The more we study and teach the mental side of performance, the more it becomes obvious to us that our students are their own worst enemy. They create underperformance as a result of their negative thoughts, actions, and emotions.
Throwing shells, slamming the gun shut, grimacing… These outbursts over missed targets simply serve as reminders to the subconscious that you desire missing. The ever-expanding list of excuses that we see shooters come up with is mind-boggling. What they don’t understand is that any excuses that they make for missing are justifications for the miss. This ensures that the probability of recreating the miss again is VERY HIGH!
Everyone wants to take responsibility for their successes, but no one wants to take responsibility for their failures. Until a person takes responsibility for their failure, their failure will continue. Once a person takes responsibility for their failure, then and only then can a commitment to change something take place and turn the failure into a success.
Can these things really cause you to miss a target?
1. The background?
2. What someone said?
3. The rain?
4. The time of day?
5. Your gun, choke, or ammunition?
6. Having to wait to shoot?
7. The type of target?
8. The people you are shooting with?
9. Whether or not you play the options?
10. The cost of entry?
If you want to succeed then you must take control of things like these and not let them control you. If you use excuses to justify your failure, then what you are really saying is something is controlling you and you can’t do anything about it. If you let little things that you can’t control, control your performance, you will never experience your potential.
You must control yourself and stay in control of the targets.
If your score for the day is the total of all the targets that you had hit, would it be fair to say that the future is a product of the past? If you looked at your scores on each station as you shot them, would it be fair to say that the past creates the future? Would it then be fair to say that the only way to control the past or the future is to simply control the present and shoot the targets one at a time? This is the only way to control your future.
Like Bill Bacon at American Shooting Center said to me once on a fishing trip:
“It doesn’t matter where you are – you are there.
It doesn’t matter the temperature of the room – it is still room temperature.
Ultimately, you must accept this one fact:
It is how well you control what you do that breaks the target—
Not what goes on around you!”
