Eventually, you will perform your best from a state of observation without thought. Or a state of thoughtless witnessing.
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This is a realization (maybe better referred to as the realization) that has changed my entire perception of competitive shooting. I had never heard the concept of "witnessing" rather than consciously "attempting/executing" an act before I started lurking on these forums. Reading a few older posts on the topic was truly one of those lightbulb moments for me.
I had stumbled across this mental state a couple of times while shooting collegiate bullseye (unfortunately, it tended to happen when things weren't going my way), after my goals shifted from shooting a competitive score to "shooting my own match." After these matches, I would sit down and try and put the pieces together, but was never really able to understand how and why this change of headspace occurred. I now understand that, due to a change in conscious goals, I was unintentionally changing over from the "execute" mindset to the kind of "witnessing" Brian is talking about.
Looking back at my early IDPA/USPSA matches (back while I was still trying very hard to "execute" stages), I see that the dynamic nature of IDPA/USPSA only compounded the problems associated with mental overload due to trying too hard. Mental overload is bad enough on a square bulleye range; incorporate moving/shooting, reloads, transitions, and everything else associated with USPSA and the overload can be even more apparent and frustrating.
I feel like I can now get into the witnessing mindset on-command during matches. It took a complete overhaul of how I approach stage planning (the "Stage Analysis and Ownership" document I found here is a great resource), but it was absolutely worth it.
For me, it's almost like writing all the code to a computer program (this would be "Stage Planning" in shooting terms), then sitting back and watching the program run its course...you just enter the execute command (the buzzer in shooting) and the program (you the shooter) runs itself (shoots the stage). Sorry if my parallel is a bit confusing, but the computer program comparison is the best one I've managed to come up with.