Eventually, your game will elevate to another level and your fellow shooters will begin to notice your scores are either becoming more consistent and/or higher.

You will begin to be complimented on your game. The normal response to a compliment about your score is to be humble and say things like, “Well a blind hog finds an acorn!” or “Aw, I just got lucky today!”

Humility is an honorable trait for a person to have, and we all like to be around humble people. But humility is not necessarily the best way to take full advantage of your success and create the memory of your performance that you can draw on in future competitions. If you can attach your performance to specific things that you did that enabled you to shoot the way you did, then you are rewarding your brain for doing a great job without being boisterous or conceited.

After making eye contact, the absolute first thing out of your mouth after a compliment should be a sincere thanks for noticing your performance.

“It’s nice to be noticed. Thank you for noticing my score today. I’ve been working hard on my game and a lot of things came together today for me. My plans on every station were spot-on. The breakpoints I chose were the correct ones for me and I hit them well. I’ve been working hard on single targets, working on visualizing how I want the shot to come together and where. That stuff really works!”