2012-05 – May 2012 Coaching Hour – Directing Subconscious Success

…….May – Directing Subconscious Success…….

 – Introduction

 – Using Tournaments as Experiments

 – The Power of the Present

 – Moving From Singles to Pairs

 – The Subconscious Wants to Make You Happy

He took that information and went back to Reno and did just  that and looked at his nutrition in the morning, looked at when to   eat lunch, look at what to eat, what not to eat and peaked and had   a great performance, went in as a goal to have the performance to be good, was able to stay in the present and called me and was just elated that something that we had said actually worked. And why he was so surprised at that I still haven’t decided in my own mind, but I guess maybe it’s because he actually did something that we said would work and he found that it worked. I’m not sure. That’s something that I would encourage all of you to do, and it’s something that I did talk to Shane about a little bit and I’ll get to him in just a minute.

But something that he added to that is once he began to look at his smaller tournaments as testing grounds for physiological things that he needed to do to have a peak performance, just himself, that he began to be able to give 110 percent. He began to be able to redefine focus.

One of the things we talked about was that if you go into a smaller tournament and use it as a test, then you’re not there to shoot a score. You’re not there to win or lose. You have given yourself permission to give 110 percent, 95/5 on the bird, commit to the breakpoints without fear of missing. Because if you don’t do 110 percent like that in your small tournaments, if it is actually a test, then it is a false positive or it does you no good if you haven’t given 110 percent of every shot. So Rick said that it kind of relieved him of the pressure of score, and it certainly made it easier for him to stick with his goals and stay with his goals because he realized that regardless of the score he shot, he would have wasted the day and wasted the goal if he hadn’t stuck with it.

So that made it much easier for him to go into those smaller shoots and begin to learn things about himself. He used the things that he learned, and as a result, Ty interviewed him, and we’re going to have a little something in the book; and as soon as I get the interview from Ty, I will probably have him come on the coaching hour, and we’ll talk a little bit more in depth about that. He said it certainly changed the way he looked at practice. He also said the concept of looking at the bird behind the gun was huge for him. That seems to be a common thread in a lot of the comments that we’re getting, both from the people that went to the advanced class and the people that we’ve seen since then and that we’ve talked about that with.

I had a session with Art Rumberg last Thursday. Just like everybody else, he gets away from us and then starts letting that bird get too close to him and all of a sudden, he’s chasing the bird. The bird is jamming him. He’s throwing his bullets.

I worked with him for a couple of hours one morning. We had a little lunch, and I worked with him for an hour and a half after that, constantly pushing him farther and farther away and getting him to commit to just do what Rick did; and that is, the next tournament you go to, use it as a testing ground. Be sure you’re seeing that bird behind the gun. When you mount that gun, make your eyes look at that bird behind the gun. Never look down the gun when you mount the gun because, as we teach this we’re finding that people do have an even greater tendency when the gun comes into the picture to want to look down the barrel, and the concept of looking behind the barrel seems to be freeing people of letting the gun get in the way.

I got an email from Artie yesterday that said he went and shot sport- ing clays. He shot a 66 out of a hundred. He had a rough start, but he got it together and ran the last four or five stations. Then went and shot FITASC and shot a 48 or a 49, and the high score was a 57 out of 60, and he was pleased with that. And one of the biggest things he was pleased with is seeing the bird behind the gun. It really related to him. So that’s just somebody else. Artie was at the advanced school. Hopefully they’ve got his medications straightened out, and he seems to be a lot healthier and seems to be taking care of himself a lot of more.

I shot with Bill Barton out in Florida who’s been to the advanced school twice and been here a couple of times, and he’s another one of those students that understands how to let the bird come to him. And he had to confess. Vicki and I took him and his new wife to dinner Friday night, and he told me he had gone to see John Wooley and he said: you know, halfway through the second lesson I just said: John, this ain’t working. And left.

And I said: Well, why did you do that?

And he said: He doesn’t understand any of this. He just tells you it’s wrong and tells you to look harder at the bird, and he doesn’t tell you how and doesn’t tell you why and he doesn’t understand it like you guys, and I knew I had made a mistake when I went to see him.

I still haven’t forgiven him, and I think I’m going to charge him an extra couple of hundred dollars for pain and suffering. I think Marlene has still got his credit card. Seeing the target behind gun was really big. He shot with us for three days, and by three o’clock the first day he was just solid, back out there waiting on it, moving slow, and it was just a big deal for him.

We heard from Curtis Dunbar who came to the advanced school. Moving the gun a lot less, he says. He’s winning his classes and getting punches. He’s seeing the targets better than he ever has. I had a phone call from a fella in Nebraska named Jed Hollenback who I’ve never met. Was going to come to Nebraska this year, but there was some kind of big event that was scheduled up there the same weekend we were supposed to be teaching up there, and we lost about half of our students once they scheduled this event.

So we didn’t go up there and Jed was all heartbroken, and I had spent an hour with him on the phone one day, talking about the three bullet drill, and actually training himself to look at the bird behind the gun, and he’d been doing the three bullet drill a lot. I told him to spend two-thirds of the time on the cross-eyed sight picture.

He went out and shot some practice, just pairs. He’s going to a sporting clays tournament, and I told him just to go to the club and just shoot some pairs and have some fun. He realized that after he had done the three bullet drill that he had much less gun confusion. His problem was the gun kept getting in the way, and he was doing what everybody else was trying to do which is try to get the lead right without seeing the gun. And I pounded that into him in three phone calls. You’ve got to look at the bird behind the gun.

And he came up with the word foc-lead, which is focus on the leading edge, and he went to a tournament, got second in class. He ran five stations. Had two bad stations, but even though he had the bad stations, he could handle them and he stayed in the game. He understood what was going on. And so his mantra is now: get your  feet right, breakpoint, focal point, mind clear, hard focus, and pull the trigger. It can be that simple.

John Milek, I thought, was going to be on tonight, but he’s not. Last three shoots he spent his second once and first twice. John was the guy that came into the parking lot that game and said: Damn it.  I’ve been over here four or five times and I’m still in the C-class, and I said: Finally we have a commitment.

So he came to the advanced school this year, and he also said that looking away from that gun when it comes into the picture and keeping that bird behind that gun is just a different concept than he had ever thought about, and he specifically said that the graphic visuals at the advanced class really helped him.

Jeff, are you there?

 Jeff: Yep.

 Gil: I got an email from Jeff Wolfe (phonetic) the other day that said: I could just scream. And I could hear him screaming, I think. Jeff, do you want to come and summarize your email and talk about it just a little bit?

Jeff: Well, I think most of it boils down to an awareness, having been at the advanced school and starting to think about these things the way I am. I’m now aware when I make mistakes, and knowing that I’m doing it and being able to correct it ahead of time are two different things.

 Gil: You said you were aware. What does that mean? Aware of what?

 Jeff: Well, I could see everything you talked about happening. You know, I could see where the gun is. I could see where the target is. I could tell that I’m looking where I’m supposed to be looking when it works. And I can walk up to a station that everyone around me says: Oh, my God, this is a hard station. What will I do?

And I say: You know, I know exactly how to shoot this. And I go up and I run it. Then I can walk up to another station and not be able to do that because I get a little full of myself or I think: Do you know what? I can take a shortcut, not follow through or not follow the plan and not do everything exactly right. And all of sudden I’m in the second pair and I miss the first pair and then maybe I miss one more, and then I walk out with a three instead of a six. That kind of awareness.

 Gil: Do you think you’re just overanalyzing it. Are they easier presentations?

 Jeff: Some of them are easier presentations, yes. That’s definitely part of it. Sometimes I look at an easy presentation and maybe I cut a corner or I don’t think I have to be as focused and as detail oriented on it, and then I realize after the first pair that I do. And so then I can fix it, right? So I very rarely drop final targets. I can usually correct things quickly, but the trick is getting it right out of the gate and that sort of taking a station for granted or taking the first pair for granted.

I think the gist of why I said I could just scream is because I’ll shoot the first pair and I’ll say: You know, I know exactly what I didn’t do. I know exactly how I screwed this up, and there’s no reason I should have done that. I have all the tools to execute this properly, but for whatever reason in the back of my subconscious or in the back of my psyche I didn’t do it.

So for me that’s the biggest thing, is getting consistent at doing the exact same things every time, whether it’s a cheap and easy target or whether it’s a target that looks like something that’s the hardest target on the course.

 Gil: I am reminded of what George Digweed said to me one morning after one of the Browning-Briley shoots at American Shooting Centers. We were both out there waiting on the squads to come and shoot the course with us, and the targets were not particularly testy. They were technical, but they were not testy.

But I asked him what he thought about it. He said: Well, it wasn’t that they were so difficult to hit as it was they were very easy to miss. To have Sir George say something like that, I paid attention to it.

And I think you’re experiencing a phase that everybody goes through. You have to give them all a hundred percent respect, and I find that it’s the easy ones that you have to commit to the breakpoint and focus even more than the hard ones because typically the ones that everybody thinks are hard are the real long ones. And you know as well as I do that if you’re early and keep focus on the bird and you’re comfortable, your PA is big enough to get out there, long crossers are really easy once you overcome that PA stuff.

 Jeff: Yeah.

 Gil: It’s the short, quick, technical birds where you have to have very little movement on the first bird. To recover for the second one, you’ve got to break the first bird quick. You’ve got to break the first bird right out of the transition. You know, it’s just picking the correct breakpoints so that you don’t finish above the line of the second bird. Those little things like that are the things that you’re learning about.

To only have trouble with the first pair is a good problem to have.

That means that you’re able to fix things when they go south. Now, what you’ve got to do is to have as your mantra to change what you do on the first pairs.

 Jeff: Yeah. I just have to work harder at making sure that I actually cued everything on those first pairs.

 Gil: Yeah. You’ve just got to give them all the same amount of respect. I think it would be fair to say that you’re shooting better than you’re scoring.

 Jeff: Yeah, and my averages are high. I mean, I’m still averaging above where I was. So, you there’s a lot of improvement here, even though I’m still pressuring myself on certain aspects of the game.

 Gil: Well, I’m going to say something in the last half of this program that I want you to take to heart. It’s about your post-shot routine and about goals. But that’s all good, you understand. That’s all well and good.

Jeff: Yep.

 Gil: It’s the struggles you go through that makes things imprint deeper in your brain. Man, I’ll tell you. I’ve been there. These are on one-day shoots, right?

 Jeff: Yeah.

 Gil: Well, you’re going to go to a two-day shoot several times and fight to be in contention the first day for high overall and lose it the second day for the same silly reason. So the more you learn and the deeper you imprint your commitment to change what you’re doing right now, the earlier you learn these lessons, and the more you can pound them into your brain as an early lesson, the less you’ll have to see them on the second day and the third day in a two- or three-day shoot because you’re going to see them again.

Do you think that the targets are particularly tricky; or are you just taking them for granted?

 Jeff: I think most of the time it’s that I take them for granted mostly because they’re actually really technically and tricky, and other times because if it’s really flat and simple, it tends to not be an issue. It’s that sort of intermediate target where maybe there’s a little bit of  a transition or maybe there’s a little bit of a need to have the gun in a certain position for the second shot or whatever. So not something, at least in my history, I would consider to be a hard target for me. It’s just the ones that are kind of intermediate that are the ones that seem to be where I do best.

 Gil: Hum.

 Jeff: It’s the hidden technicalities. It’s a course setter who sets a pair    of targets that when you look at them it looks kind of simple, but you didn’t look too deeply at them; and if you actually looked at them a  little bit, you’d see that there was a trick or a hidden gotcha. And then, some targets are obviously hard,   right?

 Gil: Describe what’s hard to you now.

 Jeff: That’s a very interesting question. To be perfectly honest, the only things that scare me at the moment are targets that are really a long way away, 75 or 80 yards, and mostly because I haven’t shot any of them. I feel like I know how to shoot them and I know how to break them, but we just don’t see them in my area. So most of our windows are really small. We don’t have a lot of these wide-open courses. So to me, those kind of shots are hard, and also things that are really close to the ground.

Around here target setters really like to throw targets three feet off the ground and use the terrain to mask their behavior. I think   you saw that when we were messing around with that one target at the advanced school, and I was trying to break it in the wrong place because I was having a lot of trouble reading what it was doing.

So those tend to give me fits sometimes to read them, but overall, everything else I feel like I know how to shoot it, and I’ve shot those targets before. And so if I miss them it’s because of the transition. It’s because the first target is on the left-hand side and the breakpoint point is a long way away or in an inconvenient spot from the second target’s breakpoint and I have to move the gun or shift my feet or something like that.

 Gil: Okay. How is your transition to the big gun?

 Jeff: Excellent. I don’t even know it’s there.

Gil: Excellent. So you’ve just got to work on a couple of different kinds of targets.

 Jeff: Yeah.

 Gil: Well, what are your plans for the rest of the year? Any big shoots or are you going to do more training?

 Jeff: The only real big shoot that I focused on is the regional up here. The Northeast Regional is in two weeks. So that’s the only really big shoot I have on my schedule. The rest of the time I’m going to go to some shoots. The Hardy Classic is another one that’s up here. But I’m going to the shoots to shoot the competition targets and think about these things and try and understand what is it about my game that breaks down and doesn’t break down in these tournaments so that I know what to work on. More for understanding how I perform while I’m at a shoot. And if I shoot well and I score high enough to win something, that would be gravy; but my goal is to just have experience shooting the targets and understanding where there’s deficiencies in my game that I need to work on.

 Gil: Okay. Well, I think all of you would do well to take a page out of Rick Carter’s book and do what I told him at the advanced school; and, that is, when you go to a shoot to stick to your goal, and the easiest way to do that is to look at it as a learning experiment, not an experience but a learning experiment, to see what it actually takes physiologically for Jeff Wolfe to have a really good performance. And I think you’ll find that it’ll be easier, like I said, to maintain that hundred percent, all there, all in, all commitment, no hesitancy, 95/5 focus. A couple of the guys said something about the 95/5 focus thing, that they’re beginning to understand that more.

Okay. Well, that’s good. I hope to get another email from you shortly that says you’re not screaming as much.

 Jeff: I’m sure that will happen.

The Power of the Present

 Gil: All right. Shane, are you back yet?

Shane: Yes.

Gil: Okay. When you had said that your goal when you went to the shoot was “to stay here, my new mantra is when I miss the target to stay here,” what does that mean?

 Shane: Well, you’ve got to stay in the present. You can’t give the target 95 percent of your focus if you’re already thinking about how good the score is you’re going to shoot or that you’ve already won or what about those targets over there that those guys are shooting, those look really hard from here or any of that other stuff.

I went to the shoot this last weekend, and I don’t why, but I got up Saturday and was pontificating as sometimes happens here.

 Gil: You were pontificating? Shane: I was pontificating, correct. Gil: To who?

Shane: To myself, actually.

Gil: Oh. You’re having a hard time determining which one is the smart- est. You better be careful. Now, don’t do it in the mirror because you’ll really be confused.

 Shane: Be careful, Mr. Ash, lest your glasses get thicker.

So I decided for whatever reason, I told you before I was having trouble with specific goals. We can be the best with the eyes or we can always be early to the breakpoint or et cetera.

For whatever reason I was thinking about what is going to be my goal Saturday morning, and I decided I was going to see what was   the maximum amount of focus that I could give every single target. I decided in my mind that I was going to always run the plan and I was always going to be early. Pre-shot, post-shot was always going to be the same. I was going to do everything I knew I was supposed to be doing, and I decided part of giving every target the maximum amount of focus I could was going to make sure that I discussed with the guy I shoot with most of the time, I discussed every target, every presentation with him before either one of us shot.

We were going to agree on chokes. We were going to agree on breakpoints, and whoever went first, be it him or me, was going to basically decide if the breakpoints were good. Give feedback, like, do you know what? I think maybe we should shoot that backwards or maybe you should shoot this one earlier or you’ve got plenty of time to get up there and make some smoke, whatever.

But I was going to give every single target as much focus as I possi- bly could, and that it pulled everything in for me. It allowed me to turn the zone on, turn the zone off. It allowed me to stay in the moment, if you will. We got through the first course, and I think I shot a 91 or a 92, and I ran the last seven stations. It was a eleven-station course, and I missed nine birds on the first couple. And I made that commitment to myself, stay here, you can do this, and I ran the last seven stations out. I didn’t realize until I got done that I had run the last seven, and it was at that point that it dawned on me that really my biggest problem is stay- ing in the present.

And so I just turned to Keith and I said: From now on when I miss a target, if it’s the first target of a pair, I’m going to make an adjustment; but if I drop the third bird, you know, the third target out of a five-pair station and I drop one of the birds on the third pair or the last bird   or whatever, when that happens, I want you to say, stay here. That’s    all I want to come out of your mouth, stay here. Because when that happens it happened because I did not give that target the focus it needed because I was somewhere else. And it works really well for me. I don’t know if it works for everybody, but it worked great for me. I shot an 88 on the second course. The second course was markedly harder in everyone’s opinion in the first course.

I dropped five birds on the last station. It was a true pair. Two   of them were one bird, and three of them was the other bird. We misjudged the distance, misread the pair. Everyone in my squad shot poorly on that station. I own that because I went first, and I led them down the wrong road. I was really amazed at how congruent I was able to stay just having that simple minutia to focus on. It allowed me to stay very congruent. I was on call. I was having to check my phone between stations to make sure I didn’t need to call somebody back and if there’s some turmoil going on within my organization at work. I mean, there were a thousand and one reasons I should not have had a good day, and I had a great time. I had a blast.

One of the biggest things that amazed me was when I decided upon a goal and made it an experiment, as you say, it was a whole  lot more fun. It was more fun than I’ve had at a shoot in a long time because I didn’t go to shoot a score. I didn’t go to win. I went with the determination that I was going to see if I could basically burn a hole in the front of that target with my vision every time I saw one, and it was an eye opener. So we’ll see if we can repeat that a couple of more times and see what we get.

 Gil: Okay. So you had a lot of things going on in the periphery that you were able to quiet with a very very clear, concise goal?

 Shane: Correct. I’m not sure. I’m on the fence right now about whether or not it was the goal or the determination. I don’t know.

 Gil: They both are one and one. You can’t have one without the other.

 Shane: You cannot.

 Gil: You can be determined without a goal and that in itself is a failure.

 Shane: Yep.

 Gil: I didn’t mean to walk on you, but…

 Shane: No. That’s the road I was going down, and I don’t know. The little man inside your head who doubts you, boy, I mean, he gets loud sometimes, and I was able to shut the little man up. Not a single time when I missed a target was it because of the little man.

I allowed my focus to drift at times and drop the target here or drop the target there, but not once was it because of the little man, and that was something new for me, as well.

 Gil: That’s huge.

 Shane: Because usually you get in there and you run a station and you run another station and, oh, man, I’m going out like a house fire, lost pair, dead, lost, lost, dead and, oh, hell, I lost another wheel, you know. And it’s the little man, and that didn’t happen this weekend. Every time I found myself thinking all right, you’re four pair in, you’ve got one more pair and you’re going to run the station out I thought no, no. That is the wrong thought process to have. Shut the little man up. You will break that target right there. You will look at this portion of the target. You will see the other one there. You will break it right there, and you will be looking at this portion of the target. You will trust it and you will make this happen, and it did.

Gil: You need to just continue what you’re doing.

 Shane: I’m going to try.

 Gil: Yeah. Stay there. That’s good. That’s good. Maybe Jeff Wolfe can learn a little bit from that. That’s good.

Moving From Singles to Pairs

Gil: I’ve got something I’m going to read here in just a minute that you won’t get tonight because I’m going to have to go through it pretty fast, but once you get your disc, you’ll listen to it a couple of times. There’s a lot here. I wanted to briefly talk to Ron Bacari. Ron has talked about his time with me last month, and he’s been doing some limited practice, whatever he can, and he shot his first tournament and I talked to him about it. He shot really well. He didn’t score well, but he shot well, and he was able to maintain his composure in the face of missing a lot of birds. He ran some stations. He shot some really difficult targets very well, and he’s in that stage that many of you have been in which is he’s shooting in control. He’s not at Jeff Wolfe’s level, but it’s a similar kind of thing at the level he’s at. He’s shooting better than he’s scoring. He has the ability to score better, and he’s only been practicing single birds.

Is that right, Ron?

 Ron: Yes, just single birds.

 Gil: And we talked earlier about how you need to start going out and shooting more pairs.

 Ron: Uh-huh.

 Gil: And shooting some different birds and turning yourself loose to go play but constantly go back to that baseline bird and work on watching it come to the gun, and watching it come to the gun is a big deal.

Didn’t you share with me how many people you saw out there that were actually chasing birds?

 Ron: Yeah, I did. My squad mates were even though they shot better than I did. They were definitely chasing down birds.

Gil: It’s kind of ugly. What’s your next step? Are you going to start practicing pairs?

 Ron: I will, but I’m also going to continue doing the single bird that we were talking about, you know, watching that chandelle from both right and left and doing that and I’ll probably go to some courses and start just doing some pairs.

 Gil: Okay. Well, that’s good. It’s just exciting to have people out there, and listening to what Shane said I think is a great thing for you. He’s really been working hard on his game, and he’s up in the high 80s and into the 90s most of the time, and to be able to go along with these guys I think on their journey will surely help you on yours. So we look forward to talking to you a little bit more about that.

The Subconscious Wants to Make You Happy

Gil: I need to get into this next segment. I could talk about this for about 45 minutes, but I’ve only got 20. So I’m going to try to get through all of it. We were flying back on an airplane Monday, and there was a segment on the movie thing, and The Automatic Brain was the title, and it talked about how our brain decides what’s important and what’s not based on our individual priorities and previous experiences. The conscious brain processes the future and the past. It’s a time traveling part of our brain. It remembers the past and dreams about the future.

It’s the part of the brain that talks to you about how you stunk it up and it’s the part of the brain that makes you want to hope to win.

The subconscious process is the present. The only way you can  be in the present is to be subconscious. That’s something that I think we talked about for the last two coaching hours. If you think about anything, you’re not in the present. Anything regardless of how positive will take you out of the present. Process thinking is where you want to be. You think about it. You tell yourself what to do. You clear your mind and you go do it. Intense focus on the obvious blocks out irrelevant things. Focusing on the target with a 95/5 focus ratio or higher when coupled with committed breakpoints can make time stand still. I believe that’s what Shane was talking about.

Every experience is an imprint on our subconscious memory. Reasoning is conscious and can affect first impressions. Things that happen are not necessarily good or bad. They just are. Our reaction to them determines whether they’re good or bad. It’s not events that cause suffering, but our reaction to them that does. This is why the post-shot routine is so important. When you hit them in the breakpoint, enjoy it, but we typically don’t. We only emote when we don’t get what we want. The post-shot routine is, man, I love how easy it is when it comes to me, giddy, smiles, laughter, emotionally connected to the success with outward reflections.

Craig Hill said one time, you get out of it what you’re willing to put into it. Eventually it becomes what we want and what we are willing to pay for it, and it’s not necessarily in dollars but time and effort and willingness to change. Perception and reality seldom match. Perception and reality seldom match. If you can’t feel it, you can’t trust it. The brain fuses what we see with touch. Touch completes the circle. It’s why we buy nice things. That’s why we hunt and fish. I was in a seminar probably 10 or 12 years ago. I was one of the feature speakers at the Governor’s Hunting Heritage Symposium.

Governors all over the country were gathering here in Houston, and I spoke to them about shooting instruction — on the power of shooting instruction. And the speaker before me was talking about the things that drew people to hunt, and he just never could understand why — you know, that primal reason why people wanted to kill something.

And there was a lady in the seminar that just was two rows ahead of me and she stood up and said out loud: Can’t you just take a picture of the deer instead of killing it? And she sat down to which I stood up and said: Would you like to wear a picture of a big diamond ring on your finger or wear a real small diamond ring on your finger? Touch. Feel. You can’t trust if you can’t feel it. You can’t fix it if you can’t feel it. You can’t replicate it if you can’t feel it.

Touch and balance are our two most powerful senses. The greater the emotional investment in something, the more easily you’re fooled. This is how magic happens. These are how people that do card tricks fool your eyes, slight of hand. When you are emotionally invested in something, really focused, it’s easy for you to be fooled because you’re less aware of what goes on in the periphery.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the basketball players passing the basket- ball. There’s a dark team and a white team and they’re all passing. You’re supposed to count the number of passes that the white team makes, and a guy in a gorilla suit runs through all of them, and because you are so intent on counting the passes you don’t even see the guy walking through in the gorilla suit. That’s what this is talking about.

You’re less aware of the periphery because your focus is narrowed, and this can be used to narrow focus on the target and plan and help remove distractions. When you are so emotionally invested in focusing on the target and carrying out a committed plan that you believe in, Jeff, I think something that you need to concentrate on is to amp up your commitment and belief in your plan.

When you are emotionally invested in that, you are less aware   of what’s going on around you because your focus is narrowed, and this can be used to narrow focus on the target and the plan and help remove distractions.

Our subconscious wants to make us happy and will work a hundred percent of its available time to do so. Now listen up. The more it knows what we want, the better it can make us happy. Clear, concise goals and plans combine for a great subconscious performance because the subconscious is not confused. Emotional post-shot routines define the success as making us happy.

Non-emotional reaction to success confuses the subconscious. It   is not sure whether it should continue breaking the targets or not because its job is to make us happy, and the greater amount of emo- tional happiness in our post-shot routine, the more clear the pathway to happiness becomes to the subconscious. It’s important that you learn in your own little way to pat your subconscious on the back and say good boy, good dog, good dog, two biscuits. Good dog, you get a bis- cuit. Good dog, good dog, you get a biscuit. It’s important that you give it some emotional, positive, happy feedback.

I’m going to read it again. The more it knows what we want, the better it can make us happy. Clear goals and plans combine for a great subconscious performance because it’s not confused what it is you’re asking it to do; but typically when we run a station, it’s more relief than, man, that felt good.

Emotional post-shot routines define the success as making us happy. Nonemotional reaction to success confuses the subconscious. It is not sure whether it should continue breaking the target or not because its job is to make us happy, and the greater amount of emotional happiness in our post-shot routines, the more clear the pathway to happiness, the more the subconscious understands what we’re asking it to do, but we’ve got to reward it by being happy. It’s important to include exactly what mechanics of the shot makes you the happiest, such as seeing the line, seeing it come, stabilizing the picture, and control of the target, no stress. It’s so simple. Crisp breakpoints.

Saying to it, “Come on over here. I’ve got something for you.”

Being able to visualize exactly what the shot will look like. I’m not talking about the lead, but I’m talking about the target coming to you. Is it going to be a big looper where you’re going to be out there in front and just let it come to you? Is it going to be a driving fast ball where you’ve got to let it merge to you and you stabilize the picture?

Exactly what the shot will look like according to the technique you are using makes the emotional part of the post-shot routine more effective. Being able to visualize exactly what the shot will look like according to the techniques you’re using makes the emotional part of the post-shot routine more effective. Breakpoints. I nailed them that time. That line was so straight. It’s so big and fat when it’s coming to me. Man, when it’s stable, it just hammers them. Whew, man, when it comes it slows down and gives me so much time and control. Being early keeps the game so simple and slow.

The better the visualization in the pre-shot routine, the easier the emotional reaction to the success which, in turn, imprints more quickly and deeply in the post-shot. Say it again. The better the visualization in the pre-shot routine, the easier the emotional reaction to the success becomes which, in turn, imprints more quickly and more deeply in the post-shot routine. The post-shot routine is the imprinting routine. It’s the part where you say good dog, have a biscuit. It’s the part where you pat your subconscious on the back for doing such a great job.

The post-shot routine is where the happiness should occur to give the subconscious a clear picture of exactly what it is that you makes you happy. Be careful how you use emotion after a shot. Shane described it as stay here. Either learn from it and correct it, love it or forget it; but when it’s good be happy. This is big: The clearer and the more consis- tent your emotional reactions are to what occurs after each pair, the better your subconscious will get the picture of what exactly you’re asking it to do. This game is riddled with people that go to the tourna- ments and hope to shoot a good score. They are never in the present; therefore, they are continually disappointed, and their subconscious is so confused because it continues to get mix signals at best.

Be clear with your goals. Stick to them. What we’ve talked about tonight is turning our tournaments into test situations which has seemed to really help almost everybody out there. I know it helped Ron in his facing not such a good score; however, he ran several stations. I know it’ll help Jeff. I know it’s been helping Shane. I know it helped Rick. To be able to look at your tournament score as a test, and to be able to stick with that goal regardless of how you shoot is huge; and when it’s over, if you can’t look the person in the eye that asks you how you shot and say, you know, based on what my goals were today I did the best I could today, if you can’t do that and be happy with it, you’re going to confuse your subconscious. Be clear with your goals and your emotions when you’re shooting, and invest in the correct reactions in your post-shot routines.