Being Honest with Your Score

You can’t run away from the score, but your ability to admit what the score is and admit the situation you’re in is huge.

Controlling doubt and fear is also huge because if you can admit the fact that you’re only down two going into the last station and let that in, you’re ahead.

Don’t try not to think about it because the harder you try to not think about it, the more you’re going to think about it.

But you can let that in and say, “Yep, that’s right. That is an absolute fact of life. Right now, I’ve got to continue with what got me here: get back into my routine, going here, break these targets, pick the breakpoint, do my preload and shoot the targets and let the score take care of itself.”

And whether you’re down two going into the last two stations or whether you’re down 15 going into the third station is of no consequence. What’s of consequence is if you can turn around with all of those different score thoughts. And believe me, your brain will come up with thoughts that don’t even make logical sense when you’re in the zone.

Every time you have to face the thought process like that, if you can come through it regardless of where you are and regardless of the outcome and stay in the present and let your anticipation circuit and the stabilized picture and the preload get you through to the end, it’s a huge benefit in the overall scheme of things.

You can’t learn it from a book. You can’t learn it from somebody else. You can’t ask somebody, “Hey, man, how did you hold it together?” If they could tell you, you wouldn’t believe them because they can’t tell you. They just know that they’ve done it enough times, and all of a sudden, because they’ve done it enough times, everything just clicks and everything comes together.

It’s an incredible feeling the first time it happens, and it’s something that you have to go through. You cannot be a dominator unless you’ve lost big. You cannot be a dominator unless your expectations have overcome your ability to perform. You cannot recognize those weaknesses unless you have experienced them, and the key to it is to accept it, internalize it, move on, and do better next time when you find yourself in that position.

This is an excerpt from the May 2014 Coaching Hour podcast. You can listen to it and read a written transcript, along with over 20 years of archived episodes with your Knowledge Vault membership.