It’s been proven that we as human beings have a 3:1 negativity bias toward the things that happen to us. And it really doesn’t matter whether they are in our control or not. This means we have a better than 60 percent chance that we will remember things in a negative way, regardless of whether they were negative or not.
Remember, we did not know how dangerous it was to ride a bike without a helmet or drink out of a hose bibb 65 years ago when I was a kid, but we do now. You can see how things we think about things can evolve whether we want them to or not.
There was a time when it was important to know where not to drink, what a copperhead looked like in the leaves, or what kind of situation you might find a rattlesnake. It was more important to remember to not do certain things when the result could be life-threatening!
How does this all relate to sporting clays or skeet, you might ask? Well, read on and we will try to make some sense of it.
If you are competitive in skeet or sporting clays, eventually you’re gonna have one of those days where you could not put a three-word sentence together and your game is as mixed up as a soccer game with six-year-olds with three balls on the field! The negative thoughts and comments will flow through your mind and from your mouth and others, like the fountain of youth at an old folks’ home.
“Man, you had a tough day today, didn’t you?”
“What happened to you today?”
“You were really off today!”
Then you see Gary Fitzgerald and he levels you with the velvet hammer: “Your score sucks; you need to get some different chokes!”
While these phrases were our attempt at not using the real comments we have heard and said to ourselves, you gotta admit that the brain does go pretty negative at the drop of a hat!
Here is what we would encourage you to do when you find yourself in this type of situation.
First, admit it and then find something good in your performance to change the thought from the negative to a positive! You just might want to try some of these phrases:
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