Leaving the Present and Self-Judgment

There’s a catch-22 in shooting competitively.

You do it for the enjoyment and the thrill of competition and you start shooting well. Then all of a sudden you think, “Well, this is why I’m doing this, and I’m excited about that.” It’s okay to end your post-shot routine and say “attaboy.” But we tend to want to be judgmental. And it’s the judgmental thoughts that make us leave the present.

If something is neither good nor bad, then it’s something that you deal with and you move on. But the instant you start looking at things as good or bad, nothing good happens and you certainly leave the present. If you look at anything as good or bad, it’s judgmental, and you’re going to be leaving the present.

You can’t consciously be in the present. That’s an impossibility. You just can’t consciously be there, because by the time you think about being there, you’re not. The conscious brain works behind reality, and you can’t doubt it by yourself. You’ve got to have somebody to doubt it with you. And that would be the conscious brain.

You can’t be scared by yourself. You got to have that conscious brain helping you be scared. You can’t doubt it by yourself. You can’t check the lead by yourself. You’ve got to have somebody else in there telling you to check the lead. You can’t do that by yourself. If you’re by yourself, then you’re in the present.

This is an excerpt from the March 2012 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with more than 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.