After an opening interlude about repetition, we spend the majority of this coaching hour discussing how determination and commitment work together, but how determination can sometimes become expectation.
Gil: Don Yost called me about a week ago, telling me some of the things that his accordion instructor had been talking to him about, and I want to start off with that. Don, tell me a little more about what the fellow said.
Don: Let me give a bit of a preamble, okay?
Gil: Okay.
Don: I bought a button accordion for myself for Christmas, and I have zero experience at any musical instrument, and there’s a shop here with a hotbed of accordion players from the bay, and I started to take some lessons once every two weeks. After a couple of weeks with the right hand playing the melody, I didn’t have any problem memorizing and picking out tunes and learning to play by ear.
The difficulty comes when you try to integrate left hand chords and accompaniment to the right hand melody because they are not doing the same thing. So I took a special lesson on that, and I was expecting to really get quite a bit of information and start rolling right away. But the way he started the lesson was to play one note on the right hand and one note on the left hand. I thought, “Hmm, okay.”
So I did that and he says, “Okay, now play two on the right and one on the left.”
I worked that out with two on the right and one on the left. And he says, “Now repeat it, and repeat it, and repeat it slowly.”
After perhaps 20 times with no more comments from him he asked me if I was bored. I said, “Yeah, I’m pretty bored.”
And he says, “Great, you’ve got it in your subconscious now, let’s move on to three notes plus two.”
So we very gradually increased the workload. We doubled it and then we went back to the beginning and repeated it. But the underlying principle was slow, methodical practice until you are bored, bored silly, in order to move from the mechanical into the subconscious. And that’s about it.
Gil: I thought that was very unique. I thought that how you did it from three notes until you were bored, about 20 times until you were bored, and I believe we’ve mentioned the magic number called 17. You’ve got to do something 17 times to get it into the subconscious. Then he introduced something else, and you did something else for a while and then you went back to that original note for a while to reinforce that.
Don: That’s correct.
Gil: And I’d never heard it stated that way: until you become bored with it, you’re doing it consciously.
Don: In practice, right.
Gil: Probably wouldn’t work with your gun mount.
Don: I don’t think so.
Gil: (laughs) There’s just no way it would work practicing your gun mount.
Virgil, I’m glad you’re here. I’m going to talk with you after I talk about determination and commitment tonight. You and me are going to talk about getting there, and then we’ll talk about Seminole this year and some of your practice routines, basically what we talked about last night.
Virgil: All right.
Gil: I had an “ah-hah!” I’m sure you’ve all thought about this, and I’m sure I’m probably telling you something you already know. I was on the way to the ranch last week and I was talking to myself about commitment. I do that frequently, mainly just to impress myself with how intelligent I am. And I am easily impressed when I’m talking to myself, but it occurred to me about commitment, that you can’t be focused more than you are committed.
That probably doesn’t mean much to you, but I think if I turn the sentence around it will probably mean more. The more committed you are, the more focused you become. When I’m talking about committed here, I’m talking about being really committed to the breakpoint and committed to focus. This thought process came out when I was talking to myself driving down the road talking about commitment and how valuable it is in performance.
It occurred to me that if you’re not committed in thought or committed in action then there are way too many things on your mind. You’ve only got 100 percent concentration, so if you’re not really focused and committed on what you’re about to do, if you’re not really determined to be committed about what you’re about to do, then there are other things in your mind that are taking your focus away from being 100 percent committed to what you’re doing.
It sounds like I’m going around in double talk, but this is a powerful thing, guys. You’ve got to be determined to be committed in thought and action. You’ve got to be committed to the plan and you’ve got to be committed to the breakpoint. I mean, nothing else on your mind. And you have to believe in the plan, and you have to believe in the breakpoint, and you’ve got to believe in everything you’re about to do. Because when you’re shooting and you’re not committed, it allows your focus to be on everything but the breakpoint. If it’s not on the plan and the breakpoint, then it will be on mechanics. I think Dean Olson calls it “going crazy”. Because when you’re shooting, if you’re not totally committed in the plan and the breakpoint, your mind is going to wander, and it’s going to be on other things.
Now, I never really thought about the fact that the greater the commitment to the breakpoint, the greater the ability to focus. As I began to talk about it and think about it and reason with myself, I began to go through the journey that we’ve been on in quieting the voice in the breakpoint and what we see in many shooters, not only in those in the beginning stages, not you guys, because you guys are all committed, or you should be committed.
You guys are so committed to what you’re doing that you under- stand commitment, but the overwhelming majority of the people who play this game are never focused on one thing. They’re never commit- ted to doing anything. Which means that, when they perform, they’re thinking about swing mechanics, they’re thinking about pulling away, they’re thinking about lead, they’re thinking about score, or they’re thinking about what station they’re on. And I’m guilty of that, too.
They’re thinking about the weather, they’re thinking about the sun, they’re thinking about rain, they’re thinking about background noise, somebody started a golf cart just when I called pull, they’re thinking about choke selection, they’re thinking about ammo selection, and all of these things, when you focus on them all at one time, or even one or two of them, they all excite the emotion of fear, the fear of missing.
There is emotion attached to every one of them. Just the fact that you’re thinking about your swing mechanics means that you doubt your swing mechanics. Just the fact that you’re thinking about lead means you doubt your subconscious ability to put the gun where it needs to be. They all take you into the future or the past. They take you away from the present. And the overwhelming majority of those things, when you’re performing, you don’t have any control over them. You don’t have any control over sun or the background noise. You’ve got control over choke selection and shot selection, I agree with that, but you can’t be thinking swing mechanics. You can’t be thinking about lead. It’s a matter of eliminating all of the other thoughts through commitment to the breakpoint. I will tell you again that it occurs to me and I have seen this happen in most of you and in myself, that the amount of commitment to the breakpoint totally determines the amount and your ability to focus.
I’ve never really put those phrases together and put those words together that way. Does it not stand to reason to you guys that the greater the commitment to the breakpoint, the quieter the voice gets? We’ve all experienced that. I know Driscoll experienced that at the ranch last weekend. He was out there shooting and he shot and missed a pair, and said, “You know, that voice was talking to me the whole time I was getting ready to shoot.”
I said, “Okay, don’t do anything, don’t even start your routine until you’ve stared in the breakpoint long enough and committed to the breakpoint and believed that you can break the target there. Don’t even start your routine until you’ve stared in that breakpoint until the voice gets quiet.” I want you all to know that he did it, and he looked at me and smiled and said, “There ain’t no voice.”
You’re going to hear the word commitment in the next several min- utes and when I say commitment I’ll use the analogy I used last month. It takes a greater commitment to step out the door of the airplane than it does to get off the bench and walk to the door. It’s all about that 100 percent commitment to the plan, the belief in the plan, the decisiveness of the plan, that eliminates all extraneous thoughts from your mind and allows you to use 100 percent of your focus to focus on the target. So be committed in focus and I’d like for you all to think about that. The next time I talk to you on the phone or in person I’d like to talk to you about it a little bit. Brian, tell me what you thought about last month’s CD.
Brian Brewton: I just didn’t get it quick enough. I needed it.
Gil: (laughs) Everybody that I’ve talked to, and I talked to quite a few of you, has said that may have been one of the best I’ve ever done. Understanding all the steps in the zone going up, and more important- ly, understanding the downward spiral and the steps in the downward spiral. Many of you have said that it helped you to understand both sides of it, and also helped you recognize that trend toward hesitation and the confused state.
I listened to it three times as I was going down to the ranch, and Brian, I’m telling you, it’s a powerful thing. I want to go over that again not next month, but the month after next. I’ve expanded some things on that and I want to share those things with you.
Gil: Before we talk to our shooters, I want to discuss one more topic. It’s about determination and expectation. For a lot of people, expecta- tion is a very strange thing and it manifests itself in a lot of different emotions. It also results in a lot of different thoughts. And determina- tion can easily turn into expectation when your thoughts become outcome-based. When you’re trying to win, or trying to shoot a certain score, or trying to run a station, or trying to beat somebody, those outcome-based thoughts turn determination into expectation.
I don’t know who I stole this from; I think it was a football coach at Alabama. I don’t recall the man’s name, but I’ve read it several times in quotation marks with different people’s names on it, “The will to prepare to win is greater than the will to win.” And to steal a couple of words from last month, “You must determine your intention and then focus your attention on what it takes to produce it.”
Determination is a powerful thing. When you become determined to win, just to win, that determination turns into expectation very quickly. And that turns into disappointment. I know that Jack Parker was having trouble a few months ago with determining the difference in goals and expectations, and in talking to him the next day, I said, “Jack, let’s just say that we’re in a perfect world and if you win the lotto, you get everything. You don’t have to give the store a cut, and you don’t have to give the government a cut. Let’s just say you win it all. Let’s just say that on a whim you were driving by a convenience store and you went in and bought a ticket and three days later you realized that you won three million dollars.”
“You called in rich, you spent some time at the financial planner, and you’ve got a little mailbox money coming in every month. You’re still working part-time, but you’re shooting at a lot more tournaments. You’re really having fun, and you bought your wife a new car and let her redecorate the house, and the money has really brought a lot of pleasure. You’ve given some of it to the church, and you’ve helped the Boyscouts out and you did some stuff for Ducks Unlimited. You did a lot of good things with the money and you’ve been shooting tournaments, and about three months later you decide: Oh what the heck, the lottery’s up to 30 million, I’m just going to buy another ticket.”
“So you buy another ticket and you play your numbers—that was on Thursday—and you leave on Thursday afternoon. You go on a shoot out of town over in Montana, and while you’re over there, Saturday night or Sunday morning, you look at the paper and you realize your numbers were drawn again. Your wife is with you, you were having a hard time focusing on the last day of that shoot obviously because now you’re $30 million richer, and on the way home, your wife and you are talking about what all you’re going to do. You’re going to set up a trust fund at your local church to help the needy and you’re going to donate some of that money for good causes. You’re going to set up a scholarship fund at the NSCA for shooters who want to continue shooting while they’re in college, and you want to help the gun club out, you’re going to buy them some new traps.”
“There are just a lot of wonderful and good things that you want to do. And then you get back Sunday night and Monday, you drive to Boise to collect it. You go in there and you say, “My name’s Jack Parker, here’s my lotto ticket, where’s my $30 million?” The guy behind the counter looks at you and says, “I’m sorry Mr. Parker, but nine other people hit the same numbers when you did.” I gotta believe that Jack is pretty disappointed at this point in time, because he’s expecting to take home a check for $30 million. And even though he was going to do a lot of really good things with the money, his expectation created a disappointment. Although the net results in both instances were the same: when he played for three million he won three million, when he played for $30 million, he won three million. The net result was the same, but because of his expectation, because of spending 20 percent of the money in the car with his wife on the way home and getting excited about spending that money, his expectation created a different emotional response.”
After I told Jack about that, he seemed to have a little bit better grasp of expectation. Expectation is something you read into some- thing else. It’s more of a dream; it’s more of what you want rather than what you desire. It has to do with, I want it, but I’m not really willing to make the commitment to achieve it. It’s something that we all have to deal with, and it’s something that this segment is about.
You’ve got to be determined that you will not be denied by any outside influences or by any internal expectations, the opportunity to perform and learn more about yourself and your game. You must be determined to create the opportunity to let it happen. Whatever it is. It doesn’t matter if it’s a sporting clays score or a business deal or whatever, you’ve got to be determined to create the opportunity to let it happen.
Any worry you give to outcome is expectation. Worry is interest on a debt that may never come due. It’s good in business. It’s a necessity in business to always have future plans, goals and the goals are just goals, that’s what they are. They’re the reason you make short-term decisions to achieve a long-term goal.
But you have to understand that you control the future by being in the present. You’ve got to be determined to create the environment to succeed. The level of success will take care of itself. The more com- mitted you are to the plan and the breakpoint, the easier it is to focus mentally and physically. And yes, I am here to tell you, through person- al experience in watching you, that you’re actually able to see the targets easier and clearer, the more committed to the plan and the breakpoint that you are.
Now think about that. If you have a casual commitment to the breakpoint or a casual commitment to the plan, that means you have other thoughts in your mind that are detracting from focus. But if you have a determined commitment to focus and a determined commitment to the breakpoint, there are no other thoughts in there to distract you, and it actually becomes easier to see the targets and they become clearer. You must be determined to react and trust your routine and your plan. And the plan must be your plan. It can’t be somebody else’s plan, because you can’t be committed to someone else’s plan.
Having a good consistent routine makes belief and commitment easier to produce. We’ve talked about routine, and we’re going to talk to Virgil in a minute about routine. You must be determined to believe in the plan, and I would tell you that you can have the wrong plan, but if you believe in it enough, more often than not you’re going to be successful even if you have the wrong plan. And the more determined you are with that plan and the more you believe in that plan and the more you shoot that plan, even though you’re successful with risk, the more obvious it is what you have to do to change the plan in order to make it a better plan.
Your plan is only as good as your belief in it. The success is determined by your determination to carry it out. The more determined you are, the more powerful your visualization becomes. The easier it becomes, because there is nothing clouding your thought process.
When you’re determined to do your best to achieve your goals, they are definitely more easily achieved. And you need to be deter- mined to do your best to achieve them, as opposed to just being determined to have them. When you’re determined to have them, that’s expectation, but when you are determined to do your best to achieve them, that’s when they’re more easily achieved.
Gil: Listen to this. This hit me like a ton of bricks the other day. Your goals guide your idle thoughts. Think about that. The more determined you are to do the best you can to achieve your goals, the more determined you are to put yourself in a position so that you can allow your practice and your training to come out in order to have a great performance, the more determined you are to prepare to achieve your goals, then the more easily they are achieved. Your goals guide your idle thoughts. And you think about them constantly. You visualize frequently. The more determined you are the easier it is to visualize. The more you think it, the more it becomes you. You’ll end up being like Jack Parker because every time he rolls over and wakes up because his shoulder hurts, he thinks about breaking targets. Now that’s determination.
Just remember when we’re talking about goals, that you can’t be married to your goals. You’re going to have to change them. Things are going to happen that change your goals. That happened to Brian Brewton last year. It’s happened to some of you. It’s happened to me. I certainly had to change my goals this last year for hunting season because of a back problem. And it took Willy beating me up to get my head straight, but once I got it straight, my back got better. It’s amazing how that happens.
You’ve got to be determined to do the right thing regardless of the circumstances. And when I say determined to do the right thing, I really mean, don’t give up. You’re all going to have a bad day. I’m telling you, it’s going to happen. I had a couple last year shooting targets. But you don’t ever give up. You never give up. You always keep trying.
You always keep trying to blot those things out and the way you blot the extraneous things out is to focus harder on the breakpoint. Look for focus, look for feel. But even if it’s not there, you’ve got to always keep trying. Never give up. And you’ve got to be willing to forgive yourself for having a bad day. It’s going to happen to everybody. You must have a determination to shoot the breakpoint, to tie the voice up in the breakpoint like Driscoll learned to do last weekend.
You start your routine only if the voice shuts up. You stare in that first breakpoint until the voice does shut up. I know from personal experience, as many of you do, that the more you do this, the better you’ll get to know your inner voice and the easier it will be to make it quiet and controlled. You must be determined to trust the breakpoint. You’ve got to be determined to do whatever it is you need to do to trust. Each one of you is going to find certain things about your mechanical game that allow you to trust. It might be soft hands. It might be still eyes. It might be taking a deep breath. Whatever it takes for you to get there, you’ve got to be willing to do it. You also have to understand that trust comes from feel and commitment.
There’s that word again: commitment. The better the feel, the easier it is to trust. And the level of commitment controls the level of focus, which controls the level of feel, and these all control the level of trust. That’s why it’s so important to be committed to the breakpoint. Man, when you’re committed to that breakpoint, nothing can get in because you’re so focused on one thing. Your determination helps you justify all the hours of hard work you put in, working and preparing to achieve your goal.
I’ve said this before, but I’m going to say it again, and I’m going to say it again in October and November. It’s important at the end of the year that you reward yourself for all the time and money and effort you spent preparing to achieve your goal. Remember that spot on dominators I did last year, and we said that dominators in sports find it very difficult to savor victory. Even though they win, they know in their heart of hearts that they could have done it better. They’re never satisfied. They’re constantly willing to fail by trying new things to learn. And they understand completely, that which is lost by trying and failing is infinitely less destructive than that which is lost by not trying at all.
Log in or become a member to read the rest of this article.
