either get to the top of their game or stay there? Well, I think I've talked about all the things you need to do to get to the top of your game. And that is to have that vision and the discipline and commitment and passion to work hard to get step to step to step to step on the way to that. How do you stay there? Not being complacent about staying there but always wanting to get better and get to and do more and then to really stay there say this is what I've been able to accomplish how do I help others accomplish what they're trying to as well as I was able to? And when you can expand to others, then you really stay at the top of your game.

Starting point is 00:44:56 That's who is the most respected. Not somebody who's just doing it for themselves, but somebody gives back. And somebody who wants to bring everybody else along with them. That's what a leader is. Not somebody who accomplishes for themselves, but somebody who wants to accomplish for the whole organization. Excellent. So Joe, I could have you back. I need to, because I'm thinking we could keep on talking for a couple of hours. So tell us a little bit about all the great work. I mean, I just am impressed with all the books that you have. Obviously, we talked about Zen golf a lot. You have Zen tennis. You have a diet book, the best diet book ever, the Zen of losing weight. And then your new book, A Walk in the Wood, Meditations on Mindfulness with a Bear Named Pooh. So tell us where we might get any of these books and other things that you could offer those who are listening. I think the simplest thing to do is go to my website. That's drjoeparent.com. It's all there. So you'll see the different topic areas, my business consulting,

Starting point is 00:46:08 which is keynotes and executive coaching and mindfulness training programs for business and stress management, and then golf and other sports, life coaching that connects with mindfulness and relationships, and also the weight loss based on my diet book. So those are the four main areas. And then the services, as I just talked about, I do virtual coaching like, you know, Zoom and FaceTime and Skype and WhatsApp around the world, both for golf, for other sports, and for business consulting and executive coaching. I also teach in person at the beautiful Ojai Valley Inn in Southern California, but you'll see all that on the website. You'll see my books, videos, audios. I have a Zen Golf app. It's not an interactive one. It's a library of

Starting point is 00:47:07 all my audios and about a hundred videos. So all of those are available. And I have a YouTube channel, same name, Dr. Joe Parent, where you'll see, and you can listen to and participate in my guided mindfulness sessions. And those guided mindfulness sessions are ones that I do on Zoom every two weeks. So if you sign up for my free quote of the week, you'll get notices of when those sessions are, or you can find it in the free resources at drjoeparent.com. But I send out a golf quote, a golf video tip and a life quote from the diet book or the windy the poo book every week. Oh, excellent. And I checked out those videos on YouTube the other day, and I thought they were really powerful, you know, that you could actually go right now and

Starting point is 00:47:58 listen to a mindfulness session or an awareness session or some compassion meditations with Dr. Joe. So website again is Dr. Joe Parrott, and you can find all the resources we just talked about there. Joe, there's several things that I wrote down that I'm going to just work to recap. I enjoyed what you said about how mindfulness is a skill and a practice. And I think that's helpful for people to know. When we were talking about what the best of the best do, and, you know, that they're constantly working to improve, they have passion, discipline, they're willing to make sacrifices. But then I also heard in that, that they're, they're, they learn, right, that they're continuously growing and not, not beating themselves up or judging themselves. And what we also talked about is your ninja system of habit change. I think that's powerful

Starting point is 00:48:51 to really take this kind of non-judgmental awareness when you're trying to create a new habit. So Joe, thank you so much for joining us. I'm grateful that you've been here. Do you have any kind of final advice or comments for us? I think we've covered pretty much everything. And I'm really happy to have been able to participate in the program. I do really want to invite everyone to participate in these guided mindfulness and compassion meditation sessions. And again, you can find all that on drjoeparent.com. And it's a pleasure meeting you virtually. I hope we are as cross in person sometime.

Starting point is 00:49:38 And thank you for having me on. Thank you, Joe. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes. And to join my exclusive community for high performers,

Starting point is 00:50:01 where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. See you next week.

High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 409: The PAR Approach for Optimum Performance with Dr. Joe Parent, Mental Game Expert and International Bestselling Author of Zen Golf

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