Mindset for Success on the Course and in Your Career with Dr. Mo Pickens

What mindset lessons can we learn from sports? With golf season in full swing, we brought in Dr. Mo Pickens, renowned sports psychologist and golf coach, whose clients have a combined 33 PGA TOUR^® victories, including four majors. Dr. Mo shared insights on mindset, framing and routine, and how these important principles can help you succeed on the course and in your career.  

Travelers is proud to be the Official Property Casualty Insurance Provider of the PGA TOUR^® and title sponsor of the 2025 Travelers Championship^®, which takes place June 18-22. We’re excited to bring the game of golf to aspiring golfers of all levels through programs like SHE Golfs, our initiative that has brought over 3,500 new golfers to the course and created access to valuable networking opportunities since its launch in 2022.  

Please note: Due to the nature of the replays, survey and chat features mentioned in the webinar recordings below are no longer active.

Summary

What did we learn? Here are the top takeaways from Mindset for Success on the Course and in Your Career with Dr. Mo Pickens:

Starting with a solid foundation can improve your golf game and career. “Your foundation is you as a person, outside the arena. And who you are affects what you’re doing in the arena,” Pickens said, noting that the “arena” could be the golf course or the boardroom. A solid foundation includes the basics such as sleep, exercise and a healthy diet, he said. Starting your day intentionally also can have a substantial impact on your foundation, so Pickens recommends spending 15 to 20 minutes doing something other than reaching for your phone or checking your email as soon as you wake up. “For some people, it might be going for a run in the morning. For others it might be listening to your favorite podcast,” he said. “You want to do something that sets the tone for your day.”

Pickens’ four R’s can help you get better results in golf and at work. “Everyone, no matter what their job is, produces some sort of result,” Pickens said. “That could be successful surgery if you’re a surgeon, selling a house if you’re a real estate agent or, in golf, it’s producing the lowest score you can.” In golf, it’s common to hear the advice, “Play one shot at a time,” he said, adding that this is easier said than done. However, he noted that if you have a repeatable process to take yourself through, you might be more likely to be successful at the shot. This is why he developed the four R’s, which stand for:

• Refocus: Decide what you’re going to do
• Routine: Set your pre-shot actions and thoughts
• React: Swing the club
• Relax: Take downtime between shots

Prioritizing relaxation throughout your day is a powerful strategy for enhancing your effectiveness in both sports and professional settings. “Around 75% to 80% of your day on the golf course should be spent relaxing, which is contrary to what a lot of people believe,” Pickens said. Relaxation in the form of wellness breaks can be beneficial in the workplace as well. Your job likely requires a large amount of mental energy, and that makes it essential to restore your supply in between tasks to improve your focus, he explained. For example, if you’ve got a big meeting coming up at 11 a.m. and you’ve finished preparing and envisioning your desired outcome, consider taking a few minutes beforehand to go for a short walk, listen to a favorite song or do some breathing exercises. “Just relax, get away from it for a little bit,” he said. “Thinking about the meeting all morning seems like the right thing to do but it’s actually not, because it uses up so much of your mental energy.”

Preparation and practice are not the same thing. Both are essential in golf and in business, Pickens said. Preparation involves acquiring knowledge, such as attending a seminar or going to lunch with a mentor, he said. “But just having the knowledge doesn’t make you better at your job. You have to apply it.” For example, if you’re in sales you might prepare by attending a conference to learn new techniques for closing sales more effectively. But then you need to practice, such as by going back to the office and doing role playing with colleagues, he said. “If you don’t, that knowledge is not likely to show up when you get under pressure, and we all get under pressure on sales calls and playing golf,” he said.

Self-talk is a powerful tool in sports, work and life. Neuroscientists have found we have as many as 80,000 thoughts a day, Pickens said. “We’re all going to say some negative things, but it’s important how we say them,” he said. First, keep negative feedback focused on skills, and characterize it as temporary, he said. For example, the phrase “I always putt badly” feels personal and permanent, but describing what went wrong today allows you to envision what you can do to putt better next weekend. Second, try to keep negative thoughts in your head while voicing positive ones aloud, he said. “Any time we say something out loud, it has three times the effect,” he said, adding that you can simply whisper “nice putt, good work” to yourself as you’re walking across the green. But this advice isn’t limited to golf. “It applies all across life, especially as you’re mentoring or raising others,” he said.

Take a page from the golf playbook and use movement to manage stress. It’s difficult to “think your way out of stress,” Pickens said. Breathing techniques can be an excellent tool to use when stress spikes, but you can also manage stress kinesthetically, meaning through awareness of the movement or position of your body. At work, that might mean focusing on your toes and how they feel in your shoes as you’re walking down the hall toward a meeting, Pickens said, noting that golfers use this technique, keeping coins or other small objects in their pocket to jingle between shots. “If you can distract yourself kinesthetically, it can help lower your stress,” he said.  

Speaker

 
Dr. Mo Pickens
Sports Psychologist and Golf Coach 

Host

Joan Woodward
President, Travelers Institute; Executive Vice President, Public Policy, Travelers