Two things here:
Think about 5-10 things that you love.
Where were you on that list?!
How many times do you call yourself names after making a mistake? I.E.
you’re an idiot. Why would you do that. You’re so stupid. Nice one there jack@ss, etc.
Now what if one of your friends or a random single in your group did that to you? So we do we do it to ourselves.
This is a great insight. I remember reading a good piece of advice a while ago (I wish I could remember where so I could credit them) on the subtle but important difference between how you treat a bad shot vs. how you treat yourself. I think it’s much healthier to keep criticism limited to the game and not to you. Saying to yourself “that wasn’t a very good shot” is much different than saying “you are such a terrible golfer”.
Trying to not be hard on myself is one of the things I’m working on in my mental game and this is a good reminder.
Random single I’d frown and ignore them. Close friend I’d fully expect it.
I love posts like these. The communication to get this info out into the world is so crucial right now. For whatever reason it got labeled as taboo and people, especially guys, never talk about stuff like this, but it is deeply important. I recently studied NLP and have learned a ton about how the brain works and how our language effects our results. Our brains are goal achieving machines, they will do what you tell them to do!