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Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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When you look at the brain and its function or you look at our ancestors and how they behaved and why they behaved and what it was all about, I think what it does is allows me now to have kind of less shame and guilt for being what I ve been designed to be.
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And so being insecure is completely necessary to survival.
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It really is.
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When you become secure that you re insecure, it s all good, right?
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When you can show weakness in front of a camera to the whole world, that s a superpower.
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It s not a problem.
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And so I think that s really what we need to look at is what is it that we need to do?
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But unfortunately, our economy works
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on a robotization of human beings.
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And as Chomsky discussed, an assembly line.
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Who s your favorite sports team?
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Sweet 16 birthday.
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And we all just run through the same narrative that just builds consumption and it s an economy.
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Welcome to Passion Struck.
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Hi, I m your host, John R. Miles.
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And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world s most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.
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Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
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If you re new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays.
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We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes.
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Now, let s go out there and become passion struck.
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Hello, everyone, and welcome back to episode 436 of Passion Struck, consistently ranked the number one alternative health podcast.
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A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn and discover new ways to live better, be better, and to make a meaningful impact in the world.
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If you re not aware, throughout 2024, we are conducting a weekly challenge to help inspire you to become Passion Struck.
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We release a new challenge every week in our newsletter, which goes out to over 30,000 people in our community.
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Just go to passionstruck.com to sign up.
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If you re new to the show, thank you so much for being here.
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Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member, and we so appreciate it when you do that.
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We have episode starter packs which are collections of our fans  favorite episodes that we organize into convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show.
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Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com slash starter packs to get started.
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In case you missed it, last week I interviewed Eric Edmeades, the visionary behind the post-diabetic revolution, and Marie Butler, a bodybuilding pro who s reshaping what fitness and health look like.
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In the first episode, Eric reveals the truth about reversing type 2 diabetes and how his innovative approach is changing lives.
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Meanwhile, Marie shares her journey from the corporate world to the bodybuilding stage, proving it s never too late to transform your health and life.
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I also wanted to say thank you so much for your ratings and reviews.
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And if you love today s episode or either of those others, we would so appreciate you giving it a five star review and sharing it with your friends and families.
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I know we and our guests love to see comments from our listeners.
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Today, I am honored to host Sean Foley, a name synonymous with excellence in the world of golf.
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Sean s journey from the vibrant streets of Toronto to the prestigious greens of the PGA Tour is a testament to the power of resilience, introspection, and unyielding dedication to one s craft.
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Growing up with a father who left Scotland with nothing but $200 in his pocket, Sean s early life was marked by constant change and the challenge of fitting in.
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From navigating the complexities of being a minority at Tennessee State University to confronting personal and professional adversities head-on, Sean s path has been anything but ordinary.
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Yet it is these very experiences that have fueled his passion for golf and philosophy, shaping him into the celebrated coach he is today.
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Sean s coaching philosophy transcends traditional sports psychology, drawing on the wisdom of figures like Malcolm X,
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Nelson Mandela, and the rhythms of hip-hop.
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His approach is a unique blend of science and spirituality, viewing players as bioelectric beings whose performance is deeply intertwined with their emotional and mental states.
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Today, we explore Sean s remarkable journey, the pivotal moments of self-realization that propelled him forward, and how his profound understanding of human nature has influenced his relationships with the golfing community and beyond.
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From his inspirations to his insights on the future of golf, join us as we uncover the depth of Sean Foley s passion for teaching, learning, and living life to its fullest.
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Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Now, let that journey begin.
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I am absolutely thrilled and honored to have Sean Foley on Passionstruck.
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Welcome, Sean.
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Hey John, thanks for having me on.
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It s kind of cool to branch out from the golf world into your world.
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I think all of our worlds from technology, in your case, to golf and mine, they re the same, just the discipline is slightly different.
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I think what you re going to find on this podcast is we re both trying to achieve the same thing, which is how to help people become their best selves.
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So I m really excited to explore the depths of that because it s something at the core of how you train these athletes that you work with.
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So Sean, I understand you and I have a few things in common.
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My family like yours comes from Scotland and I understand that your father came from a really humble beginning.
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And when he embarked on his new life in North America, he came over with just $200.
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And that led to a career with DuPont that saw your family moving from everywhere from Toronto.
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to Wilmington, to San Francisco and beyond.
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It s clear that this upbringing brought forth a whole bunch of significant change.
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And I know this firsthand because my dad worked in sales and we moved around a lot as well.
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And I ve read an article where you described yourself during this time as being half leader, half blunder.
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Can you elaborate on what that meant and how these frequent transitions shaped the early stages of your path?
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Yeah, it s like anything in life.
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I look back on it now and I m so grateful for kind of all the challenges and opportunities.
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You know, being a kid is difficult, right?
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And being a different kid is more difficult.
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I think when you re moving from, I was only six when I moved to Delaware, it wasn t much different than Canada.
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You know, we had, we played hockey, it was the same.
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And then I moved to California and being the kid the first day in schools is never easy.
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You know, you don t know anybody.
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But you go through 11 schools or 10 schools and you go through that.
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And I think what it did for me was I wouldn t say I m a leader by any means.
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I m trying to, I aspire to with my time on this planet, how limited it is to make my mark on the world and share with people what I think is really the most imperative way to live, which is just trying to live life and maximize the kindness and compassion that you can have for everybody and all people.
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And so that s.
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Really, the people that I grew up and the people that my parents had me read and influenced me, they were all about unity and equality and love and education and uplifting people.
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So I just was always very attracted to that.
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It just made sense to me.
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It just felt right.
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And it does feel right.
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So I think just
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the human brain itself, because sometimes we have to separate like our narrative of who we are from what our brain does.
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And I think if you look at the brain, 90% of the hardware in there is about 400,000 years old.
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So we have to really, really work to get to a place of insight and enlightenment, because the brain is kind of
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pretty much pre-programmed to detect threats and have us live in fear.
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Because the difference to the caveman and to us is you and I are doing this podcast because we re trying to thrive and help people thrive.
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But the brain s very interested in survival.
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It s not necessarily interested in thriving, right?
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So that s quite new in evolution, the ability to, one, I think our first discussions of God is maybe 10,000 years ago.
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So if we re 200 to 400,000 years old, it s a relatively new time.
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So so many of our processes are that way.
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And so the problem with that is I think that the brain is pre-programmed towards being tribal.
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And so being able to fit in was very important to our ancestors.
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If you were kicked out of the tribe in the middle of the winter, you probably weren t going to make it.
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So, so many of the tendencies I see in people s behavior now, it s like I look at it through the lens of what a primatologist would tell me or evolutionary biologist or an epigeneticist.
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I just don t think you can look
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at the idea of mental health through the lens of only psychology.
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I think you have to look at physiology.
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I think you have to try to create this pizza of different disciplines to understand why a 12-year-old behaves like that or why we can be so altruistic or so violent in the same week.
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And so I think just the more environments that I had and all the different cultures that I had, I m very fortunate to be from Toronto.
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I m very fortunate to be Canadian.
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Look, we re not perfect by any measure, but it is definitely a community where caring about one another is just not said in speeches.
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It s just not said and you see it actively happen.
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Like Canadians sometimes when it s,
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Being Canadian to a fault is being at a red light and getting rear-ended and then getting out of the car and saying, hey, I m sorry for stopping at the red, like it was your fault that you stopped at the red, right?
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We might use sorry too much, but I ll take that over the other side.
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You ve got to weigh the good and bad in duality.
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It s such a diverse place.
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That s where I grew up.
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That s what you think the rest of the world is like.
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Then I moved to Delaware, but I was only six, so I don t remember much except going to Montessori and playing hockey on my front drive.
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And then I go to California.
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And once again, another place that s incredibly diverse, quite open, quite liberal.
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And when I say liberal and conservative, just so you understand what I mean by that, is a liberal is someone who s into free enterprise, property ownership and democracy and is open to change.
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A conservative is into free enterprise.
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property ownership, democracy, and is averse to change.
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So the dynamics of what a conservative and liberal are, are exactly the same.
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How they go about it is slightly different.
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So unfortunately, these words have become very misconstrued in the dynamic of division, which is very easy to do, but I think we re a lot more connected than they think they are as they try to separate us.
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So I just want to get people to understand when I say that word, that basically means I m moderate.
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So I have a tattoo right here.
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on my arm of one of my heroes, Malcolm X. And it is very fitting for today s day.
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It s always been fitting, but it is definitely right now.
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And the tattoo says, I m for the truth, no matter who s telling it.
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I m against injustice, no matter who it s against.
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And so, for me, it s a fantastic, like, compass.
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So, the ability that I have to sit in the room with people that I genuinely disagree with, but if they say something that s true, I ll support it.
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So, I can t sit where I m in my area and they re, oh, I m this and you re that.
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So, as soon as you open your mouth, I m not even going to listen to you because you re wrong.
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You can t live like that.
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Like you will not have an abundant experience if you stay so close.
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So I think being able to keep moving to different places and just, I was always a big thinker and I was like a why person.
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Like why is the sky, my dad said it was like pretty annoying.
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Like why is the sky blue?
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Why is wood brown?
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He said he got a lot smarter having me as a son because he would have to go research and answer so he could tell me.
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But I ve always been kind of observing everything around.
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And so I think more environments for me were helpful.
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To somebody else, all those moves and going to new schools could have created a whole different dynamic, right?
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We all experience the outside world differently because we re all internally different.
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So if I m internally different than you, what I m going to project from inside of me is going to be slightly different than you.
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So for me, I think it was beneficial.
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But I think I forget, John, how hard it was.
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I think I forget, I told a group of young golfers the other day that if someone had showed me from 22 years of age to 49 on a projector what I was gonna have to do and overcome to get to being on Passionstruck with John, I would have looked at it and said, well, who s even gonna start doing, that looks impossible.
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It just looked like, how am I gonna make, you mean I m gonna get fired in front of the whole world?
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Why would I wanna do that?
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So it s just good that when you climb Mount Everest that you don t know what it s going to be like.
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Because if you did, you re probably not going to do it.
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And that s kind of the beauty and the mystery of this experience, right?
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It absolutely is.
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And I ve got a great story along those same lines.
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I went to the Naval Academy and a number of my classmates ended up becoming Navy SEALs.
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And one of them is a very close friend of mine.
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He ended up being his BUDS, Basic Underwater Demolition School, honor graduate.
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But he told me about this situation where squad he was responsible for was asked to clean the leadership s office and he said that this was something because of how many of them there were that would probably have taken maybe a half an hour max, but they d given them four or five hours to do it.
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And they walk into the office and on the table is a book that says the syllabus of a week.
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And Chris tells me that he sees it and he understands there s got to be some type of trap to this.
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So he s encouraging everyone to just stay away from it.
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Well, two of his guys make the decision that not only do they want to read it, but they re going to.
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copy it, because they ve got a couple hours, so they copy the whole thing.
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That night, before the start of Hell Week, they stay up all night studying it, understand now the difficulties that they re going to face over the next week, and quit before Hell Week even starts.
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And I think that goes a lot to what you were just saying.
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That s perfect.
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I mean, first of all, the guys who get into Hell Week are all quite smart enough to know the name of it is Hell Week.
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Now, heaven and hell, that s a whole other different discussion.
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But when I was a little boy, and I really, really thought that hell might be a completely real thing, like, you know, real thing, not just as a metaphor, right?
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It sounds pretty terrible.
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It sounded pretty terrible.
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I like when guys go, yeah, you know, if I, if I didn t go into pro golf or pro football, I would have been a seal.
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And I m like, are you sure about that?
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Like there s a practice in a hundred degree heat with full pads.
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And then there s healthy.
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Are you sure about that?
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So what s interesting about even that is how do we create like a special operative?
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So when I m thinking about golf, my guys are technically the Navy seals of golf, right?
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They re the best of the best.
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And then I look at how the seals build these guys and knowing that they re putting millions of dollars into each individual.
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They have not, there s no guessing.
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There s no guessing.
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They ve had the best neuroscientists.
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They ve had the best of the best.
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They, I think if you do it like this, you ll really be able to see who can stick around and who can t.
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And so it brings you to another point, like why is passion so important?
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Like why is love for what you re doing so important?
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Is because if you don t have that, then how are you going to withstand everything that you have to endure?
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That, to me, is really what Hell Week is.
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They take 100 incredibly amazing, brilliant, athletic men, in the past also women, and they put them through something that s so brutal that at the end they call seven or eight of them special.
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And it wasn t because of how happy they could be.
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It wasn t because of how positive they were being.
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It was because of how much pain they could endure.
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But realizing that they might be the key
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to when pain goes into suffering.
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So I think as soon pain I can handle suffering is I can t.
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So when you look at and obviously you don t look at it because it s really hard to learn about these guys and what they do and I understand why but every time I get a chance to meet somebody from Delta or when I m in the UK SAS I turn into Barbara Walters because I m fascinated.
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Now I m a peace-loving man but I have a tremendous amount of admiration and respect
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for how they re masters of what they do.
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I m very interested in people who have become, you know, overachievers in anything they do.
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How did they do it?
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How did they get there?
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And you just keep coming back to the first chapter of Man s Search for Meaning by Frankel.
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And it s like, if you can t define your purpose, then you re just running around like a chicken with your head cut off.
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And so I think if you have purpose and you have meaning,
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you know, that s kind of the gasoline to your car.
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So it doesn t mean the road you re driving on is going to be that easy or you might be in traffic or you might have a bad tire, but you at least have the foundation and the fundamentals for the road that you re on.
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And so I don t think being like when I listen to the self-help world, it s very cavalier and naive and it s adolescence that, you know, you just need to be happy.
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And it s like, all right, well, someone studied happiness for a long time at Harvard and said that they basically have seen that the people that they tested, it s not like pure data that you might ve looked at, right?
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Because it s dealing with humans is they found purpose in their job.
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They were married to their best friend and they had three deep, meaningful relationships and they exercise.
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So the happiness is for free.
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So physiologically, if I give myself enough sunlight, if I give myself 30 minutes of
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I mean, I don t have to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger.
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If I go for a 30-minute walk, if I can tend to get into cold water three times a week, if I make sure that I have electrolytes in my water, the potential of me over a month having way higher mental health goes resoundingly up.
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Physiology is one of the keys to psychology.
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Sitting in a city all the time, I never see the sunlight, I never touch the ground with my feet.
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It s not that a city is busy that people are walking around looking kind of annoyed, it s because they re not getting any of the cellular information that they need from this outside world because we are completely interconnected to the whole thing.
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you know, when you look at what Harvard said, that s it.
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But people when they re like, I have players, right?
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And sometimes they ll have like a sports psychologist, the sports psychologist will say this person needs to be patient, they need to have self belief, and they need to be positive.
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And I m like, have you met any successful people yet?
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Like ever in your life, because those things to me are all consequences.
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And that s the problem is it s very easy to see the consequence in cause and consequence.
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And so I ve never met many
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people who are great at what they do who don t get impatient when they can t solve a problem.
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Right?
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So self-esteem comes from solving problems.
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It doesn t come from not having any.
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So I would rather my player be competent in his skill set than confident in skills that he doesn t have.
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You know what I mean?
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It s just, I m sorry, but it s like being positive and happy would not help Viktor Frankl for one second.
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The image of seeing his wife and family again was the only thing that kept him.
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Who could live through that?
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Who could survive through that?
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It just had to be, your life had to be for a way bigger purpose.
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than your bank account or your Instagram followers.
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It would have to be for something so much more than that.
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And so I think that s kind of, I think within golf, that s what I found as a young kid, like early on, I had a passion for it.
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I enjoyed just how difficult it was and how it seemed like this endless journey.
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It just seemed very like a microcosm for life in many ways, right?
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I mean, because at the end of the day, we can have a team,
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It still comes down to your own individual component.
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Life is definitely not a team game.
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It s definitely an I game.
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No, it absolutely is.
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And for the listener, I just wanted to mention that if you want to hear more about this Harvard study of adult aging, I had Bob Waldinger, who s the current head of it, on the show last year.
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He has a great book called The Good Life.
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But interestingly enough, Sean, when you look at what they examined and you look at the people who live in the blue zones over centuries who ve lived the longest and have had the happiest life of anyone, it came back to those four same things.
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And I m not sure if you ve ever heard of self-determination theory.
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So to me, that just underpins this, that it really is about autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
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So autonomy being that you have self-agency over your actions, competence that you re constantly striving behind your purpose to the best that you can at whatever you re setting your intentions against, and then relatedness is really having bonds with other humans.
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And these things sound so simple, yet so few of us really perfect them.
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And that s the challenge, because if you listen to like a neuroscientist, many of them will argue that this idea that you think you have a free will is cavalier.
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And I ll read that.
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I ll read everything and I ll say, yeah, but I think it can be done.
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I think I ve done it.
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So, you know, I think it s what I like about that world is that when you look at the brain and its function or you look at our ancestors and how they behaved and why they behaved and what it was all about, I think what it does is allows me now to have kind of less shame and guilt for being what I ve been designed to be.
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And so being insecure is completely necessary to survival.
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It really is.
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So when you become secure that you re insecure,
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It s all good, right?
2
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When you can show weakness in front of a camera to the whole world, that s a superpower.
2
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It s not a problem.
2
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And so I think that s really what we need to look at.
2
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What is it that we need to do?
2
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But unfortunately, our economy works on a robotization of human beings.
2
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And as Chomsky discussed, like he discussed an assembly line.
2
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So we ll just, who s your favorite sports team, sweet 16 birthday.
2
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And we all just run through this same narrative that just builds consumption and it s an economy.
2
SPEAKER_01
And like, look at the amount of money that s made on Thanksgiving.
2
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And so when people say to me, like, happy Thanksgiving, what I love about Thanksgiving is that you go to the store.
2
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And everyone s like, hey, Thanksgiving, man.
2
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Have a great one with your family.
2
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And I m like, man, I do this every day to people.
2
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Don t you enjoy this?
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Isn t this nice, wanting to accommodate strangers with the hope that they have a fantastic weekend with their family?
2
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It s just amazing how we pick these three times a year to be very humane and realize, hey, we re all connected because we all celebrate Thanksgiving.
2
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So I hope you have a great Thanksgiving.
2
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The other day I was in West Palm and I saw this homeless guy and he just needed help, flat out.
2
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And so I helped him out.
2
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And then my friend said, that makes you feel good, right?
2
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And I said, no, I feel good already.
2
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That s why I do that.
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The outside isn t influencing the inside for me.
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It s just, this is completely an inside job.
2
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So the thing about moving to all those different places, when I get to California, you know, my parents meet all these other couples and they re all so different.
2
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And we had this great neighborhood where it was,
2
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just in a circle, and my brother and I were eight and six, and all these boys were in high school, and they were like Greek gods to us, like all of them, right?
2
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You know, we had some people who were ex-hippies, you know, who are now working in the early, early days of Palo Alto, and so I got all these different looks into,
2
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And then my parents, you know, when I grew up, like I was so fortunate, my parents had friends who were gay, who were Muslim, I mean, everything.
2
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So all I knew at the end of the day was like, oh, all these people are just really cool.
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It didn t really matter.
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And I think that that s what the world does, right?
2
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Is to keep the machine running is we need to identify labels.
2
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And so the word patient to me is a label because the thing is, if being impatient is not good,
2
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then how do I become patient?
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Because when I m patient, I haven t really told myself to be patient.
2
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Like I haven t said, okay, you re going to be on this podcast with John.
2
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We re going to smile.
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No, I m just going to do what I can do within this moment of consciousness.
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So this could either be really flat or really up.
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I don t really think I control the outcome.
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The fact is that it s about the sharing and speaking to you and being part of this podcast.
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That s the dynamic for doing it.
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Whether people like it or not, that s nothing I can control.
2
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So I think that it s really imperative that in those studies that they looked at those points, I would also say in my life,
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the people I ve seen who are the most content.
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And content s not, I m content that I m not happy all the time.
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So they re not synonyms.
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Like I m okay, I know that s not what I m here for, is to be happy all the time.
2
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If I go to the gym in an hour, I can assure you that I m not going to be happy in the gym.
2
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I just realized that it is a necessary evil, that enough data has showed me I should be doing it.
2
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And so that s kind of how I ve done with the coaching is,
2
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The same kind of idea when guys come to me, or girls, they re playing the worst golf they ve ever played.
2
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I tend to have a magnet for that when they re at the bottom of their career.
2
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And so not only are you adopting somebody who doesn t have any belief that they can do this anymore, but with the resounding knowing that they were number one in the world at one point, so whatever allowed them to do that is still in there.
2
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Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And no one put that there.
2
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Nobody put that there.
2
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That came from their own admission and their own work ethic and their own love for the game and all that.
2
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So if someone s 350 pounds and they re on a treadmill, if they walk for long enough, they will get healthier, they will get better.
2
SPEAKER_01
But even that person still has a six pack, you just can t see it.
2
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So even when they come to me and I know that they re lost, I just let them understand like, it s okay that you feel like this, but this is just a feeling.
2
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You re actually not lost and a career is a really long time.
2
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And I don t know how you can go through something at this high a level with being unscathed to failure.
2
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I don t think it s possible.
2
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So there s nothing wrong with you.
2
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This is what s supposed to happen.
2
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So everyone s telling you, you need to be confident.
2
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You need to work hard.
2
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You need to be patient.
2
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No, you need to sit down and be introspective and say, how did we get to this point?
2
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When I was playing my best, when I was living my best life, what was I doing?
2
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And so if I ask my friend who s kind of going through some difficulties right now, when he was doing that, he was exercising every day.
2
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He was only drinking on weekends.
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He was only eating meat twice a week.
2
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He was reading an hour a day, and now he s not doing that.
2
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And what are you doing now?
2
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No, I m going out with the boys every night.
2
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Are you reading?
2
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No.
2
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Have you been exercising?
2
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No.
2
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I m like, look, success and failure leave clues, and failure may leave more.
2
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And so looking at it as I love speaking to neuroscientists because when I say failure, they always correct me and they always say, Sean, in our world, we call it feedback.
2
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And I was like, man, we should call it feedback in our world.
2
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I mean, imagine telling a nine year old who s just lost the basketball game with missing a buzzer beater.
2
SPEAKER_01
Hey, what was your feedback on that in that moment.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I could I really couldn t feel my fingers I couldn t feel my hands I was having a hard time breathing.
2
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As soon as you tell them, oh you failed their head goes down and now they never ever share with you what they were going through because if they give you the feedback
2
SPEAKER_01
I was having this completely sympathetic response, which my brain is very good at.
2
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It s called fight or flight.
2
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It s number one ranked in the universe at that.
2
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Oh, there s nothing wrong with me.
2
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That just comes from my ancestors.
2
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Yeah.
2
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So will it happen again?
2
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Yeah, it ll happen again.
2
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But there s ways that you can not combat it, but learn to accept it and keep moving forward.
2
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And when you realize that it s OK to feel like this rather than what s wrong with me, you just change the whole thing.
2
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So imagine if every time you say the word failure over the next month to somebody,
2
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You say feedback once again, we get into.
3
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labels.
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Oh, it was a good experience.
3
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It was a bad experience.
3
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What if it s just an experience?
3
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I m grateful for my wife.
3
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I m grateful for my success.
3
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I m also grateful for all of my worst days.
3
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You have to, when you say gratitude, gratitude just isn t for the good stuff.
3
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It s gotta be the whole thing.
3
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Yeah.
3
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I think that whole concept of feedback loop is so extremely beneficial and people don t treat failures or setbacks as that feedback loop as they should.
3
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And Sean, I could go a million different directions from what you just talked about.
3
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I love talking, but I m not always great at, I think when I was working with tiger and they interviewed me all the time, I used to watch Phil Jackson interviews.
3
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Cause he was amazing at it.
3
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And they d ask him a question and he knew there was no way to win an answer.
3
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So he d say, you know, a better question.
3
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And then he d answer his own question.
3
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So I think during that time I m getting interviewed and I m, I m just always knowing that.
3
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I m like, where are they going to be throwing the knives from if I answer it like this?
3
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And then I thought, man, this is not really what I aspire to.
3
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Right?
3
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Yes.
3
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We all try to achieve our dream, but we don t realize that at night that could become a nightmare as well, you know?
3
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You re absolutely right.
3
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And I do Toastmasters and they ve got this exercise where they do a tabletop, where they give you almost like an improv question that you have to come up there and speak about for two minutes.
3
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And oftentimes my strategy is I don t like the question I ve been given.
3
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And when you re up there, you can talk about anything.
3
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So I just go back to a question I liked more or something else that I want to talk about.
3
SPEAKER_00
So.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hey, you know, you know what?
3
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Maybe it wasn t a good question.
3
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Yes, or maybe it s just not the right question for that situation.
3
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Coach, what do you think is going on in his personal life?
3
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You know, I think a better question is that, you know, we re back to number one in the world.
3
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So I m really pleased that the big man is where he needs to be and where he should be.
3
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Next question.
3
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When do you think the affairs started?
3
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I don t even think about yesterday.
3
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I m kind of more focused on right now.
3
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But yeah, we re playing well.
3
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Irons are good.
3
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Body s feeling good.
3
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All right, guys.
3
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See you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Have a good day.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, we re at a golf tournament.
3
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We just play golf.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s in the lead.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why are we talking about anything else?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like that, you know, like when Popovich goes in, they don t say the point guards dating this new girl.
3
SPEAKER_01
And do you think that this is kind of holding back his three point shot?
3
SPEAKER_01
They don t go there.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the difference with Tiger is that
3
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I mean, you were talking about someone who s recognized at one point on the level of Prince Michael Jackson, Mandela.
3
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I mean, just one of the biggest names.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when you think of something that s a niche sport, and this is probably one of the most well-known people in the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
So this is a sport that s played by almost less people than any other sport in the world.
3
SPEAKER_01
And this guy s at the level of a Messi.
3
SPEAKER_01
But the world plays soccer.
3
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The world doesn t play golf.
3
SPEAKER_01
So what s going to come with that is what I found comes with that is just constant media attention on that person.
3
SPEAKER_01
They don t really care as long as they get clicks.
3
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The thing I learned, like somebody said to me one time, I was once quoted an article that I never even did the interview.
3
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And it was at first it for like about 30 seconds.
3
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And then I said, okay, one, you said yes to the job.
3
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So you couldn t have known it was gonna be like this, but you probably knew it was gonna be quite different and quite challenging.
3
SPEAKER_01
Two, you re guilty till proven innocent now.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you re just gonna have to accept this and realize that, you know, we go back to your friend who s the SEAL.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s never ever got on the comms and said, hey, Lieutenant, I can t believe they re throwing grenades at us because it s war.
3
SPEAKER_01
He s already accepted.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the best thing about those guys is like 50% of their training is worst case scenarios.
3
SPEAKER_01
Worst case scenarios.
3
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Not what s the I don t not visualizing the best case scenario.
3
SPEAKER_01
What am I going to do if this happens and I have to problem solve this and this and this.
3
SPEAKER_01
So a lot of them have said when they get to war it s almost easier than training.
3
SPEAKER_01
You know and Michael Jordan said when he got into a game he just enjoyed himself because they practice.
3
SPEAKER_01
He made this team practice so hard they never ever were in a game where it was as challenging as their practices.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so they all sit on the floor and they play or they sit at war and they re successful.
3
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And we go, man, they re talented.
3
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They re lucky.
3
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And it s like, no, it s got almost nothing to do with either of those things.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like with either of those things, how do we define to get the best out of ourselves?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like you spoke about initially, I don t think that s just going to be like straight roads.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so when my players say things like, I hit a great shot and it ended up in a bad place, it was like, and then, and that emotionally bothered you?
3
SPEAKER_01
Have you not played golf for 20 years?
3
SPEAKER_01
So you want to go to a sports tech where I think you have to logically start to understand golf.
3
SPEAKER_01
and the game itself and understand what it is you re doing because I understand that after covid my flights have been delayed quite a bit.
3
SPEAKER_01
I understand that to get a million and a half people in the air at almost the same minute is probably incredibly difficult.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if our flight ever takes off at the right time it s probably a miracle of engineering.
3
SPEAKER_01
And so when I m in the airport and they say your flight s delayed and everyone looks at me and they re like, how can you be so patient?
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m like, cause I understand the thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m not actually trying to be patient.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just, from my own experience, I had a pretty much one in two chance of this flight being delayed.
3
SPEAKER_01
So no, I m not upset.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I know you re upset because you know this yourself.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if I had to be home at four o clock, I would have taken the one at 8 a.m.
3
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knowing it was probably going to get delayed till 10.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I still had an opportunity to not be frustrated.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it comes down to me and my, and the need to understand.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when I think when I ve understood the brain better, I think religion tried to teach me as I grew up, why I shouldn t judge people.
3
SPEAKER_01
looking kind of into how the brain works and how we ve evolved, it showed me that I have no choice within my own software and my hardware, that it s constantly judging nonstop.
3
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t make me a bad person.
3
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t make me a sinner.
3
SPEAKER_01
It just gives me less shame and less guilt and gives me something to work on.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s it, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
So when I meet other people and I see how they re being, I don t get upset at them or want to yell at them.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just realized that where they re at in that moment, they just have a misunderstanding.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I don t take it personal, and I feel for them.
3
SPEAKER_01
And if I can get them to see that from a bad mood, they re projecting a certain reality, and from a good mood, they re projecting a certain reality.
3
SPEAKER_01
So how do we do things that get us into a good mood more often?
3
SPEAKER_01
And then it goes back to what Harvard said, or what Huberman says, physiological things and purpose.
3
SPEAKER_01
Coming back to the same place, because there has to be the nucleus of experience has to be the same for everybody, even if it feels so different.
3
SPEAKER_00
So Sean, I want to take you, since you ve brought him up a couple of times, to a decade ago when you start coaching Tiger.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the expectations placed on Tiger and his team have always been immense, especially when it comes to winning championships.
3
SPEAKER_00
But you took this journey over at a time that was notably difficult for Tiger.
3
SPEAKER_00
He had a ton of personal upheaval going on at the same time.
3
SPEAKER_00
What I wanted to ask you is you walk into this and obviously there s more things going on than just his swing and his golf mechanics.
3
SPEAKER_00
How did you go about trying to coach him as a human and not just seeing him as a golfer, but as a person who was going through this tumultuous time and trying to bring him out on the other side of it?
3
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Yeah, the funny thing is, I don t think I ve ever been asked that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But obviously, passion struck is into the human.
3
SPEAKER_01
So unfortunately, sometimes we see superstars and we forget that they re human.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, they re ordinary people doing extraordinary things with their time.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I do appreciate that you recognize that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think I was a bit naive.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, it wasn t that I was naive.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was just that I was 35 years old.
3
SPEAKER_01
I just stopped waiting tables four years ago.
3
SPEAKER_01
And now I am working with a person who I could potentially be the biggest fan in the universe of.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m arrogant at the time, because I haven t missed yet with one player.
3
SPEAKER_01
I ve just been absolutely flying on the PGA Tour.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m buying into the narrative that I m Midas, and that everything I touch turns to gold.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that time, that s where I was.
3
SPEAKER_01
That guy s been knocked down about 60 times since then, so he knows he s not Midas.
3
SPEAKER_01
And he didn t read far enough to the end of the story, John, where he touched his son, couldn t turn him back.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we ll say that there s a lot less arrogance now, sir.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ve always been quite into the players.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like long before this, what precedes this is that I coach in Canada and I start this a program for elite junior golfers.
3
SPEAKER_01
Now, none of them were elite yet, but to build them, to get scholarships to the United States, if they wanted that and do all that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they used to call me the Shawnee llama because
3
SPEAKER_01
Between the ages of like 12 and 22, I studied Buddhism quite heavy.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I ve always been into meditation and things like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So knowing that Tiger had a mother who s Buddhist and Tiger grew up meditating, it was mandatory.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was like a non-negotiable, probably had a lot to do with his
4
SPEAKER_01
greatness, at least something meaningful to his success.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I ve never been through a divorce.
4
SPEAKER_01
My parents didn t get divorced.
4
SPEAKER_01
So just take the divorce itself and the fact that just go to the most human level of this divorce, this person at one point you asked to marry, probably because you thought you were going to be with them for the rest of your life.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now you have kids, that makes it complex.
4
SPEAKER_01
What does that mean as it relates to custody?
4
SPEAKER_01
Okay, now, that s just hard and that s, I have a neighbor going through it right now and no one knows this person.
4
SPEAKER_01
So imagine being on the front cover of everything.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right?
4
SPEAKER_01
So I think for someone who no one even knows is happening, it s already impossible.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the problem is the more people who know, the harder it is to get away from it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it s more constant, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And now you ve also had this image in this brand built behind this image.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then we ve seen that there s this other side to you, which I fully accept.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t believe in anyone s image.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just an image.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right now, if you screenshot, it s an image of me.
4
SPEAKER_01
If I come and say, hey, John, and I come to your office, it s no longer an image.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I don t even want an image.
4
SPEAKER_01
What s an image?
4
SPEAKER_01
Right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Image comes from the word imagine.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I don t want to imagine.
4
SPEAKER_01
I want to live my life.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not trying to imagine it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then it s why you re getting a divorce.
4
SPEAKER_01
So what led to this?
4
SPEAKER_01
And then we see everything that had went on in Tiger s life.
4
SPEAKER_01
And once again, he s human.
4
SPEAKER_01
That type of fame is oppressive.
4
SPEAKER_01
A lot of times repression has a tendency to bounce into perversion.
4
SPEAKER_01
So if people are repressed from drinking their whole life, when they start drinking, they might go overboard with it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think that it s, as a human, you could see how this could happen to an individual.
4
SPEAKER_01
That he s not worse than you, you re not better than him.
4
SPEAKER_01
And all that happened is of a misunderstanding that he s having so either one he wants to be that way, or two he doesn t and he s just sabotaging.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so, unless any of us ever really truly understand what that level of fame is like.
4
SPEAKER_01
then we probably just can t make an assessment on how difficult that would be, even if it looks so great, but it s just not great.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so there s a lot of Hollywood stars who have overdoses, but everyone wants to be a Hollywood star.
4
SPEAKER_01
We all just imagine that it s that.
4
SPEAKER_01
So coming into that and then knowing as well that his golf game wasn t what it was, but how much of that was based on him not being able to play golf versus him
4
SPEAKER_01
just having this fog of so much distress and I couldn t imagine it I couldn t imagine it like imagine every day you went somewhere you knew what everyone was thinking about you you always knew so when he walked on the range John we knew that he knew that we knew he was beating us he knew that
4
SPEAKER_01
He knew that.
4
SPEAKER_01
He looked like the biggest lion on the grasslands.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I shouldn t say lion because he s a tiger, but the image in my head is this sun setting on this massive bronze lion walking around with his chest out with everyone just going like, hey, big man, just stay away from us, please.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then overnight, you go out and you actually wonder what they re thinking.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s just gotta be, at 34 years old, that s just gotta be like this.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I d say where I was naive was that I thought the turnaround would be way faster.
4
SPEAKER_01
I thought, I got it.
4
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This is not going to be hard.
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And that was wrong.
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But I love the guy.
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I mean, I wish that, I wish people could see the side of Tiger that I ve seen.
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And I think as time is going on, we re seeing a little bit more of it.
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And I mean, this is a guy potentially, I mean, Tiger Woods could probably be president.
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I mean, how many times can you be around an individual where you know if they put their heart into it, they could probably become the president?
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There can t be, well, I don t know, of lately that might be, maybe my theory s wrong, John.
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But the kind of influence that Tiger continued to have, and we all want him to play golf and we all want to see him win.
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But I want to see him continue to manifest some of the things that I know that he wants to do.
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And if you look at what his foundation has done, I mean, that s 1,000 kids that have went to university who are in the first generation to go to university.
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And when he gets up to speak about it, this predator on the golf course can t even get through the first 20 seconds before he s got to cry for a minute until he can actually give the speech again.
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And so when people are like, yeah, he just does that for taxation, I m like,
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Okay, and you re just saying that to feel better about some version of your own mediocrity because that s not why he does it.
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So, but it s really difficult.
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Like the choice to be, when people say what made Tiger Woods the greatest of all time, he was willing to pay the greatest sacrifice of anybody.
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And I got a bunch of friends out on tour, John, who are physically every bit as good, but they look at all that and they re just glad to be 20th in the world and making a great living.
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And they re not even recognized at their own airport.
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They don t want that.
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And that s why, you know, people don t stay number one in golf for so long is because it s everything that comes with it.
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It s not it s all of a sudden it doesn t become golf.
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It becomes this other kind of ecosystem and they just want to be good at golf, you know.
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Yeah, and that s what makes to me Novak Djokovic or Messi or any of Tom Brady and staying at that elite level for such a long time, such a remarkable feat.
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But Tiger is absolutely one of the top 10 people I ve ever wanted to have on the podcast, not to talk about golf, but to talk about his life journey and how he s overcome so many self-sabotaging moments, but also moments of hardship and pain and other things.
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The difference is we are all self-sabotaging, or we have.
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It s just no one wrote about it every day for two years.
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I mean, that just makes it so much more difficult.
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It just makes it so hard to get away from.
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And I think that s where the empathy lies is that once again, we spoke before we got on the podcast and I told you about my experience using crutches through an airport and how much love and compassion that I felt from strangers.
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Whereas normally when I m at airport, if you make eye contact with someone, you can see they kind of get uncomfortable from it.
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I mean, I smile at people and once in a while you get a smile back, but for the most part,
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Um, you don t do that.
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So now I m on crutches and I m like, wow, this, I feel like I m in a kindergarten right now.
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Like everyone, everyone s trying to help me out.
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And I sat on the plane and I was kind of overwhelmed by it a bit.
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And I was thinking, man, imagine if we could get to the point that we could convince ourselves that anyone standing in front of us, no matter, you know, how attractive they are, how wealthy they are, how great they are at a sport.
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If we could just believe that, you know, in their soul they re on crutches as well, how much that would change our interaction on a daily level, you know?
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We re good at hiding mental anguish, right?
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But you can t, when you re limping through an airport after knee surgery, you can t hide it.
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You can t even pretend not to limp.
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Well, this leads me into something I really wanted to get into with you.
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When you talk about perceiving yourself and how others perceive you, you say that your time at Tennessee State University, which is a historically black university, awakened you and you likened it to a better experience than you could have even had at Harvard, especially about being true to yourself and embracing compassion and empathy.
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And I want to take this a step further because I understand along this journey, you really started to draw inspiration from the works of Webb Dubois, Malcolm X, which I ordered as autobiography after hearing you talk about it, Nelson Mandela, and Naz.
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How have these different experiences and yourself actually experiencing being a minority influenced the way that you view the world and how it s made you a better coach because of it?
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Yeah, I think the precursor to that is that I have like two incredibly open-minded parents who made me read, who made me meet people, who made me, that was kind of their passion, right?
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It was just people.
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And so there s that part.
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Then there s the fact that I m from Toronto, which is like one of the most diverse cities in the world.
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And then there s also the fact that we didn t, in Canada, obviously our record is equal to America as it relates to native Canadians.
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But, you know, we didn t grow up like in a racist society.
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So it s completely different.
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Now, I wasn t naive to what had happened in the United States because my parents educated me on a lot of the experience and the way we re taught U.S.
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history in Canada is quite a bit different.
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We learn more about U.S.
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history than we do about Canadian history growing up in Canada, just for the simple fact that the U.S.
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is the superpower and they re our closest neighbor and our greatest ally.
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So we really knew a lot about U.S.
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history.
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So when I got down to Tennessee State and it was an all black university, one of the main reasons I went is because my dad was not at all convinced that I was going to ever graduate.
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And he had every right to do so.
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Second, the Canadian dollar was 64 cents to the US dollar.
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And my parents didn t, you know, they were comfortable, but there s nothing that they were going to be able to afford like that.
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And so I ended up getting a full scholarship to this school, Tennessee State, which is a
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historically black university, but it was also a division one school.
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So the program became decent.
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Like we had decent players.
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So that the reason when people ask me, why did you go to, I didn t go there to like get the experience.
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I just went there more as like, I have to go here.
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Right?
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But coming down as this Canadian kid, like, I never even met an enemy in my whole life.
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Like, that s just not how I am.
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And I never really thought, oh, that person s Muslim or Indian or black, or they re just Canadian to me.
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They re just, they re really Canadian.
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So when I got there, I was cool.
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But a lot of people weren t cool with me that I was there.
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And I think that I understood that.
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It wasn t Africans who put Europeans on slave ships and murdered and tortured and worked to death those people.
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So I also understood that, look, it s not my ancestors.
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It wasn t me doing that to you.
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But I completely understand
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that the issues that African Americans are dealing with today stems from this time all the way through and how there s been zero justice.
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I mean, I was just in West Palm the other day.
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I was so upset at this one moment because it just hit me.
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Like, if I went to any major city in the United States,
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and I wanted to find drugs or trouble, all I do is go to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
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Parkway.
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And that breaks my heart because he s in the top three greatest Americans of all time, maybe human beings.
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And you know what?
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The system continued to perpetuate this idea of poverty and poor education and no experience.
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And once globalization hit so many big cities, it was over, right, for people.
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And I think the problem I have with that is that
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In America, you re not free if you re poor.
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Nowhere in the world are you free if you re poor, especially you re probably less free if you re in a first world country than if you re in a third world country, right?
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Because then everyone s just like you.
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So if you don t have the freedom to eat well, if you don t have the freedom to get a good education, you don t have the freedom to travel, then you re not free.
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And so that s all money is, is freedom, right?
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It s not happiness, we know that, it s that.
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So I m sitting there at the stoplight and I m looking around
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And I m just like, just stabbed him in the back so hard that every single one of these streets are named after him in every city in the country, you know?
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So that, sorry, that was a tangent, but that really bothered me the other day.
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And once again, we talk about justice and truth earlier with that Malcolm X quote.
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That s, to me, that s unjust.
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I don t care who it s unjust to.
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There s a bunch of white people who live in Appalachia.
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It s been unjust to them as well.
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This isn t just unjust.
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It s not a function of the melanin level of my skin and where my ancestors, at what time they left the equator.
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That s their major difference, okay?
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Everything is, I think every Ancestry.com ever, I think everyone has had at least 4% African in them because that s where Original Man is from.
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So we just, we need to recognize like through Dubois and through Marcus Garvey,
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and through all these incredible black men at that time they were, at the time they were doing what they did, it just expanded my mind to this whole, oh, I ve been told the story this way, but the story actually was told this way.
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This is actually what happened.
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And you know, and that really irritated me.
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And I think that when you walk into a classroom
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Look, the brain already is going to project bias simply, okay?
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There s been plenty of studies done where they run pictures across the screen so fast that you can t optically consciously tell what you saw, but your subconscious can see it.
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And then they are measuring the electrical impulse in the brain.
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So you didn t even see the picture, but all of a sudden your limbic system is firing.
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So you are starting to interpret fear, but you can t even tell anyone what you saw, but your subconscious thought.
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Now, that thing connects into this encyclopedia of previous experience that have come from watching cops on television, that have come from watching movies, that have come from watching these biases that you have, right?
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Like, I have a friend down the street
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And he s this really elegant 60-year-old guy from New Jersey.
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He is so a soprano.
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He s a soprano.
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I can t even see him as a doctor.
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He s a Tony soprano.
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He sounds like him.
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He looks like him.
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He s Italian.
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That s the bias in my head.
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I know he s a doctor.
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So I think it s really imperative to get people to understand that we have to really challenge those belief systems that have been put in us.
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And so I knew going to class,
5
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You know how many times I heard the brothers say to me like, oh man, we got Ricky Schroeder in here.
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Hey, look, it s Michael J. Fox, man.
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Michael J. Fox, can I get your autograph?
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Right?
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Because look, a lot of them had never went to school with a kid like me.
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And look, I looked like this at the same time.
5
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I had my glasses and I had my polo.
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I m so glad to be an ambassador for them now when I was so happy to pay for it back then.
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And so I was just me.
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I ve always been like this.
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One of the advantages I had since I was 10, I ve been very deep into hip hop.
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So I at least had some things to discuss with people.
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And with hip hop, it didn t really matter what you look like.
5
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If you knew that artist, it s like a badge of honor, right?
5
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And so I was walking into classes, and I knew that no one was seeing Sean.
5
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They were seeing what their interpretation of Sean was.
5
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So that was a very deep place to come at it from.
5
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Oh, don t take it personally.
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Don t let it upset you, because they don t know you.
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So the thing is, if you give into it, if you react to it, they re never going to get to know you anyways.
5
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So I m not saying it wasn t easy, because look, there was at least five or six guys who made every day pretty difficult on campus for me.
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But look, I d already been, John, through 10 different schools.
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They were doing it to me for a different reason.
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They used to do it for me because I wore pink, and then they did it to me because I played golf, and then they did it to me because I spoke funny, or they did it to me because I was short.
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Now it was just because I was a different color.
5
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That s all.
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So I ve already had people judge me and not see me for who I am already.
5
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This is not different.
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It s just a different way.
5
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You know, my minor is black political thought.
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So I was in class with people who, you know, to some point were quite militant.
5
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I understood why they didn t want me in there.
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But I understood the people that they listened to.
5
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And I listened to Louis Farrakhan speak.
5
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And I love a lot of what he has to say.
5
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A lot of what he has to say is right on point.
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But I can t agree with all of it because not all of it is true.
5
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Just like I can t listen to somebody else.
5
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And so to me,
5
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When you know what it feels like to be guilty till proven innocent, when you know what it feels like to walk into a room and have no chance, no chance, it s just very humbling.
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And if you don t accept it, you will lose your mind.
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And so I think whenever you have the opportunity to see through the lens that other people might see through,
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All it does is show you that we re all going through the exact same thing.
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So what did I learn?
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That we re the same.
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It s all the same.
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And there s not a two-year-old in Palestine right now who has any issue with a two-year-old kid in Israel.
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He s going to have to learn that.
5
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And if that type of hate can be taught, then as Mandela said, then that type of love can be learned.
5
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And so that s kind of what inspired me to do.
5
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Now, I m not saying that my dad gave me a ticket, a one-way ticket to Toronto.
5
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And he said, if you use this, and I think he grew up like a Catholic kid in a Protestant neighborhood.
5
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So he d been through his own 1945 Glasgow.
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He s been through his own deals.
5
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Right.
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And has a few scars to show for it.
5
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But that when he gave me that ticket, he goes, if you use it, I will completely understand.
5
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Right.
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Completely understand.
5
SPEAKER_00
My parents aren t naive to the situation in America as it relates to this.
5
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And, you know, most people are probably just going to be like most people are just good people who want to see their.
5
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who want to see their families do well and want the world to be OK, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
But he knows there s going to be agitators and it s going to be pretty tricky.
5
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But as I said to you before, it wasn t anything new.
5
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It was just for a new reason.
5
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And so I wish everyone I knew
5
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that looked like me had the ability to feel what I felt, because overnight it would change everything, because I was able to sit there.
5
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So when a black woman says when she s in a corporate setting that she feels like no one s listening to her, I completely know what she s saying, and she s completely being truthful, even though she might be from MIT with a PhD in something that no one else has studied.
5
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The amount of respect that I have for African-American women is through the roof because
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If you look at society, they have the steepest hill to climb.
5
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So when they get to the same place you re at, I really want to know them.
5
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I want to know how they did it.
5
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I want to know what they think.
5
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If I had my own podcast, I would completely want to know how they did what they did.
5
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Because for us, it s just easier, and we can t say that it s not.
5
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And if we don t admit that it is, then we re just buying into cults of personality that are just baiting our ignorance.
5
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And so I m so grateful.
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And then it showed me just to, you know what, just get up, just get up.
5
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Like, I could lay in bed.
6
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and be like, man, I got to go to English today.
6
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I hope those guys aren t sitting over by that tree today.
6
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Just go.
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And just go and just push through and just push through.
6
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And two weeks ago, I got a phone call from the Dean of Student Affairs at Tennessee State saying that on April the 12th, I m being inducted into the Tennessee State Hall of Fame.
6
SPEAKER_01
And that s just like, for me, players have won majors, they ve been number one.
6
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To that kid who got that ticket from his dad and was sitting in his room looking at that ticket, and then going for his first lunch and sitting at a table and everyone getting up and moving, if you told him at that point that he was going to be inducted into the Hall of Fame of that college,
6
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He would have told you that crack is terrible for you.
6
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It s a terrible drug.
6
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It s going to ruin your life.
6
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And so, I mean, to go full circle, of course, I could have learned a ton at Harvard.
6
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I m not saying that I couldn t.
6
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But what I learned there was pivotal to the rest of my time as a communicator and as a human being is to really sit and listen to people, knowing that they don t feel heard.
6
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And they have so much to say.
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And the thing is, because they don t feel heard, they ve got very articulate at what they know.
6
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So they re on a whole different level than I can be on.
6
SPEAKER_01
So at that moment, I probably wasn t grateful for it at all.
6
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But when I look back on it now, when you go through that kind of difficulty, like the way the SEALs train, when you go through that level of difficulty, then when you get out into what you re trained for, it becomes easier.
6
SPEAKER_01
I pretty much knew by the age I was 20 that I d probably never have to go through anything that difficult outside the death of a close family member.
6
SPEAKER_01
And to be able to be 20 and know that you ve been through the thick of it and you ve went through the most adversity you re probably ever going to go through, that s almost a golden ticket to the rest of your life.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, Sean, thank you for sharing that.
6
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And congratulations on the Hall of Fame.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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Well, I love all the people that we emulate, that we have statues of.
6
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Not any of them wanted a statue.
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They just wanted to benefit others.
6
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You know what I mean?
6
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They didn t want the whole statue.
6
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That was the opposite.
6
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We have a statue because they uplifted others, not because they wanted to be the face of it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I asked my audience when I heard you wanted to be on the podcast, if they had any questions for you and I got a couple from them and I m going to start the first one like this.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a famous quote that the opposite of love is not hate it s indifference.
6
SPEAKER_00
Apathy is spreading amongst golf fans or the PGA tour right now as someone who s deeply embedded in the world of golf.
6
SPEAKER_00
What s your analysis of the situation?
6
SPEAKER_01
Great question.
6
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Player on the Live Tour and I have players, like my six players on the PGA Tour.
6
SPEAKER_01
Look, inequality in every metric is expanding everywhere.
6
SPEAKER_01
The haves and the have-nots are getting further apart in every single industry.
6
SPEAKER_01
And I completely agree with this person, but the greed is embarrassing.
6
SPEAKER_01
But if someone said to me, hey, look, you know what?
6
SPEAKER_01
You re doing this job already, the same job, and you re gonna do it for more.
6
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but there s going to be less people there.
6
SPEAKER_01
But you re already in apex, at least in alpha, so you don t really care about your competitors.
6
SPEAKER_01
You see, it s very easy to occur, right?
6
SPEAKER_01
So the PGA Tour builds this idea that, you know, the PGA Tour is one happy family.
6
SPEAKER_01
I don t even know many families that are that happy.
6
Right?
6
SPEAKER_01
Like having a family is like the most impossible thing in the world.
6
SPEAKER_01
I won t say pick, because I actually beg.
6
SPEAKER_01
You can beg your wife.
6
SPEAKER_01
So you can choose your wife, but you can t choose your in-laws.
6
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And you certainly can t choose your kids.
6
SPEAKER_01
They just kind of come prepackaged, I think.
6
SPEAKER_01
If any of your viewers have any
6
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Insights for me on parenting, I would love it, because it seems fairly impossible.
6
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, I agree.
6
SPEAKER_01
The thing is, golf is still a niche sport.
6
SPEAKER_01
So if you look at what the industry brings in, and then you look at what the players are asking for, it doesn t really match.
6
SPEAKER_01
So the fact that pro golfers think they should be getting the same money as Steph Curry and LeBron, that s just mathematically not true.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s just mathematically not true.
6
SPEAKER_01
So the thing is, because it was kind of the only show in town for a long, long time, whenever things that would
6
SPEAKER_01
you know, appear to be a monopoly happen, you just have blinders to what s actually happening.
6
SPEAKER_01
So are we being treated well enough?
6
SPEAKER_01
Are we, and so what Liv did, Liv comes in and says, hey, look, we re going to do this, this, and this.
6
SPEAKER_01
And people go, you can t do that.
6
SPEAKER_01
They re like, oh, we can do that.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re actually going to do that, right?
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And for me, where it really changed from a feeling standpoint was being in Mexico and seeing John Rahm walk into the locker room.
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And look, I m not, you make your own decisions in your life.
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I ll make my decisions in my life.
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If your decisions in your life
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have a negative effect on my life, then we ll discuss it.
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If it has no effect on my life whatsoever, you just, you re good.
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You do your thing and I ll do my thing and that s great.
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And so I don t feel that way.
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But, you know, as kids, we all paid to play golf, and we loved it.
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Like, and we loved it.
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And I faked sick from school so many times, thinking my parents didn t know that I was faking it.
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That s the thing you learn now as a parent.
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I m like, go to school, you re fine.
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Like, that s all I wanted to do.
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And I was paying for it.
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And I was working at a golf course so I could play at the golf course.
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And now,
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I m getting paid to do it at the best places in the world, being treated excellent, having a lot of people out there to support me that I don t know.
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And I m not making enough money and I m miserable.
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Like, so I used to pay to do it and I loved it.
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And now I m paid to do it and it s become like polluted and perverted and convoluted.
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And so that, that s my question.
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Like, I want to make sure that I take care of my family.
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Well, you re already at 70 million.
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I think you re probably good, right?
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Like, we should analyze the fact that, like, should there technically be a billionaire on Earth, right?
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Like, in Shantopia, John, when you get to 999,999,999, every dollar after that just goes into programs for children.
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Like, let s just be real.
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I looked in the dictionary the other day, and philanthropy was the synonym for guilt.
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But I feel for these fans, and I feel it myself.
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And when I watch it, it s changed.
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And when things change, you know, you always give things the benefit of the doubt, right?
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I tell my son, always give people the benefit of the doubt.
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First time you meet them, you show them love.
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If it s not, give them back.
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The second time you meet them, you show them compassion.
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If not, give them back.
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There s no third time.
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Don t even embrace the ability not even to like them.
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That s unnecessary.
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Just let them be, you know, atoms just like you are, and you can just go and live.
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Having disdain isn t even worth it.
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Don t even have that, because that s going to kill you one cell at a time.
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It s not going to do anything to them.
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And that s giving it the benefit of the doubt.
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But once you see things for what they are, you re going to have to act according.
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So when I m watching the telecast, it doesn t feel like it used to.
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I can feel the friction.
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I can feel the fraction.
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I can feel it on the range of the tour.
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So what the fans are seeing, we re feeling.
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And, you know,
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PGA Tour is almost like two levels now.
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And Live is what forced their hand.
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I mean, Live was the Trojan horse to professional sports.
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That s all it was.
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It was the Trojan horse.
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It gave them the opportunity to get into how they wanted to get in.
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And then, you know, I mean, in this world, whoever has the most is probably going to end up on top.
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And the PGA Tour for me and the Live Tour, I have great friends on both of them.
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There s great players on both of them.
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But it s, you know, it s been a complete change and it s a shift.
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But yeah, we just want to watch them play golf, you know, and so many people out there struggling and watching golf for them on the weekend might be a respite from the reality that they re going through in the moment.
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And, you know, they re seeing a bunch of grown men argue over billions of dollars.
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It s probably insulting.
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And I think a follow-on question to that is with all these changes, there s now ongoing debates around the qualification process for majors.
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What s your perspective on the effectiveness of the OWGR system?
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And do you believe it s outdated and is there a need for a new system?
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Yeah, that whole thing I don t get.
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I think I went through calculus like seven times.
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So as far as the math of that system,
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I m already not good at like what we know to be standard math.
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So once they get into that whole thing where I m kind of like, so hold on.
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So if I play these next two tournaments and do well, I would lose world ranking points because of my what?
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So this is what I ve said a million times to agents and players.
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I don t understand that.
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And they re like, yeah, but if you look at it like this, I m like, I still don t understand that.
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I don t think it s understandable.
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This is, you know, life is like, like, look, life s an extension of high school cafeteria, right?
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We just get older and gray and put a couple pounds on, but it s still emotionally the same type of thing.
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So us versus them, like Pink Floyd so righteously said.
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And so we keep saying we want to.
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Liv is saying we re doing it for the game and the PGA Tour says we re doing it for the game.
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Okay.
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All right.
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So when the game s at its best, we re at a major.
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1,000%.
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That is when the game s at its best.
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That s when I m in St.
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Andrews on a beautiful night with 50,000 people in this small town and golf is just encompassing this whole thing and it s amazing, right?
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I even get goosebumps talking about it.
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That s a major.
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So you want, and it feels like that because you ve got the best, best players.
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That s what the Super Bowl feels like.
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That is what the NBA championship feels like.
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You re there watching greatness.
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These are the best of the best in that moment.
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So not having Brooks or Dustin or Bryson or Wako or Mito or Sergio, it s not the best.
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It s just not, like Taylor Gooch said the other day, that if there s certain players not in the Masters and Rory wins it, there s an asterisk.
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that I completely disagree with that, okay?
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If Roy McIlroy ever wins anything, often it s by like seven anyways.
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So that was unnecessary, but that s just a guy, you know, a young man feeling his game.
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He s been playing good.
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He s made $40 million and he makes a comment.
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I don t agree with it.
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If he feels that way, that s fine.
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But if they re not all there, then you can t say that it s the best field.
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And the best field is what s good for golf because
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The best field is what gets the best level of golf, which means that we re going to be watching on television, and young kids are going to be getting inspired to see it, and things change.
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But the fact that it s gone more towards greed and power isn t astoundingly alarming.
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I mean, what isn t?
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What s not going that way?
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So this is, I think, just matches very much the kind of social direction or flow of where we re at right now.
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Okay.
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And then along these same lines, the last question would be players are getting bigger.
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Just like every sport they re hitting the ball farther, et cetera, which is bringing about the golf ball rollback.
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How do you think it s going to impact scores for both pros and amateurs?
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This is so unnecessary, by the way.
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It s so unnecessary.
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I m not saying it s a done deal.
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It s so unnecessary.
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I have not found anything in the last 20 years that s made golf easier.
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I am on FaceTimes with grown men at night who are thinking of ending it completely.
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It s over.
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I don t want to play anymore.
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And they all hit it further than they used to.
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And they all hit it further when they used to be exactly the same.
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about the game, okay?
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So I don t think the average handicap has changed in 30 years, even though we went from wood to things that make up F-35 fighter jets, because you can make the ball better.
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You can make the clubs better.
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If we don t understand the game, if we don t understand where our emotions come from, if we don t understand our experience of success and failure and trial and error, it doesn t matter.
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So golf is an EQ game.
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It s an EQ game, right?
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If you have high emotional intelligence, golf will still be painful, but you won t suffer through it.
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So I just completely disagree with it.
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And you know, the fact that, I mean, now all these manufacturers are gonna have to go and spend millions of dollars to create new molding machines to change it.
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I don t think it s a done deal yet, but I don t think it s gonna make golf any better.
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It s just,
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You know, they say we re taking up too much land and the environment and all that.
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Okay.
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I get that.
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But you know, like these lithium batteries aren t great for the environment.
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Like you could literally poke holes in every single theory on the planet.
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Right.
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So.
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I think that as the game was getting, as it got tiger eyes, right.
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Cause the, the luckiest thing that PGA tour has ever had is tiger woods.
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Right.
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So you can say what we did these great deals with the NBC not without the kid in the red shirt.
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I mean that was and what did he do.
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He had speed.
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He hit it hard.
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He was aggressive.
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He pumped his fist.
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How is that bad for golf when it actually blew golf up.
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And so now we re just in the standard in a day where
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Way more people than just him can do it, and we re trying to go back in time.
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We re trying to make America great again.
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America s been great for a long time.
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Doesn t mean it s not unscathed from a lot of terrible shit, but still great.
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Like, I live here and pay taxes.
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I could be in Canada.
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So why do I want to go backwards, you know?
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Why go back to when it was what, to who?
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So I just think it s, I don t think it s necessary.
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Um, and I really deeply, I ve had a lot of people who believe it s why it should be that way.
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And they ve explained it to me and they, you know, look, they have every right to explain it that way.
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But I ve been on the PGA tour for 18 years.
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I remember when players used to smoke in the fairway and hangovers was a daily thing.
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Okay.
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And now we have cold plunges, we have red light saunas, we have trainers, chiros, therapists, neuropsychologists.
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I haven t met a kid who s 21 or 22 doesn t jump onto a 60 inch box.
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Yes, I know the ball is faster.
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Yes, I know that the club is hotter.
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but forces mass times acceleration.
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And these guys are able to create a lot more of it, a lot more of it.
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And so then they say, well, we had them hit an old driver with an old ball.
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Okay, I don t mind if they hit the old ball, as long as the ball s made today, like on today.
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The ball s 25 years old.
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Of course, it s not gonna go as far as it once did.
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Do your knees feel like they did 25 years ago, John?
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Heck no.
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I don t even, they don t even feel like knees anymore, man.
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Well, especially in your situation when you re on them all the time.
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Well, I m going to end on this question.
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I heard you bring this up on another podcast that you were on and it s actually the focal point of the last chapter that I wrote in my book that just came out.
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And that is the main thing about the main thing is keeping the main thing, the main thing.
7
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It s so easy to say, but so hard to do.
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What are your thoughts on that?
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The main thing is just learning, man.
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Just learning, learning more about the game of golf, learning more about the people that I walk by every day, learning more about the economy, learning more about the music I like, learning, reading books all the time.
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To me, the main thing has been curiosity.
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And, but I was raised in a society that says, remember son, curiosity killed the cat.
7
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And I m like, you just want me to be a robot.
7
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People say like, be true to yourself.
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I don t actually know what that means.
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I don t think a lot of people know who they are because they re all trying to be somebody else or they ve been taught to become something that they weren t.
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So I don t really like throw outs like that.
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Like be positive or be true.
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Or I love when players go, I just have to find a way to stay out of my own way.
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And I m like, what does that even mean?
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Like, why do people say that?
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Like, put your finger on that.
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So I think the main thing for me is just, in my life, it would be love.
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In my business, it would be curiosity.
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So for somebody who can say a lot about things, if I m to bring it down to that, if I can say at the end of my life that I stayed curious the whole time and that I had a lot of love for everyone I met, then I think it won t matter if I m remembered.
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I just think I ll be sitting there at peace knowing that I had a good go, you know?
7
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Like, I had a good life.
7
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Well, Sean, thank you so much for being here today.
7
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This honor is very cool.
7
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I m not trying to branch out of golf, but as you can tell, like Nick Saban is not just a basketball coach.
7
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You just weren t an it guy.
7
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We re all so much and we re all the same.
7
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So I think that what s cool about the world now is that interviewers were only like Barbara Walters or Michael Wallace.
7
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And now anybody can be interviewers.
7
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And we realized like.
7
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there s lots of great content out there where we can really uplift and help people.
7
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Because when I turn a lot of the journalism on or people asking questions, doing interviews, they re all things that I wish I could unlearn or unhear.
7
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Well, thank you so much.
7
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I thoroughly enjoyed that interview with Sean Foley, and I want to thank Sean for the honor of coming on today s show.
7
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Links to all things Sean will be in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
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Please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we featured here on the show.
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Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles and our Clips channel at passionstruckclips.
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Please check them both out and subscribe.
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Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place at passionstruck.com slash deals.
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Please consider supporting those who support the show.
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If you want to follow me and get daily inspiration and go to John R. Miles on all the social platforms.
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If you want to join our weekly challenge and get inspirational news delivered to your doorstep every week, then go to passionstruck.com and sign up for our newsletter titled Live Intentionally.
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You re about to hear a preview of the PassionStruck podcast that I did with Ethan Mollick, a Wharton professor and author of the groundbreaking book, Cointelligence, Living and Working with AI.
7
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I think in the long term, I am worried the subtle stuff starts to matter.
7
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If we give up more authority and control, if we re not in the loop, then I worry a lot about the kind of biases that AI has in making decisions.
7
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If you re still in the loop and it s one of the voices
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you re listening to, like another human mentor, then there s a lot more value in it.
8
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The fee for the show is that you share it with family and friends when you find something useful or interesting.
8
SPEAKER_01
And if you know someone who s really into golf or wants to hear the coaching philosophy of Sean Foley, then definitely share this episode with them.
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In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.
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Now, until next time, go out there and become PassionStruck.