On The Mark Podcast with Dr. Kapil Gupta - Conquering the Mind to Achieve Greatness

6:20AM Jul 25, 2021

Speakers:

Mark

Kapil Gupta

Keywords:

golf swing

play

hope

golf

golfer

game

felt

lesson

gupta

long

holes

listeners

shot

anxiety

point

score

care

fear

lived

observation

Dr. Gupta. It has been a while. How are you doing?

Wonderful, my friend. Nice to be with you again.

Nice to be with you. Now we're a podcast we're downloaded all over the world and a lot of folks I don't believe know completely who Dr. Kapil Gupta is. So before we delve into the lessons to be learned, please share a little bit about yourself for the listenership.

I am a mental performance coach. I work primarily with professional athletes and CEOs in the realm of the sort of the nuances of professional sport and life (as opposed to simply performance). And I think at the end of the day, the interiority of a human being is fundamentally what where all greatness comes from. And I think that's the thing that is that has been largely ignored in modern society. And so those are the things that I try to address, the sort of the deepest elements of a human being so that all the things that arise superficially to that come out the way they're supposed to come out.

Okay, I sort of need to hold up the yield sign here because I'm sure a bunch of the listeners are going, "Okay, the interiority of the human being..."

You know, I've been very much blessed by all of your wisdom and your counsel you've shared with me. And you talk about the interiority and the dealing with life. But you had a personal instance with your young son, Abhay, who's a heck of a golfer in his own right and a competitive player, the future masters and so I want you to share that experience, and unpack the event for us so we know what went down. And then I want to talk about that because I think there are some really deep and very important lessons our listeners can learn from that.

Yeah, well, I'll say the most important lesson that can be learned is the lesson for me. And so I'm a wonderful subject in this particular case, since it was you know, from a personal standpoint, I find that to be quite trying and, and far from equanimous let me say from my personal standpoint. Abhay was playing the future masters this year and he was standing after 36 holes that I think six under one shot off the lead and on the final round, I think under the back nine, I think he birdied, I think if I'm not mistaken, four out of the last five holes.

I think it was five or six, I was reading the news. I mean, it was five if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, he got on a real tear over there.

He did. He did. And it was raining steadily all day long. I mean, the rain literally hadn't stopped for a minute, all day long. And we went to the 16th green and the rain came down a little bit heavier, and the water began to pool a little bit on the green. So the rules official came by, and he blew the horn. And so we came inside. And I think at that point, he might get five or six shots in the lead. I think he was standing, he was at 10 under at that point, and we came in the clubhouse. And we kept waiting and waiting and the rain wouldn't stop. And the greens began to pull up. And after a while the water began to recede. And, and we only had two holes left, which could in my opinion have been finished up. So the committee for you know, whatever reason decided that they were going to make it a 36 hole event. And they wouldn't even count the first nine. And so they basically handed him second place trophy. And it just totally just wiped away all that he had done that day. And the person who was the winner was incredibly gracious. And it wasn't his fault. I mean, he said, you know, you know, we all know who won today. And it was very kind of him to say that, he didn't have to say that. But I'm not going to pull punches or hide anything Mark. I'm a very honest person. And I'll say the good, the bad. And I was quite upset by that decision. I felt it to be quite unfair, and rather ridiculous in my opinion.

The Dr. Gupta that I know has always been very understanding of the world. Okay. And the fact that you will admit that to me as a friend and a person who has worked together and, and certainly to the world through this podcast. It's telling for me because it once again illustrates to me how this golf thing can become, you know, such a part of us, if you will.

We got there four days ahead of time. And we really, really prepared for this event. And I just felt like it was incredibly unfair what they did. And they knew how I felt and there was no qualms about it. And they interviewed Abhay afterwards. I wasn't there for the interview, I had gone to the car. And I guess Abhay, from what I read was very gracious about it and took it in stride. And I didn't want to take it in stride. And I still don't to be honest with you.

But having said all that, I will say that what this illustrates for me is that no matter what happens at the end of the day, I do know for a fact that everything does happen for a reason. I have no idea what that reason is, and I'll probably never know. But that is how I reconcile it in in my mind that you just cannot- ...What else can you do? You cannot control these things. And Abhay made a statement to me in the car. He said, "You know, I guess nature didn't want me to win this event."

Okay.

And that was how he reconciled it. And so, at the end of the day, it is what it is. But I have, I've been very forthright in how I felt about it. And I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I firmly disagree with what happened.

But I think things happen to us in life, according to the lessons that perhaps nature or the universe feel that we need to learn. And maybe this was a lesson that I needed to learn. "Well, I'm going to take you to the brink of things. And then I'm gonna pull the rug out from underneath you. And I really need you to be okay with that. And I kind of think that was what was in store for me.

Well, it's almost the perfect segue to what I want to go to with this podcast with you in terms of expectation and hope and all of these things that we go into. Not even Competition. I could be just a club golfer who's going to play with his buds this afternoon. And, you know, there's a certain amount of anticipation and hope that I don't want to go out there and do badly. So we're going to talk about that in a minute. I want to ask you about what you wrote after this event because I'm guessing this was after the event. You wrote a very good quick message on twitter, and you wrote "My son, as I watched you play the back nine of yesterday's final round, I saw the universe in your eyes, and it brought tears to mine." Do you care to unpack that a little bit for us, please?

Yeah, he completely committed to his system. Totally and completely gave himself to his game. And he did not get off track in the slightest. And as not only a father but as a teacher, nothing could warm my heart more than that.

Okay, how about we go further, because that's a wonderful observation. The listeners listening to this going, I want to give myself to the game. Go a little further there for us please. Would you describe for the listener at large who caught that and is like "Man, that sounds like something I want to do when I play. How do you completely give yourself to the game?"

I will disagree with the prevailing thoughts on the idea of hope in that I, in my own personal life, and in those who I try to help and counsel, I actually believe that hope is a very dangerous thing. I think that if you play golf, and whatever you do in your life, I think if hope literally isn't part of the equation, then you have a far better chance of accepting what needs to be accepted. But if hope is the undercurrent, then that hope is an element which infuses every single putt, every single drive, every single walk down the fairway, because you're always hoping for something to go in your away. And whenever you are hoping for things to go your way (as innocent as it may sound), you are actually setting yourself up for an almost inevitable disappointment, because rarely does anything ever go away.

So you're almost walking in with a hit or two against you if you bring hope to the table. And expectation is simply the child of hope. If you have no hope, you will have no expectation. And then one might say, well, "If I have no hope, and I have no expectation, then why should I play? And to that, my answer will be that the joy in playing the game must actually be in the executing of the actions. And in being in the midst of the environment. And giving yourself whole to each and every shot, not because you should, but because one day you will perhaps recognize that that's all you really have, no matter whether you're Tiger Woods or the club golfer, that is all anybody will ever have.

Wonderful insights, it makes this spring to mind for me. This is from your writings, "The mind hopes, this hope creates fear. This fear creates anxiety, this anxiety creates tension, this tension robs the player of his art." And as a golf instructor, I want to come in and add another verse to your little poem, if you will there, and say that tension is the biggest wrecker of a golf swing I've ever encountered. You care to talk a little further on that please?

Yeah, the problem with the mind is that when the mind hopes for something, it fears not getting it four times as much. So whenever you have hope, the reverse side of that is fear. And you can't have one side of a piece of paper. You will always have both. The only way that you can separate yourself from fear is to first separate yourself from hope.

Wow, interesting. Hey, you know what? It gets me thinking and this is off the sort of conversational lines but you know, my mind tends to dance around the show, I asked Podrick Harrington when he was at the top of the game about that, and he said to me, that everything he did was out of a sense of fear. There was a fear of failure always that governed his approach to the game and this is a three time major champion. And he was kind of governed by fear. What is your take on that observation?

I think fear and anxiety are really the cancer of modern times. Because it is so prevalent and ubiquitous and pervasive. It is at the undercurrent of driving a car or picking up a glass of water. It seems that all that we human beings do these days. We have anxiety as a constant underlying hum to our existence. And it is a systematic eradication of that nuance of anxiety, which leads to freedom, and Podrick Harrington also said, "We are always running from who we are."

There's a truth.

And that speaks once again to the underlying current of, I mean, you know, this you're standing on the Masters range, the amount of fear and anxiety and nervousness and tension as to what's going to happen and what you know, it is a swimming pools worth. And I think that is where all of one's energies, and laser-like focus and attention has to go, much more so than the technique of things. Because even if one has faulty technique, if he gets to the point where he becomes at least to a fair degree free, then he can overcome that. But the opposite doesn't typically work.

Okay, that's perfect for this statement here. This is yours. "The greatest, most delightful and freedom filled thing in the entire world is to not give a nickels' worth of Damn." Now I agree with that completely. And so many folks have asked me about this, because when we call in golf or whatever the case might be, you'll get a Dustin Johnson, who looks like he doesn't have a care in the world whether he hits five miles off the line, or on the line, he's going to be the same guy. It's a bit of a knife edge to walk, wouldn't you say? So I want your commentary there. But also for the listener that's like okay, well, I want to be free and I, I don't want to care, that's a difficult place to go. So how does one navigate those turbulent waters?

Like all things Mark, it's a difficult thing if you view it as a prescription. Everything that comes packaged as a prescription, as a tip, and as a technique is always difficult, because you are doing it for ulterior motives. It isn't genuine, it isn't from the heart. And if it isn't from the heart, you're doing it by instruction. But the person who tries not to care is the person who will be subject to it just as much as the one who does care. So it really comes down to falling in love with the idea of not caring, not and this is the key point now, not to prevent caring in order to play better. That is an ulterior motive, which will always fail, because it is not sincere. It is done for a dangling carrot, when there are no carrots, and you want things for their own reward, then the mind actually begins to subside and it begins to acquiesce to your demands. But as long as you know that I'm doing it not to care, why, so my shots will be better so that I'll get a better score. It's a trick and the mind will see the trick and it'll exploit it.

Alright, so correct me if my assessment is incorrect, but it's basically getting back to falling in love with the execution of the task as opposed to saying, "if I care less I'm more than likely going to do better." Where again, now our mind is going to what the potential results or the rewards for the improved play would be.

Exactly it is about investing yourself in that which you truly sincerely and genuinely love without asking a nickels' worth more. It's about finding the things that you can truly own and not hoping for the things that you cannot.

Well that makes sense given what I'm about to read to you, and all these quotes are yours: "the need to play well is too heavy a burden to bear." And I've seen that especially in the professional game, but it's pervasive in the amateur game as well because you play in the club championship you play in your member guests. I had a lady who came for she comes once in a while for lessons but then she booked like four in four weeks because she was landing up some tournament that she was playing with a friend at her friend's club. She was doing well. The day before she left she had a lesson with me she was doing absolutely dandy. I get the report back and she had the most terrific time she could ever imagine like the thing just fell apart in her. That is what your observation basically describes.

Need is a prison. Whatever you need. Even if you get it, the price you will pay for having gotten it isn't worth the getting it. Because you will live in angst the entire journey.

I want you to then again speak personally, because I've known you now for a little while, and I've watched Abhay come up from being a talented young man to a potential star. And so I want you then to advise, or maybe just speak a little bit, no advice, just share counsel, if you will, as to how you've helped, this young man sort of navigate his career as he's moved on as a golfer. And now, one of the leading Junior players around the place.

I've lived in the sort of crucible of junior golf for a while now, you know, Abhay just turned 13. And my older son is 18. And we're actually I'm talking to you from the US Junior in Kansas, where I'm at this week. I'm a wonderful subject, because I've done so many things wrong. The things that I've learned is that, if you're not going to detach yourself, which no one is going to it, these things have to be done almost by force, because it's so difficult to do. Life will keep putting you into circumstances in which you will see no other wisdom other than to steadily and systematically detach yourself from the performance of your children. Because you will feel so much angst, and you will be in that crucible for so long and so deep, and you'll live and die on every shot. And after a while you'll come to the point where you say, you know, well, at least somewhere and so you know, there's more to life than this. And I actually have to get to the point where everything is allowed to happen. And we absolutely control the things that only we can control. And whatever happens from there just happens, but we learn from it, and we refine. And we test it again, we come back and learn from it, we refine and we test that again. And that's the steady move towards the Holy Grail. But it can't be from the standpoint of I hope you do well today. Because as soon as you have that outlook, which is the default outlook and believe me, I understand, I've lived there. It gets you to a point where you look back after a number of years to say, you know, what, have I really enjoyed this? Has it been enjoyable? And most of them have not been because of the outlook. And I have, you know, we all only blame ourselves. And so you grow older, and you keep revisiting the same situations and you grow wiser. And you learn, and you find the holes in your perception and your attitude as time goes on. So I will say that at the end of the day. For any parent, the biggest problem is the way that we look at things, not the thing that the kids aren't seeing,

Well, I guess to make it personal, if you were playing, let's say, one of your youngsters or someone listening, from a personal playing competitive point of view, it's the same thing to detach yourself from the perceived result or the hope of the result. And just to get out there on each shot. And it's somewhat cliched, I guess just to, you know, execute and remain present for each shot as far as possible.

It does, but once again, that can't come about by way of prescription. That has to come about genuinely, after one has lived in the angst for so long, that he genuinely comes to the understanding which says, You know what, I'm tired of living this way. What I've learned, is that this doesn't work. It doesn't help me at all to hope that this balance is going my way or the shots go my way. Because most of them don't anyway, so my hoping doesn't change what the ball flight does. So all I can actually do is I understand now, all I can really do is just to hit my shot. And then whatever happens, happens. And coming at it from the standpoint of understanding is something that lasts and becomes consistent and becomes a part of your DNA. But if you've come at it from the standpoint of instructions and tips, and if you do this you'll play better, even though it may be technically correct. It won't work because if it doesn't come from the heart, it never sticks around.

You made a statement that I love and it goes, "the golf swing is like cosmetology. If you stare at your nose long enough, you'll begin to hallucinate imperfections." The statement speaks for itself. But still just in closing, you've been gracious with your time, I want you just to share a little insight there. For the listeners out there who are perpetual golf swing investigative people who are always looking to tinker and their technique.

Well, first of all, golf score does not come from golf swing. And second of all, if you enjoy golf swing as a hobby, then there's nothing wrong in doing it. But if you believe and if you connect the fact that that hobby is going to lead to lower scores, I think that you're going to be disappointed for much of your golfing career. Thirdly, if there were no driving ranges, there would be much less swing points. Driving ranges attract one and tempt one into thinking golf swing, because a driving range is basically a soccer field, that has nothing to do with the game of golf. Golf is fundamentally a different game in the driving range. So if you go to a driving range, you are guaranteed to think about golf swing. But if you go to the course, exclusively, then you will fall into the habit of playing golf. But if you go to the driving range, thinking that I must fix this, in order to play well and shoot a better score... You don't have to take my word for it. You have examples, people all over the world at the professional ranks, who if you examine their golf swing, you will never teach it, and you will never laud it. However, if you look at the score at the end of the day, you would say "Wow, that's a pretty impressive score." And he does it consistently. So as we've seen time and time and time again, how someone plays far supersedes how they swing. And if that is understood as an absolute fact not because I say it, but because the evidence pans it out, then people will begin to understand that the nature of my play the nature of my strategy, when I look at a hole, this hole, I always played that. That's because the way that the limbs hanging off the left side of that tree over there always negatively affects my perception. Therefore it causes me to slice it, I don't need to go get a lesson to fix my slice. I need to either cut those limbs down or understand that those limbs are the cause of my pushing it to the right. It's all perception. It's all about understanding what the golf course does to you physiologically, and that's where most of your problems are coming from, not from the mechanics of the action.

I love it. I'm going to leave that with folks and say just meditate on that for a little while because there's so much truth in your observation.

Thank you, sir. Pleasure being with you again.