Dr. Bhrett McCabe is a clinical sports psychologist who works with some of the world’s top golfers and the University of Alabama.
There's a scene in the Netflix series "Drive to Survive" that Dr. Bhrett McCabe particularly likes.
A top driver has his car stuck in sixth gear and radios to his crew in a panic, believing the race is slipping away.
"Just drive. Just drive with what you got," a crew member responds.
"He ended up winning the race," McCabe said. "It was brilliant because a lot of times, we're like, 'Why is this always happening? Why are we always failing in this position?'
"Just slow down."
McCabe is a clinical and sports psychologist who, for decades, has worked with some of the world's top golfers to address performance struggles and cultivate resilience strategies.
A former baseball player at LSU under the legendary Skip Bertman, McCabe also works with the Milwaukee Brewers and athletes and coaches from the University of Alabama to hone their processes and navigate performance anxiety.
"I think we make a mistake for stoicism saying that we're unemotional," he said. "Stoicism is the fact that I can handle anything before me. Why waste energy trying to fear it and protect against it?"
Best of 7 spoke to McCabe about processing negative thoughts, preventing the mind from spiraling, and why anger isn’t always bad.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
Dr. McCabe, why do you believe trying to eliminate doubts or negative thoughts is a mistake?
Your mind is constantly working. It’s never static, and if you look at elite players, the best of the best, they have negative thoughts. Rory (McIlroy) talked about that when he won the Players Championship walking to the 17th green in the playoff. “Why would my mind go to having a negative thought about hitting it in the water?” The mind has to evaluate those environments, so it sends thoughts out there that I call test balloons. It's like weather radar. It's looking for storms on the horizon, and it's pinging to prepare you.
Doubt is internal. It's a self-belief challenge. Negative thoughts may be an external challenge, but all they’re telling you is that there's potential. They’re not telling you that’s reality. But what happens is because we're usually disturbed by that thought and the nature of it, we add emotion to it, and emotion only increases negative thoughts.
But thoughts are nothing more than weather pains. They’re just working through the environment. You don't have to believe them.
How do you then prevent negative thoughts from taking over?
I use the analogy of changing the channel or turning the radio station. You have the power to pivot.
There are times where we have a high belief in what we’re doing, and we’re O.K. But if you get up in the morning and you're running late, and your computer’s going through a reboot, and you spill coffee on your shirt, and a train stops your progress, all of a sudden, you start to believe and internalize your failures, when in reality, it could just be a series of bad events that are kind of unrelated but create a pattern.
What you have to do is look at it and say, “Today sucks” or “I’m having a hard day.” That’s fact, and there’s nothing wrong with presenting data. But what we have to understand is that we don't need to bring drama to the data. In the heat of the moment, we often ask “Why?” questions. But it's not the time to solve the problems. It's the time to endure, to stay in the resiliency, to keep fighting away with the elements.
What ultimately is self-belief to you?
I think the ultimate way to look at self-belief is not what can you do — it’s what can you endure? Belief is I can stand up to anything. I don't need it to go my way, but I can endure. I can stand in the fire. I can stand up to the challenge.
I don't think we always walk around with a lot of belief. We’re not peacocking out there. We're not saying how great we are all the time. I think we have to be in a position of knowing that things are really hard, but the moment doesn't define us.
I know you also think circumstances heavily determine perspective.
I asked a player last night when I was driving home, "If I asked you to lean over the edge of a balcony and look down, would you do it?" He's like, "Absolutely not." I said, "Even on the first floor?"
He said, "Well, that's different." I said, "What's different?" Circumstances are different. The circumstances are defined by the consequences that could possibly happen on the first floor. If you spontaneously had a muscle spasm and fell over, you're probably not going to hurt yourself as if you did it on the 100th floor. There's a pretty significant risk there.
That's just like competition. When we're practicing, there's no consequences. But when we're in the heat of the moment, there's a lot of consequences, so what happens is we try to control things more. The same kid who on the first floor would lean over and not think about it on the 100th floor is going to hold back, probably anchor himself in, have somebody hold him by the pant legs. He's going to do everything to protect against the consequences.
Several good thoughts. Why don't you have issues with an athlete demonstrating anger?
Anger is a primary emotion. There's nothing wrong with it. If you care, if you are engaged, you're probably going to have anger when things don't go your way.
The problem is the secondary emotion, the anger about being angry or using that anger to attack yourself. That’s where the downstream effect happens, and when that cascade happens, it influences behaviors, it influences perspective, and it influences belief. I'm fine with anger if you can stop the cascade.
Why are awareness and acceptance so important to you?
If somebody was driving down the road and cuts you off, there's probably some days you'd be angry. But if you get up on their tail and you ride them, you're playing a stupid game.
If you’re aware of “That just pissed me off. They just damn near killed me. I need to back away for a little bit, because I'm not going to make a good decision. I need to slow down. I need to not get distracted. I need to do the things I need to do,” you’re going to be better off. You can be angry and be happy and be worried. But don't build the secondary emotions on top of each other.
I want to shift a bit. You played baseball for legendary LSU Coach Skip Bertman. You’ve spent a lot of time around Nick Saban at Alabama as well. What do the great coaches you've seen up close have in common that might not be obvious?
They don’t hold grudges. I think coaches make very fast, knee-jerk reactions on a player’s ability to perform, and then when something goes wrong, they make long-term conclusions. If somebody made a mistake — acts out, if they lip off — they didn't hold grudges. They gave people the right to self-correct. They gave support to players to find a way to mature and grow. They didn't write players off.
I see it all the time right now. A kid is a freshman and, "He’s no good." Well, why don't you invest in him? "NIL and the transfer portal." I get it. It sucks when employees leave us and you invested in them. But if you don't invest in them, you're guaranteeing that they're going to leave.
What I learned…
I said to Dr. McCabe that it sounded like Bertman and Saban weren’t overly impulsive. But he corrected me a bit.
“They weren't calm. They were highly demanding, which results in high impulse, and they would let it rip,” he said.
“But I think they were very good at seeing down the road what they needed to do in anticipation of what they would face. You can call that experience.”
That ability to anticipate storms without being overly consumed by hypotheticals is a significantly underrated leadership quality in my opinion.
Additionally, McCabe said that he thinks coaches should write more frequently — and even have their own philosophy binders.
“If I hired a new chef for a restaurant, I would expect them to come in with a book of business, how they do things. But we all walk around like, ‘I got it all up here,’” he said.
“Well, how do we remember that? If we’re constantly changing what we do with our assistant coaches, how are we going to expect them to be successful?”