2005-09 September 2005 Coaching Hour – Staying Positive at Nationals

In the lead up to the 2005 National Sporting Clays Championships, Vicki starts by covering practice, visualization, anchor points, and first station reminders. Gil follows up with a talk about correction routines, what they are and how to implement them.

The other major topics for this hour include staying relaxed and whether it’s beneficial to watch the targets that other people shoot.

We finish up with ways to implement the “big ju-ju” of Neuro Linguistic Programming, and how to leave outcome-oriented goals at the gate.

Nationals Prep with Vicki

Gil: Vicki, why don’t you go ahead and get started and we’ll just kind of let her roll and see where it takes us.

Vicki: All right. Nationals are nine days away, and I hope that every- one is ready. I know you’re ready to go, looking forward to enjoying the festivities and enjoying even more—killing some clay targets. So what are we going to do for the next nine days before Nationals? Well, you want to go practice the easy targets. This is the time when you want to gain your confidence. You don’t want to go into Nationals having any doubts about your shooting. So go to the shoot feeling good about your shooting with no doubts. You do that by just shoot- ing close, easy targets.

Gil and I went out this weekend, and we had more fun because on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, which was quite a feat for us, we got to go and shoot about a case a day. Of course, by Monday both of our arms were dying. (Laughter)

But all we did was shoot really close, easy targets. We shot all pairs and our goal was to get the feel back with our guns and to become acquainted with them again.

To  feel that connection, to get where when you call pull you went to the breakpoint and nothing else mattered and you  trusted  your point, of course. But it was really fun to get back and just shoot and get the feel back, which we just hadn’t done in several months. The second thing that everybody needs to start doing is to take five minutes out of your day and visualize, and I know we’ve talked about this. And, you know, a lot of people kind of say, nah, I don’t like to do that; but I will tell you that it’s a very, very powerful tool. The more I learn about this NLP and how to use our brains correctly, the more books and articles that I read, they always talk about visualization; or, as one book calls it, the head edge. All visualization is, is mentally rehearsing what you want to happen. I know that we’ve probably talked about this, but   there are several articles on the free-throw study where they had three separate groups of people shooting free throws. They all came the first day and shot. They had one group that came the first day and then didn’t shoot until the last day. They had one group that came the first day, visualized for an hour for 30 days, and then came back and shot free throws on the last day. Then the third group was people that came every day for one hour and shot free throws. And what they found was that the first group, of course, coming the first day and the last day, didn’t improve any; but the second group and the third group, those groups that had come the first day visualized for an hour and came the last day, and the group that came every day for 30 days improved the same amount.

And there’s another study that I read about where the U.S. Olympic Ski Team was divided into two groups. One actually did the race down the hill, and then one did visualization. The coach, after a couple of days, realized that the group that was visualizing every day and then racing was improving faster than the group that really did it. So he made a quick decision that the Olympic Ski Team would all do part visualization and part running down that silly mountain. The biggest thing, I think, was visualization, because it lets you become very focused. You’re very relaxed and you’re ready to go shoot targets, and that’s what it takes to be a peak performer. Be focused, be relaxed and ready for anything that comes about.

Gil: And something that I learned just working with Bob Palmer—we’ll talk about this in a minute. But to not just visualize just the simple things in the event but to visualize the whole thing. Visualize how it feels. Visualize in color. The pictures are moving. You can see it. You can hear it.

And we’ve talked about this over and over again; but I guess I didn’t really realize how visually you can visualize. But to really get lost in it and let your emotions show in that visualization process, I think, is really important. The deeper you can go into that process, the better— and it doesn’t have to be about shooting. It can be about anything. Anytime you had a peak performance, whether it was closing a business deal, or whether it was giving a talk.

I mean, I’ve even visualized some of the days when I’ve come off of the coaching course and said: “I was as good today as I’ve ever been. I mean, my timing was right. My calls were right. The people were receptive.” Interestingly enough the people have as much to do with having a stellar performance as anything. Just like in our game the targets have a lot to do with a stellar performance, but I know that the more you do it the easier it is. I was in here going over the NLP stuff this afternoon, and I was just reading some of the exercises that Bob gave us, and I thought that I would do some of them.

And the more I do them the easier they are to do, and the more you visualize the easier it is for you to visualize, but it also goes back to how we redefine visualization. It’s more about how it feels. It’s not how it looks. It’s how it feels, what you felt like when you were in that situation; and that’s critical, and we’ll talk about that a little bit more when we talk about the NLP stuff.

Vicki: I think we can talk about that a little bit right now because you want to have that good feeling when you go to any shoot or when you walk into a situation that you’re not real familiar or comfortable with. And if you can visualize it, how the sun feels or how the grass smells or anything that you can add to that to make it more colorful, it’s just going to happen.

And all of these books that I’ve been reading on this NLP, and it goes into such detail, and it talks about, you know, Tiger Woods and Mark McGuire, and all of these people who are just excellent in their sport, but they all visualize; and I don’t think that we put enough emphasis on that, to make everybody get really into it. And it doesn’t take very long. And like Gil said, the more you do it the easier it is to slip into it. One thing I do want to add right in here is anchoring a good feeling when you’ve visualized something happened. In fact, I want everybody to do that right now. I want everybody to think of a time when you did your best job at something. It doesn’t have to be shoot- ing. It can be a moment in your office or proposing to your wife or having a kid. It doesn’t matter. But that wonderful experience that you had, think about how it felt. If your chest is real light, if you’ve got a real good feeling in your stomach, you want to remember that feeling. And I want everybody to take your thumb and your finger and put them together, and we’re going to call this your anchor point. If you can anchor a good feeling, so that every time you press your fingers together that feeling will come back. When you get out on the course and you start getting that bad, negative feeling, if you’ll put your fingers together, you will be amazed at how the good feelings, the positive feelings, will come back.

I’ll share this with you. I’m going through a lot of stuff with my father and I’m learning all about the oil and gas business, which I don’t really care about. But I’ve been put into some situations where I was very uncomfortable having to make decisions on things, and I tried this last week in a meeting. And I was very uncomfortable, and I just put my fingers together and I just felt kind of overwhelmed and I thought: “Okay. Now I have the solution.” The whole situation became very clear and very focused, and it’s no different when you’re out on the course. You can make all of the bad stuff go away, and the targets will appear clearer and your outcome will become clearer. I know it sounds silly, but it works. (Laughter)

Gil: It sounds silly to people who have never experienced it.

Vicki: Right. And I know we’ve talked a lot about this NLP stuff, and we need to get everybody to do it because it’s amazing how you can see the differences, and Gil’s going to go through that in a little bit. But let me go back to things we’ve got to do between now and next week. The biggest thing is to visualize how you want your whole day to go. And the night before, if you wake up, just start visualizing everything that’s going to happen. Go through a course. Make up a course. It doesn’t have to be the real course but just go through the course and get it to where you’re comfortable and you’re confident and you’re relaxed going into the day. Each day, when you get up, the first thing you need to do before you get in the car is put on your shooting glasses so your eyes can adjust. I found that this weekend, when we went out to shoot, I had to put my glasses on as soon as I left the house because as I’mgetting older, it takes a little longer, I suppose. But it took me longer to get my eyes adjusted so that I could see really well.

As soon as you get into the parking lot, get in your zone. Be ready for the shoot then. Don’t wait until you go to the first station. Go ahead and get into that confident, relaxed mode. Because if you have it when you step on the course, it’s going to show, not only to yourself but to everybody else around you.

You want to keep your mind on the positive things, like how much fun this game is. It is so much fun to go out there and break targets. You’re going to see people you haven’t seen in a while. You want to see those targets break. But just keep thinking about the neat things that are going on around you instead of going into that negative thing.

One thing that helps—we tried this years ago—is to keep a smile on your face. Whether we came off of the stand with a zero or a ten, we came off with a smile on our face. Then people started thinking maybe we had gone crazy, which they were probably correct about. (Laughter) If you come off with a smile on your face, you leave the misses there, but you also leave the negative thoughts there. You don’t allow the negative thoughts to come in when you have a smile on your face. Plus people are going to wonder what the heck you’re doing in there when you come off with a big, old smile. Plus it’s contagious. Other people will start smiling, too. We’ll have a whole group of smiling folks. That’ll be interesting. Okay. When you get to the first station, you’re going to make your plan. Then you’re going to execute it. If you feel any outside influences trying to get in, such as people coming up behind you or maybe the trap broke, maybe it starts raining, you can’t control that so don’t try—don’t let that in. If you feel like it’s coming in, stop what you’re doing. Anchor yourself. Get your focus back. You want to feel the positive emotions flooding in your body rather than the negative ones because the negative ones will drive you down. If you feel the good, positive emotions, you’re also going to feel the confidence coming back. If you don’t hit the target, never look down. This is something that we’ve just started talking about. And the minute that you look down, you know, stomp your feet or look at the dirt, all of the negative vibes start coming back in. You don’t want to do that. Look out. If I miss a target, I’m going to look right where I want to break it, and I will tell you that I personally could see that target breaking. Then I can get back in my routine, back focused, and I don’t allow anything negative to happen because I know how to hit that target. It just didn’t happen that time, but it will this time. If the bad emotions flow in, I don’t want that as part of my routine.

Something that I read that I want to relay is that the best athletes are masters of their emotions and not servants to them. Remember, before you can control your performance, you need to be in control of yourself or you cannot control your performance. How many times have we let the servant in us control us? I don’t want that to come about in my routine. When you do miss a target, you need to go  through a correction routine plan or correction plan. I think Gil is going to talk about some good examples for that.

The Correction Routine

Gil: Okay. You will continue to look for miracles until you take control and responsibility for your own behavior and actions. When you miss a target—and it’s going to happen—ain’t no sense in living in a dream world. It’s going to happen. Let’s say you get on a station and it’s got a left-to-right quartering bird with another bird and you miss two of the left-right quartering birds. Just because you missed them doesn’t mean you’ve got a problem with left-to-right unless you want it to be a problem, unless you make something of it.

Hey, you missed them. You didn’t make a good correction. Not a big deal. Leave them behind and go on. If you dwell on them, it’ll be like Miss Rudolph and that tarantula. You will see him again, and it will always manifest itself as a mechanical problem; and you’ll go mechanical with your fix, and we all know what that does. It happens. You’re going to miss some. Don’t worry about it. Leave them behind. Like Vicki said, walk off of that station with a smile.

The best thing you can do in practice is do some contingency planning. If you miss the last pair on the station, don’t feel like you’ve got to shoot it again just to leave on a good hit. But look at those breakpoints and say “I can hit those targets” and turn around and leave. Stay in your program. Trust your training. Trust your fundamentals. Remember when we had Mick Howell on? And I think it was Cindy Barton who asked him: “Mick, what do you do when you make a correction? Do you change your lead? What do you do?” And I’m going to tell you what. There was a pregnant pause.

And after about 30 seconds he said: “I just focus harder. I just focus harder. It’s a game of focus and it’s a game of trust. You’ve got to trust your breakpoints. You’ve got to trust your plan.” And I’ve got to tell you, when Vicki and I went out and shot the last three days, the first day I shot pretty well, but I just didn’t feel anything. But the second day, man, I tell you what, after about halfway through, she looked at me.

She said: “Baby, you’ve got your smooth back.” And I didn’t get it back on the long birds. I got it back on the short birds, just shooting simple— as Jeff Krueger would call them, cupcake targets— just having a good time running stations. And today, when I did my little visualization exercise, I was visualizing what we did, and it was so easy to do. And I visualized myself running station after station after station after station.

You don’t have to visualize what you’re about to do when you’re visualizing at home. Just visualize a good performance because you’re not visualizing what you’re about to do. It’s visualizing how it feels when you do well. There’s that feel word again in that visualization. When you visualize, you’re visualizing how it feels to do well, what happens in your body, what happens to your breathing, what happens to your posture. We’ll talk about that in a little bit when we talk about the NLP stuff.

But I’ve got something I want to share with you that I shared with Sid Lyons and Robert Ruckert and Gabe Krohmer, Larry Krohmer’s son, and it’s something that we’ve talked about before; but I guess things like that just happen to us. Things that need to be said often come up in a lesson before they need to be said, and I called it a correction routine.

Vicki said always look up, never look down. Remember that phrase, “never look down,” because I’m going to talk about it in a few minutes. But whenever a miss occurs, stop everything. Open the gun. Don’t reach for another shell. Go back to where that miss occurred. Keep your head up. Look at the miss square on in the face. Accept it. The first step to solving a problem is acceptance. Replay in your mind what happened. Make a change. Be determined with the change. Then go back into your pre-shot routine. It’s pretty simple. If you don’t have a plan like this in place, you ought to. You ought to try it. You never know when you can use it. What normally happens after a miss is peoples’ heads go straight to the ground. They go straight down. They begin to be judgmental and blame-oriented with their thought process, and they begin to try to visualize what happened and the mistake is less obvious.

It’s hard to try to visualize and make a correction looking down at the ground. The negativity is already in, and you are no longer in your zone because the zone cannot exist in the face of any negative thought. The zone can only exist when you are in control of your emotions and your thought process. When you look down, you’re tied up in the problem because you’re angry at the result.

But now listen to what happens if you have a correction  routine.

You’re tied up in the solution and the correction is clear. Because you’re looking up into the breakpoint where you missed that target, you can replay it vividly in your mind and the correction will be obvious. There’s no judgment or blame. It’s not “I’m going to try.” It is “I will do this. I will do this on the next one.” You’re forward thinking. You’re focused on the solution. Determination becomes very easy when the correction is this clear. There are no score thoughts. “Damn, I missed another one. That’s not there.” “Dammit, I was behind. That’s not there.”

There ain’t no argument going on in your head because it’s easy to visualize what happened, and the correction becomes very obvious. And because there’s no argument, determination is easy to achieve. It’s very easy to go back into your routine and stay in your zone. Just remember that the zone cannot exist if judgment or blame are present. The zone is the presence of positive, determined, forward thoughts. You can’t go forward if you’re looking backward. You’ve got to make your plan, and you’ve got to shoot your plan. But just remember, in sharing this with Sid and Robert and Gabe, the first couple of times I had to tell them: “Keep your head up. Quit trying to load the gun again because when you miss the first thing you want to do is load another one and get a success so you don’t have to face the miss.”

But whenever you miss a target, you look right up there at it. Face it. Replay it. You will be shocked at how obvious the correction becomes. If the correction is obvious, you become confident because there is no doubt. You become courageous and determined.

In fact, I gave them a little catch phrase. I told them: “When you come out of that visualization process, I want you to say the last words that every redneck that’s ever died has said: ‘Hold my beer, watch this.’ I want you to be so determined you’re willing to turn around to the crowd and say: ‘Hold my beer, watch this.’ I know what I’m going to do.” That’s the determination I’m looking for. Can’t help but smile when you hear that “hold my beer, watch this,” because we all know some people that are like that. Stevie’s got quite a few up there at his club.

(Laughter)

Staying Relaxed in a Tournament

Vicki: I guess a lot of what we’ve talked about is anchoring and feeling and confidence and all of that, and a lot of that all happens when you’re relaxed, and you’ve got to stay relaxed. I know that there was an exercise we did with Bob Palmer, the NLP guy who proved to everyone that you have more power within yourselves if you’re relaxed as opposed to stressful or anxious.

So you need to get where you are very relaxed. Be aware that other people around you will affect your game, and when you get in the stand and someone comes up with their clays car and they’re making a lot of noise, you can’t let that affect you. You have to stay relaxed. Here again, bring out your anchor point, put those fingers together so that the good thoughts will flow in. Because if you can recognize it immediately, you’ll be able to stay relaxed, and your peak performance will come because you’re really stronger when you’re relaxed. I know that doesn’t seem right, but it’s true. I know people will call us and they’ll say: “Man, I just can’t close. I’m shooting the first 80 and I’m only missing two or three, and then at the last 20 I am having hell. I just can’t finish.” My first question is: “Are you watching everybody’s targets?” And they say: “Well, yeah, of course.”

Well, your brain and your eyes are going to get tired. So don’t go up there and watch everybody’s targets. Watch the show pair. Then make your plan. Then go do something else. Look at the trees. Look at the rocks. In San Antonio they’ve got pretty flowers. Do anything. Get your mind off of shooting that pair for just a few minutes. Like Gil and me, when we shoot together he shoots before me. And when he’s on his next-to-the-last pair, that’s when I’ll go back up behind him so that I can make sure that my plan is still the right plan, but I don’t want to be thinking about it for five or ten minutes because I’m going to get tired and bored. So I’m just going to watch the last couple of pairs to assure myself that my plan is correct.

If you watch everybody’s pairs and you walk up and say: “This is an easy pair; I can shoot it like this.” And then all of a sudden other people start to come up, people you know that may be a little bit better than you. They come in and they start dropping those targets. All of a sudden that little doubt can start creeping in, and then these targets that you think are easy have become your hard targets. So don’t watch every- body’s pairs. You’ll get tired. Too much doubt will creep in. The other thing that you want to make sure you don’t do—I’m guilty of this, but— don’t go in and change your plan. And then what if everybody in the group says: “Well, I’m not shooting the left bird first; I’m going to shoot the right bird first and then the left bird.” Well, your plan was one way. They’re going to do it some other way. Don’t change your plan. Go with your gut. What works for you is what you need to do.

The next thing I wanted to bring up was food intake. Everybody goes to these big shoots and they think they have to eat a whole lot of food; you have to eat a big breakfast because you’re not going to get to eat again until lunch, and then you have to have a good lunch because you’ve got to shoot all afternoon. Well, unless you eat like that all of the time, you don’t need to do that when you go to a big shoot. Stay with your routine. If you eat a small breakfast, eat a small breakfast. Then eat a pretty good lunch, and then eat your dinner, whatever; but don’t change your routine just because you’re at a big shoot.

If you find that you get hungry, go get a Gatorade, get a PowerBar or something like that; but don’t get your body all out of whack because, here again, once the body goes, a lot of the confidence, a lot of your feel, will also go. You want to get your self-talk phrases down now. You have nine days to think all of these wonderful things so that you can recognize when the self-talk starts to go negative. Always think positively. Get your self-talk phrases. It’s like me to hit these targets. I love to shoot targets. I love to see them break in a thousand pieces. You’ve got to start thinking about this stuff now— the good thoughts. I want to read y’all a little thing that Arnold Palmer kept, this little saying in his locker: “ If you think you are beaten, you are. If you think that you dare not, you don’t. If you’d like to win but you think you can’t, it’s almost certain you won’t. If you think you’ll lose, you’ve lost. For out in the world you’ll find success begins with a fellow’s will. It’s all in the state of mind. Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins is the man who thinks he can.” Think clearly. Use your mind effectively by turning those negative thoughts into a positive coach. We, Gil and I, want the posi- tive coaching, in all of you, to always be the voice in your head. The positive coach has only good things to say and makes  everything appear a lot clearer.

Watching Other Shooters

Gil: Well, I’d like to reiterate one thing. I may find something else to reiterate in a minute. (Laughter) But I was talking to Sid Lyons who had the same problem you were just talking about. The last lesson I had with him I said: Well, what are you doing when you’re up there getting ready to shoot? He said, “I’m watching the   targets.”

And I asked him, “Sid, what good can come from watching everybody shoot targets?”

And he looked at me kind of like I had one ear an inch and a half lower than the other and couldn’t figure it  out.

And I said, “Now, think about this. Let’s say that you’ve made your plan to shoot the station, and you watch two squads of people go up there and none of them run the station, and they’re all having trouble with it. What’s that going to do to your plan? Chances are really good you’re going to get caught up in their misses, and you’re going to go back up there and say, ‘What the hell is so hard about these?’ And you’re going to give the targets more respect than they deserve.”

And then I said, “What happens if you watch two squads shoot the station and they all run it? What happens? You might think that might give you a lot of confidence, but on the other hand it might make you say, ‘Well, shit, everybody’s doing this.’ Like Vicki said, ‘Hell, it’s easy.’ You might not give the targets the respect that they need. You might go up and try to shoot not to miss. There’s nothing good that can come from watching other people shoot targets.”

I was talking to Craig two or three months ago about this particular thing and he said: “Gil, man, I was over at that World Shoot and I was watching Richard Faulds shoot, and I just wanted to watch him because he’s the best in the world. And man, for three or four stations I found myself missing targets because I was trying to shoot like he was because I was watching him so hard.”

So just be aware that whenever you watch other people’s targets you’ve got more trouble than a squirrel in an eight-lane freeway. There ain’t nothin’ good gonna come out of it.

Links Between Thoughts and the Body

Gil: I would like to talk a little bit about what we learned from Bob Palmer. He came up and was with us for two days. Steve was there for a couple of days. Brian was there for a day, and it was a very interesting situation.

He’s in the martial arts a lot, and some of his terminology didn’t gee-haw with our terminology; but I was very impressed with some of the things that he did and some of the emotions that I experienced when he was doing them with us, and it was amazing to me how negativity affected the body’s physiological state.

Just simply thinking about a negative experience actually makes physiological changes in the body; it’s not limited to these but including some of these. One of the first things that happens when you begin to think about a negative situation is your head goes down.

Remember Vicki telling you to keep your head up? That’s one of the most powerful things in the correction routine. Don’t hang your head. You’re giving in to judgment and blame. Keep your head up. One of the first things that happens when you go to the negative side is  your head goes down. Your shoulders will slump forward and down. Your breathing will become shallow and rapid. You’ll have an uneasy, queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. The more deeply you go into this negative experience when you’re in the downward spiral— remember the downward spiral? Hesitant, confused, angry, and depressed. When you get into this, physiological things happen to the body, and none of them are good. These things actually happened to me and we were doing the exercises with other people when I could finally think of something negative.   (Laughter)

It was hard for me! One of the hardest things for me to do when we were doing some of the anchoring exercises was think of something negative because we’ve taught y’all, and we’ve taught ourselves that when something negative happens learn from it, deal with it and go on and put it out of your mind; and it was literally hard for me to think of a negative thing. It took awhile, but I did. I got back into some of those old demons and exorcised them. We’re not just saying to think, “Oh, I won today.”

The more things that you can go through about how it felt to be there and how it felt to do it when you’re at the height of that feeling is critical. When you’re at the height of that feeling, when you’re deep in the visual process, when you’re really in the throes of battle and the targets are blowing up and you’re in control, you feel how that feels, that’s what your zone feels like. That’s when you want to put your index finger and your thumb together for about six seconds.

You don’t have to squeeze them. Just put them together. Just be aware that they’re together and continue to visualize. Watch the targets break. Remember how it feels. Remember how it felt walking to the last station. Remember how it felt running the last station. Remember how it felt shooting five out of eight on the hardest separator pair they had there and remember walking off that station feeling really good because you got your share of the hard ones. When you’re remembering those things, just anchor them by putting your index finger and your thumb together. You’ll be amazed at what you can do to recall that feeling. You’re not recalling the incident. You’re recalling the feeling you had when you performed well. Remember, visualization is about feeling, and focus is about concentration. When you’re thinking of those positive experiences, these are the things that I remember that happened physiologically to the body.

When you began to think of the positive experiences, the head came up, look straightforward or looked up, a smile came on the face,there was no tension in the face and automatically the shoulders went back, the person stood erect, their breathing became very slow and very deep. They spoke of a centered feeling in the middle of their chest. So the queasy feeling left their stomach and went up to their chest, and it was a very centered feeling. Personally I felt my feet get really flat on the floor even though I was moving a little bit. When I stopped moving my feet felt very, very flat on floor, and I was totally in balance, and all of these things happened to me just by simply thinking about and feeling all of the aspects of a positive experience.

And, boy, when you anchor something like that, I’m going to tell you something; it’s a powerful thing because you can bring those feelings back. You can bring that state of mind back, and that state of mind produces that state of physiology. I don’t know about you guys that were there, but I was shocked at how just by thinking the right thought, just by remembering how the physiology felt, just by anchoring that, you could bring that right back. You can bring that feeling back.

And when you start to feel like you’re losing it, that’s when your shoulders go forward and your head goes down. Don’t ever look down. That’s one of the most powerful things about the correction routine.

As I said earlier, look up. Look where the miss occurred. Replay it in your mind. It’s easy to replay because it just happened. Face it. Don’t be ashamed of it. If you’re ashamed of it, you’re blame and judgment oriented. You’re already out of your zone at that point in time. The zone can’t exist if blame and judgment thoughts are in your mind.

The only way it can exist is if you’re forward thinking, solution- oriented, and you use your good self-talk phrases. And anytime you can attach those self-talk phrases into your visualization, it makes them even more powerful. And when you do that, anchor that thought by putting your index finger and your thumb together. You’ll be amazed the more often you do that how much easier it is for you to bring that physiological transformation into your body just by what you’re thinking.

To me, after studying this a little bit with Bob, Neuro Linguistic Programming is the art of using visualization with feeling, to remember good performances in all levels of your life and actually replacing the less than stellar performances with the stellar ones and anchoring them so that the feeling that accompanied them can be revisited in an instant.

When you feel yourself losing it, when you feel those thoughts come in, when you feel that unbalanced, queasy feeling coming in and you feel like the whole world is coming down on you, you can just put your fingers together and I promise you—just like Vicki said, she used it in a meeting the other day. I’ve used it several times when I felt like I was going to lose my temper. I was upset. A couple of times this past month I had some disagreements with my son and I just put my fingers together and walked away from it and let it go. It is what it is. It becomes what you make of it. Understanding what your zone feels like and being able to get there on command is a big deal. But like anything else, you become proficient at. It must be used to become a weapon in your arsenal.

We’ll share different techniques we’ve learned with you in the future, whether we see you or talk about them on the phone. But it’s one thing to know what it is and we hope you get there. That’s been the tack that we’ve been going at, and y’all have been achieving that zone experience.

But it’s another thing to know what it is and start there. That’s what Vicki is talking about. Start in the parking lot. Start with that good feeling. What does it feel like? How do you feel when you’re performing at your best? It’s okay to feel that way. And when you start the tournament feeling that way, man, it’s easy. It’s easy to start the tournament, and it’s easy to get centered and anchored when you know how to do it and know what it feels like  it.

Big Ju-Ju

Gil: I will share this with you. Bob Palmer spent an hour-and-a-half with Dean Olson the morning before he left. I talked to him about the anchoring, putting his fingers together and—anchoring certain experiences, and he had several different things that he anchored in and out. And the day after Bob had left, on a Wednesday, Vicki and I were out at our field. We’d just finished teaching, and Dean rolled up with a smile on his face like you can’t believe. He came up and he had two score cards in his hands. He said: “I did it.” I said: “What did you did?” (Laughter) And he said: “I just shot the red course and the blue course, back-to-back anchoring. I shot a 96 on the red course, which is the harder course. I ran a hundred straight on the blue course.” And I said: “So you mean there might be something to this anchoring stuff?” He said: “It’s big ju-ju.”

I will share this with you also. He went to Greater Houston this last weekend. Practiced on their very difficult five stand. He shot a 24 on the first round, a 22 and a 21 on the next two rounds and a 24 on the last rounds. I will let you guess which two rounds he used anchoring. It wasn’t the middle two. He said: “It’s absolutely amazing. I hesitate changing something in my routine this close to Nationals.”

And I said: “I’m not asking you to do that.”

He said: “But I want to. It’s amazing. It’s not a change. It’s just a different way of looking at creating that feeling, that zone experience. Remembering to do it is the tough part and I’m working on that.” And I said: “It’ll come. Don’t be concerned. It’s just another level of maturity at the level you’re at. So try it. Try doing some anchoring while you’re visualizing and visualize the tournament, visualize yourself doing well, visualize a practice round, visualize yourself running stations in vivid detail, remember what it feels like, last pair, yeah, last pair for a straight, call, pull, boom, boom, dead pair, that felt good, I remember what that felt like.”

I can remember right now the stations that I visualized that we shot. I’m telling you I was visualizing myself just running station after station after station, and that feeling comes back to you and  that feeling is your zone. That’s where we want to be, is in our zone.

Leaving Outcome Goals at the Gate

Gil: The next thing I want to talk about is leaving your outcome goals at the gate, and it’s okay to have outcome goals. I want to win my class. I want to win the shoot. I want to win my class in FITASC. I want to win this. I want to do that.

Those are good, and it’s good to visualize yourself winning those; but when you get to the shoots, you need to leave those at the gate. You need to leave those goal outcomes at the gate because when you’re shooting, you’ve got to be focused on what you’re going to do. Your shoot goals could be things like this: I want to see every target before I move. I want to commit to the breakpoint. I’m going to let your eyes slide on the long ones. I want to stay in my zone. I want to remember what it feels like. When I get out I’m going to get back in that zone. I want that feeling. Accept every result regardless of what the result is. Use my correction routine and learn from it and forget it.

I’m going to be neutral or happy.

Those are the kinds of goals you need to have. Those are what we call performance goals. They’re goals that you have to hold onto to to have a good performance because when outcome goals enter while performing, you’re not there.

The outcome will become what it is. You  cannot control the outcome. You can’t control others’ performances. You can’t control the targets. And there are a lot of things that have to do with your outcome, not just you. A lot of things. We talked about how there’s a lot of luck that goes into a peak performance. Things have to happen just right, but you can have all of the luck in the world and if you’re not centered and you don’t control the things that you can control, if you don’t control your thought process, all of the luck in the world ain’t going to help you win. So on game day leave your performance goals at the gate, and then trust yourself to make the right plan and let it rip. The following is an epistle that I wrote. It has a lot to do with what we’re talking about tonight. It’s called being totally consumed. The fight is to be totally consumed with the moment. Nothing else matters. Taking things one at a time allows you to be totally consumed. If you’re not totally consumed, expectation and judgment enter the picture and you will self-destruct. You do it to yourself because you are not totally focused on what you’re doing. Not on the mechanics of what you’re doing but on the objective. This is why the breakpoint is so important. With a plan the objective becomes the breakpoint, and the commitment to the breakpoint allows you to focus on the front of the target and trust yourself. You can feel and trust to be focused on only one thing. See it break there. “Where” is so important because it is the end, not the process.

The breakpoint is the goal line or the finish line of the hundred-yard dash. It is where every bit of movement is directed. It’s where you’re going. It is where the winners are determined. The losers are deter- mined along the way. When you get caught up in the mechanics or where you are, you’re not in the present, and your determination turns to doubt which creates a loss of feel, the lack of trust, and focus. The only way you can be focused is to know where you’re going. You don’t have time to think about how to get there. You just go. You’ve got to trust yourself to get there. Focus and feel allows you not to think about mechanics while performing. You must be totally consumed in the moment with where you are going, not how you are going to get there. Determination and trust in yourself will put you there, not mechanical thinking. This is why focus and feel are so important. You cannot trust what you cannot feel. Tempo and focus allow you to reach higher levels of performance. You must not care how you get there. Or even if you ever arrive, you must only focus on going and trusting yourself to arrive. Trust the breakpoint. If you are truly focused, you will arrive regardless of what it takes, no matter the odds. Resist analytical reasoning and above all be determined to go and get there. Trust yourself. Go. Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead. Don’t worry about missing. Without risk nothing great is ever achieved. The risk, however, is failure, which becomes a temporary state of mind, that if thought upon repeats itself; but if dealt with and learned from, goes away. Do not fear failure. Do not be afraid of fearing. It is impossible to be courageous if at first you did not fear.

The task is to consciously analyze but then trust yourself to carry out the task. Without trust you’re stuck in analytical, conscious reasoning which is doomed to fail. Make your plan. Trust it. Believe it. Shoot it. Break it in the breakpoint. Never be afraid to miss it in the breakpoint. On game day there are only front edges in breakpoints and determination to execute the plan regardless of the result. When you are totally consumed in the moment, the result is a given. The result is a product of determination in the plan and singularity of focus. Not how, but when. Make it. Believe it. Do it. Let it happen.

This is why the quality of your practice is so important. You must practice like you play. There is no tomorrow, no emotion, no judgment. Just a situation that you will succeed in. Being forgetful is good with adversity. Remembering is good with success. When the failure occurs, learn from it and move on. It’s merely feedback to a better performance. Whatever happens is neither good, nor bad. It just is. It is what you make of it via judgment and blame or feeling and trust. Learning from your mistakes leads to higher performances. Learn what to do, not what not to do.

It’s important to speak to yourself in the correct way, always posi- tive. Not “I will not do that again”, but “I will do this next time”. This allows you to be totally consumed in whatever you’re doing without regard to how, just what. You are just a casual observer to what is hap- pening. If you are more than casual, you will get caught up in the mechanics of what’s going on. You will not be in the flow and you will fail. This is why feel and trust in your mechanics in your pre-shot rou- tine is so important. Practice, feel, and trust. They are paramount to the highest levels of performance. You are only aware of time when you’re not doing something. Be willing to be consumed with what you’re doing, totally consumed with the shot of the moment. Nothing else matters. It is the nothing else that gets in and takes you away from the moment. Judgmental and blaming thoughts cannot exist when feel and trust exist. You must practice feel and trust. Learn to trust yourself. If you can’t, no one else can. Let it go. Only then will you ever find out who you really are and what you’re really capable of. All of your boundaries are self-made and come from conscious doubt, judgment, and blame. Let go and trust yourself. Learn to feel your swing and trust it. It is what it is. It becomes what you make of it. I said that.

A man named Clement Stone said this: “There’s little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it’s positive or negative.”

Roselyn Carter said this: “You have to have confidence in your ability and then be tough enough to follow  through.”

Marcus Garvey said this: “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you have started.”

Joe Namath said this: “When you have confidence, you can have a lot of fun. And when you have a lot of fun, you can do amazing things.”

Ray Knight said this: “Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it’s absolutely necessary.”

Brian Tracy said this: “Your decision to be, have, and do something out of the ordinary entails facing difficulties that are out of the ordinary, as well. Sometimes your greatest asset is simply your ability to stay with it longer than anyone else.”

And lastly, Herm Albright said this: “A positive attitude may not solve all of your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.”  (Laughter)

Gil: Guys, thank you for listening to me be profound tonight. I know I probably said several things in this little last epistle over and over again, but we found that the more different ways we can say the same thing the easier it is for y’all to understand it. We’re out of time. We look forward to seeing y’all at Nationals.

Stevie, Are you still there, partner? No. He had to go. He said he might have to turn off a little early  tonight.

Stevie: I’m here, buddy.  (Laughter)

Gil: Are you there? Hey, man, I quoted you on a couple of our banners at Nationals. You’re going to be there whether you know it or not.

Stevie: That’s great.

Gil: So in October I don’t know what we’re going to talk about, but I certainly would like to send some of you some of the stuff that we got from Bob Palmer so that we can discuss some of those things, maybe one or two of the exercises. I don’t want to send you all of them at one time, but I’ll send you a couple of them, and we’ll talk about those specifically.