Why can't I keep my head clear?

[Memphis]

I've started competing in IDPA and USPSA again recently and I've gone to crap and need help.

Quick BIO: I shot IPSC 12 years ago for about 2 years as Master competing with an Open .38 Super, I was a Deputy Sheriff, I'm a life long firearms enthusiast and WAS blessed with the odd ability to hit about anything with just about anything. i.e. I could shoot clays mid air with a Marlin .22 or peg cigarette butts with a piece of gravel at 5 yards. Bows, sling-shots and even casting a fly rod was just easy for me.

Fast forward and I'm now 34 and have retired from work, started spending a LOT more time shooting, reloading, tuning guns, teaching some firearms related classes as a hobby and, I have a comfortable low-stress life. In between being 22 and 34 I've lost my bullseye blessing, had chemo destroy the nerves in my extremities and enough head trauma to kill a line backer which has also effected my long-sited vision.

I shoot pretty well at the club when I'm just goofing off and making brass but, when I think of it as practice I go all to H***. When I get to a match I'm always calm but I feel like I'm forgetting stuff (like items for the match) and I spend a lot of time thinking about it even though it doesn't really bother me I can't seem to stop. I know that sounds contradicting but I'm a "roll-with-it" and very adaptive guy since chemo made my memory a little mushy to say the least and it's just how I've come to live these days. When I get to the stage I'm able to plan out my shots, see it all go down and make ready with out issues. Then....I hear the "beep"....

I go to crap, my mind goes blank, I start miss fast and if anything goes wrong I CAN NOT stop thinking about it for the rest of the day. I've tried breathing exercises and light meditation (albeit, I'm not an expert) but I've tried all I can think of and taken a lot if advice from this forum. WTF?!?

[benos]

Memphis,

The first thing that came to mind after reading your post - I wonder if you have unconsciously convinced yourself that you can't kick your problem's ass?

That's all I got for now.

be

[Memphis]

Not something that had occurred to me. I'm not a Buddhist nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night but, I do think I consciously am aware of that thought at least once at every match.

Thanks.

[Jake Di Vita]

Man this could be a combination of several things.

When I get to a match I'm always calm but I feel like I'm forgetting stuff (like items for the match) and I spend a lot of time thinking about it even though it doesn't really bother me I can't seem to stop

Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to spend some time writing up a range checklist. That way you will always KNOW you have everything you need and hopefully get that totally out of your head.

When I get to the stage I'm able to plan out my shots, see it all go down and make ready with out issues. Then....I hear the "beep"....

Whenever I hear this, I instantly think there is a visualization problem in there somewhere.

I go to crap, my mind goes blank, I start miss fast and if anything goes wrong I CAN NOT stop thinking about it for the rest of the day. I've tried breathing exercises and light meditation (albeit, I'm not an expert) but I've tried all I can think of and taken a lot if advice from this forum. WTF?!?

Maybe just stop caring? I could be way off, but I think ego is a big part of the problem. My guess is as soon as you start "practicing" or shooting in a match, you feel you need to shoot like you could years ago. Obviously, that ain't happening just yet.

Next time you go to practice or a match, erase EVERYTHING out of your head, and just shoot when you see the sights in the middle of the target.

[G-ManBart]

I think Jake hit all three points nicely. The one thing I'd add is that "they" say it takes 7 exposures to something to really commit it to memory. With the memory problems chemo brings (a friend is dealing with this), that might take a few more times. Simply do the mental walk-through as many times as you can.

I started to put together a range checklist a few years ago, but decided to just look at the stuff in my truck and run through "gun, mags, ammo, belt, shoes"...if I have that, I can manage to get through the match. R,

[AlamoShooter]

34 years old, I started competing at 34 , light competition but still thats when I started. 20 + years ago. Understand the thing of letting it bother your brain about things you -used - to be able to do. Focus on what you can do and let go of the past. The check list is a great Idea to let you get to sleep in hotel before match day.

Now if some-one will tell me why I came into this room

I stoped planing every shot in my prep, = I look at the targets and shots in the walkthrough and make mental notes about the spots I need to hit /(stand at) take the shots. My pre stage thoughts are just about hitting the spots to make the shots.

Its simple and the targets and shots from each position is like a phots that flips up. not described in words just a photo.

most stages I only have to plan five or six positions, each positon has a note sending me to the next.

A blind stage at a 3 gun match had me feeling like I was on a Cafine over dose though . I didn't know the stage was over , the RO had to catch me from running away looking for more targets

Edited November 20, 2010 by AlamoShooter

[Neomet]

I'm with Jake here. Just a thought but how about for a couple matches don't even look at your results? Ever. Know that going in. If you will never know the results you can't be attached to them which might well be the driving issue. If you want to go to the deep end of the pool have a buddy check your targets for you and take your scoresheet so you can't even see that. Tell the RO you don't want him to say your stage time out loud. That might be really interesting.

[Aglifter]

Perhaps a blinking red light, and some music in your ear muffs, right before a stage - that's always been a way to settle my mind. Of course, dark rooms and a candle also help. (Not a Buddhist, but Christians are permitted to meditate as well.)

[Flexmoney]

expectations, outcomes, results...

these are things we wish for. but, they are derivatives. they are not the things we have to do. they're not fundamentals and they're not the execution.

figure out what is most fundamental and over develop that for a while.

it is mentally tough, but forget the current score and method and measure yourself by the execution of the fundamentals instead.

[BayouSlide]

Next time you go to practice or a match, erase EVERYTHING out of your head, and just shoot when you see the sights in the middle of the target.

Jake's advice above is spot on.

Sounds like medical issues have added the equivalent of 30 years to your mental ability...you're dealing with some of the same issues I recognize in myself as age 60 gets closer and closer.

Some of my friends have convinced me that I sometimes think too much, which I've come to understand as trying too hard create the "perfect" mental programming that, unfortunately, is a little unrealistic at this stage of the game, for me at least. Don't have the RAM anymore to pull off the complex, and would be better off just concentrating on putting two good hits in each brown target, then moving on to the next.

A simple plan well executed is more successful that the "perfect" plan that falls by the wayside because it's just beyond what we can pull off every time the buzzer goes off. And if you can still the little voice in your head that fosters expectations instead of execution, so much the better.

Good luck in your journey.

Curtis

[imadvm]

I took a class from Matt Burkett last year in preparation for the MGM Ironman match.

Here are some of the things he taught and they seem to really help.

1. Be fully prepared and organized for the match and each individual stage.

2. No negative thoughts or conversations with other shooters -- actually he said not even positive talks, i.e. don't talk to other people who just shot the stage and

talk about how great they did as this puts additional mental stress on yourself. This is your "game face" and mental attitude.

3. Have a plan for the stage and visualize it several times from the very beginning buzzer through to the last shot. Include where and how you are going to move,

when you are going to reload, the targets and shooting positions.

4. BREATH ! Sounds strange but often times just consciously breathing while shooting or when things go wrong will calm you down and get you organized.

5. When things go wrong and they invariably will DO NOT dwell on them -- MOVE ON. Later try to analyze what you could have done differently and correct it next time.

6. Practice -- dry firing, movement, reloads, etc.

I'm sure I've missed things that were taught but these are the ones that stuck with me and really helped. I'm an average "C" shooter and am always trying to make

myself better so I am basically competing with myself and not trying to beat a Grand Master shooter - try to learn from them but don't feel bad if you

don't come close to their performance.

Jerry

[benos]

I go to crap, my mind goes blank, I start miss fast and if anything goes wrong I CAN NOT stop thinking about it for the rest of the day. I've tried breathing exercises and light meditation (albeit, I'm not an expert) but I've tried all I can think of and taken a lot if advice from this forum. WTF?!?

Maybe just stop caring? I could be way off, but I think ego is a big part of the problem. My guess is as soon as you start "practicing" or shooting in a match, you feel you need to shoot like you could years ago. Obviously, that ain't happening just yet.

Next time you go to practice or a match, erase EVERYTHING out of your head, and just shoot when you see the sights in the middle of the target.

Good stuff.

[Sam]

Memphis, perhaps you are being haunted by how good you were "back in the day"? Most of us (old folks)have felt this yearning in some area of life at some time. The truth is: As life happens, we change. Through change, some abilities languish while others are strengthened.

It is completely possible for you to develop a very high level of skill with firearms. Just as it is possible for anyone who has never fired a gun before, to do so. But, it is totally impossible to be what we once were.

[grayguns]

To the OP, your forthright willingness to confront your difficult situation openly here touched me, and reminded me of where I've been. If the Moderators will permit me, here's an unusually personal narrative that reinforces and illustrates the excellent advice you read here, offered in the sincere hope that it might be helpful.

Though I don't normally discuss it, my close friends of long standing in the sport know that I had a stroke in the late 80's, when I was about 32, caused by a heart condition. As a result I was rendered quite disorganized, forgetful and pretty much nuts for a while. I lost a big measure of my previously-accomplished athletic ability (to this day I cannot throw anything accurately...don't let me play darts!), memories, words, confidence, some coordination on my strong side, and with those perceived losses came feelings of grief, frustration and humiliation as I struggled to deal with things that once were easy, as I forgot people I once cared about, and as I blew commitments in a rushing torrent of confused thoughts. I inevitably came to see myself as damaged and unworthy, and had difficulty imagining that I'd ever be "OK" again. A shade of foreboding telling me I was done came over me.

Eventually, as I recovered some, I seem to have decided that shooting again would be therapeutic. Aaron Bush told me later on that I showed up at the Steel Challenge range in Piru wearing pink balloon pants, holding a pistol in one hand and a holster in the other with little clue of what to do with them. By the Lord's grace, some close friends helped me along during this time. (Let no one ever disparage the generally high character of shooters in my presence.) Anyway, I'd told myself that I wouldn't "try" to be competitive again, that I'd resign myself to being realistic, that I needed to put that hyper-competitive driven nature of mine away for good. After having been among the first shooters to get his card punched by Dave Stanford into the then-new "M" classification, I applied to USPSA be reclassified. I was convinced I wasn't going to be "OK" again.

As I had been shooting competitively since I was about 15, I understandably came to see my post-illness performance in matches as some sort of metric by which I judged my overall recovery in comparison to my modest previous accomplishments. This was very unhelpful, to say the least. Perhaps you can relate to the emotional and mental conflict this presented, as my recollections of past ability conflicted with the reality of present skills. Despite my intention of just "shooting for fun" (something alien to my previous experience), I found myself feeling immense pressure as I saw each mistake or errant shot as both a negation of my progress and a validation of my own self-image as damaged goods. Plus, I really still wanted to "win", whatever that meant. I wasn't "OK".

Some good time went by as I gradually continued to recover physically and mentally, yet my damaged self-image remained. So too did the pressure my ego placed on me remain, as I struggled within myself to both validate and repudiate that negative self-image, with each perceived success achieved despite a built-in excuse for failure. Being a highly results-oriented personality, my inconsistent match performance gave me plenty of evidence to support either ego-driven viewpoint: one risky and potentially painful, the other safe but empty. I was still living to the standard of old expectations and old beliefs about what I could and couldn't do. When we love the past more than the present, we exist in a past that never was.

Whether we're happy, nervous, sad or hurt, it's in our human nature to look for reasons to explain why we feel the way we do. That leads us to the classic error of believing that how we feel influences what we are, what we do and how we do it.

Thus, as I continued to shoot match scores well below my increasing ability with only just enough occasional flashes of brilliance to keep me intrigued, I identified "match nerves" as the reason for my inconsistent performance. The belief that how I felt affected how I scored led me to all manner of strategies aimed at altering or controlling my emotions, thoughts and so forth. I developed magical rituals to occupy myself between stages. I made lists of everything. I stopped talking to other shooters as much, which is almost like being dead for a social butterfly like me. I stopped watching the other shooters. I meditated like a maniac. (For indeed, how else could I meditate? I'm a maniac.) I visualized glowing green fire. I counted breaths. I re-read the Tao Te Ching and Musashi. After a lifetime of self-absorption, I searched for some authentic meaning in the release of myself. It was all about me.

All this hard effort at not trying hard did help my scores a bit, but I continued to blow huge chunks at the range now and then, more often than I wanted to admit. My fervent denial of the importance of results often became a cruel lie once I stepped into the box. My increasingly not-so-great heart still sometimes pounded away when my name was called on deck. I still wasn't beating my ostensible peers. I was still beating myself. I was still fighting my "nerves". I still wasn't "OK".

Fortunately, starting around 1996 the gift of life God gave me coughed up yet another chance to learn something positive from adversity that finally opened my eyes to accepting a new self-image, and with it a new manner of seeing everything. My arthritis and heart disease both became acute problems. This was actually a fantastic break for me. Really. My heart went in and out of arrhythmia like a tweaker burglarizing a trailer park, between bouts of angina. My hands and joints stopped working well as the pain was constant and inescapable. I can't take Motrin and the like, and I was smart enough to know that gunsmith / trainer / cop types must not eat Vicodin like it was a breakfast cereal. Yet, I still had to work, to build guns, to shoot, to live. The long hours at the bench dropping my tools in a clumsy parody of skilled labour and the times I'd step into the shooting box feeling like I was really going to die led me to two great and useful realizations that I missed during my younger shot at inner revelation:

First, I don't have the luxury of relying on being comfortable.

Second, I am not how I feel. Being comfortable doesn't matter.

With my growing business interests and a new wife who wanted me alive and healthy spurring me on, I had to do stuff whether I felt like it or not, or even if I felt like I couldn't do it at all. For the first time in my life, I truly began to internalize and live by what I'd known consciously but denied inside all along as I clung to my excuses: how I feel doesn't have to influence how I perform unless I allow it to.

My previous efforts at mastering my emotions were based on a faulty belief that these emotions guide my performance. In truth, beyond being in whatever nutty state I might start off in, my performance guides my emotions if and as I choose to trust.

The former way is results-oriented, and thus ego driven. It negates our training, has no faith and is fragile and brittle, yet lets the ego pretend it's strong.

The latter way is process-driven and honors experience and training as a result.

It was my little Ratwife Beki that helped me really grasp this concept, back in '96. On the afternoon of the first day of competition at the World Shoot in Brasil, I stumbled onto a board while dragging a dummy out of a trench and cracked my shinbone. I was already shooting from fear of failure, of missing, ruled by expectations I was afraid I wouldn't meet. Our Team needed me to be hard, but I was down. While I iced my leg back at the hotel, Beki looked at the match, looked at the tasks required, and made me a list of simple affirmations that she taped into the back of my blue IPSC rule book that changed me forever.

Each sentence, and they were few, referenced me to a clear, accessible and discrete aspect of the process of visualizing the courses and operating the pistol, and freed me from the seductive shadow world of results and expectations and thinking my way through.

In essence, The List told me that I deserved to be there. It told me that all I had to do was trust my visualizations, watch the sights fall on each target and feel the prep of the trigger until each shot breaks. What it didn't say, was anything at all about avoiding other shooters, or wearing my lucky socks, or trying to control things to make myself feel a certain way as a pathway to results. It assumed, very correctly, that I was feeling pretty miserable anyhow and that I didn't have the luxury of letting that interfere with trusting my visualizations, watching the sights and pressing off each shot. Or watching the targets whilst slapping the shit out of the trigger when appropriate, for that matter.

Rodent made me read the list before each stage starting Tuesday morning. Initially I found myself feeling every bit as nervous as I was on Monday, but with one key difference: I allowed myself to not care...not about results, because I'm human and have an ego, but rather about not caring about how I felt about results. Instead I simply watched the sights and felt the pressure of prepping the trigger as it rolled off under my finger another 400 or so times that week. I came back pretty far that week and ended up 7th while supporting my Team for whom I would have done anything. Still have that gold medal. And that list.

Since then I've had my share of blowouts and also did well much of the time, but a foundation was there to build upon. It was simple: choose results and kick open the door for the ego to intrude where it doesn't belong, or choose process and leave the ego to do a job it can actually do well.

Since retiring from competition in 2004 to devote myself fully to teaching, building and my LE work, perhaps the greatest, most immediately practical insight that others here have also kindly shared with you has been reinforced by my students time and again: let yourself have fun. I agree, the last thing I still do before the "beep" is smile, and thank my Lord for yet one more stage to burn before He calls me.

Without meaning to presume, I have faith that, like me, you won't ever be "OK" again. What you can and will be is different, and in some ways better than ever. Different can be OK. I pray that God helps you and heals you. If I can be of any service to you at all in your recovery and fulfillment of your goals, please don't hesitate to ask me. Anything at all.

I thank everyone for indulging this long post and do hope it's helpful in framing some core concepts.

-Bruce

Edited November 24, 2010 by grayguns

[EkuJustice]

It really can be a mental block sometimes when something goes wrong to keep dwelling on it. After the shot,you have to say that shot is gone and just worry about the one you are currently taking. Think of it as say 32 individual shots and not a 32 round COF. Stuff goes wrong and you really just need to learn to accept it and move on since you don't have a delorean to go back and do anything about it. Also try not to concentrate on shooting the entire match. Have a trigger point where you turn your concentration on and off and turn it on when you are say on deck and turn it off after the gun is back in the holster and your done with your stage. Trying to focus 100 percent of the match will just overwelm you and cause for a break down. Concentrating in short bursts will keep your focus

For the worrying about forgetting stuff, how about making a check list of every thing you need for the match. Pack up the night before and have it ready to go so all you need to do is grab it in the morning not search for gear. In the morning, as the stuff is put in the car, check it off the list just like a pilot will do. If everything is checked off the list everyting is there and good to go

Edited November 24, 2010 by EkuJustice

[Graham Smith]

Maybe just stop caring?

That's really hard to do and can be extremely counter intuitive but that was my first thought when reading about this.

Without going into details, I am very detail oriented and am what a lot of people might call "anal retentive". In my work (computers) this is a valuable trait but it can also work against me in other things. Like shooting. Whenever I start getting too wrapped up in all the minutia, my match scores go down. To counter this, I just keep telling myself, "It's just a f#ing game. Stop sweating the details and just shoot."

Once I stop worrying about how well I am doing and trying too hard, I always do better. So, I try and spend my practice time worrying about the little things (one at a time) and spend my match time enjoying myself. I try and make the matches a welcome break from the practice rather than the other way around.

Your mileage may vary.

[warpspeed]

To the OP, your forthright willingness to confront your difficult situation openly here touched me, and reminded me of where I've been. If the Moderators will permit me, here's an unusually personal narrative that reinforces and illustrates the excellent advice you read here, offered in the sincere hope that it might be helpful.

Though I don't normally discuss it, my close friends of long standing in the sport know that I had a stroke in the late 80's, when I was about 32, caused by a heart condition. As a result I was rendered quite disorganized, forgetful and pretty much nuts for a while. I lost a big measure of my previously-accomplished athletic ability (to this day I cannot throw anything accurately...don't let me play darts!), memories, words, confidence, some coordination on my strong side, and with those perceived losses came feelings of grief, frustration and humiliation as I struggled to deal with things that once were easy, as I forgot people I once cared about, and as I blew commitments in a rushing torrent of confused thoughts. I inevitably came to see myself as damaged and unworthy, and had difficulty imagining that I'd ever be "OK" again. A shade of foreboding telling me I was done came over me.

Eventually, as I recovered some, I seem to have decided that shooting again would be therapeutic. Aaron Bush told me later on that I showed up at the Steel Challenge range in Piru wearing pink balloon pants, holding a pistol in one hand and a holster in the other with little clue of what to do with them. By the Lord's grace, some close friends helped me along during this time. (Let no one ever disparage the generally high character of shooters in my presence.) Anyway, I'd told myself that I wouldn't "try" to be competitive again, that I'd resign myself to being realistic, that I needed to put that hyper-competitive driven nature of mine away for good. After having been among the first shooters to get his card punched by Dave Stanford into the then-new "M" classification, I applied to USPSA be reclassified. I was convinced I wasn't going to be "OK" again.

As I had been shooting competitively since I was about 15, I understandably came to see my post-illness performance in matches as some sort of metric by which I judged my overall recovery in comparison to my modest previous accomplishments. This was very unhelpful, to say the least. Perhaps you can relate to the emotional and mental conflict this presented, as my recollections of past ability conflicted with the reality of present skills. Despite my intention of just "shooting for fun" (something alien to my previous experience), I found myself feeling immense pressure as I saw each mistake or errant shot as both a negation of my progress and a validation of my own self-image as damaged goods. Plus, I really still wanted to "win", whatever that meant. I wasn't "OK".

Some good time went by as I gradually continued to recover physically and mentally, yet my damaged self-image remained. So too did the pressure my ego placed on me remain, as I struggled within myself to both validate and repudiate that negative self-image, with each perceived success achieved despite a built-in excuse for failure. Being a highly results-oriented personality, my inconsistent match performance gave me plenty of evidence to support either ego-driven viewpoint: one risky and potentially painful, the other safe but empty. I was still living to the standard of old expectations and old beliefs about what I could and couldn't do. When we love the past more than the present, we exist in a past that never was.

Whether we're happy, nervous, sad or hurt, it's in our human nature to look for reasons to explain why we feel the way we do. That leads us to the classic error of believing that how we feel influences what we are, what we do and how we do it.

Thus, as I continued to shoot match scores well below my increasing ability with only just enough occasional flashes of brilliance to keep me intrigued, I identified "match nerves" as the reason for my inconsistent performance. The belief that how I felt affected how I scored led me to all manner of strategies aimed at altering or controlling my emotions, thoughts and so forth. I developed magical rituals to occupy myself between stages. I made lists of everything. I stopped talking to other shooters as much, which is almost like being dead for a social butterfly like me. I stopped watching the other shooters. I meditated like a maniac. (For indeed, how else could I meditate? I'm a maniac.) I visualized glowing green fire. I counted breaths. I re-read the Tao Te Ching and Musashi. After a lifetime of self-absorption, I searched for some authentic meaning in the release of myself. It was all about me.

All this hard effort at not trying hard did help my scores a bit, but I continued to blow huge chunks at the range now and then, more often than I wanted to admit. My fervent denial of the importance of results often became a cruel lie once I stepped into the box. My increasingly not-so-great heart still sometimes pounded away when my name was called on deck. I still wasn't beating my ostensible peers. I was still beating myself. I was still fighting my "nerves". I still wasn't "OK".

Fortunately, starting around 1996 the gift of life God gave me coughed up yet another chance to learn something positive from adversity that finally opened my eyes to accepting a new self-image, and with it a new manner of seeing everything. My arthritis and heart disease both became acute problems. This was actually a fantastic break for me. Really. My heart went in and out of arrhythmia like a tweaker burglarizing a trailer park, between bouts of angina. My hands and joints stopped working well as the pain was constant and inescapable. I can't take Motrin and the like, and I was smart enough to know that gunsmith / trainer / cop types must not eat Vicodin like it was a breakfast cereal. Yet, I still had to work, to build guns, to shoot, to live. The long hours at the bench dropping my tools in a clumsy parody of skilled labour and the times I'd step into the shooting box feeling like I was really going to die led me to two great and useful realizations that I missed during my younger shot at inner revelation:

First, I don't have the luxury of relying on being comfortable.

Second, I am not how I feel. Being comfortable doesn't matter.

With my growing business interests and a new wife who wanted me alive and healthy spurring me on, I had to do stuff whether I felt like it or not, or even if I felt like I couldn't do it at all. For the first time in my life, I truly began to internalize and live by what I'd known consciously but denied inside all along as I clung to my excuses: how I feel doesn't have to influence how I perform unless I allow it to.

My previous efforts at mastering my emotions were based on a faulty belief that these emotions guide my performance. In truth, beyond being in whatever nutty state I might start off in, my performance guides my emotions if and as I choose to trust.

The former way is results-oriented, and thus ego driven. It negates our training, has no faith and is fragile and brittle, yet lets the ego pretend it's strong.

The latter way is process-driven and honors experience and training as a result.

It was my little Ratwife Beki that helped me really grasp this concept, back in '96. On the afternoon of the first day of competition at the World Shoot in Brasil, I stumbled onto a board while dragging a dummy out of a trench and cracked my shinbone. I was already shooting from fear of failure, of missing, ruled by expectations I was afraid I wouldn't meet. Our Team needed me to be hard, but I was down. While I iced my leg back at the hotel, Beki looked at the match, looked at the tasks required, and made me a list of simple affirmations that she taped into the back of my blue IPSC rule book that changed me forever.

Each sentence, and they were few, referenced me to a clear, accessible and discrete aspect of the process of visualizing the courses and operating the pistol, and freed me from the seductive shadow world of results and expectations and thinking my way through.

In essence, The List told me that I deserved to be there. It told me that all I had to do was trust my visualizations, watch the sights fall on each target and feel the prep of the trigger until each shot breaks. What it didn't say, was anything at all about avoiding other shooters, or wearing my lucky socks, or trying to control things to make myself feel a certain way as a pathway to results. It assumed, very correctly, that I was feeling pretty miserable anyhow and that I didn't have the luxury of letting that interfere with trusting my visualizations, watching the sights and pressing off each shot. Or watching the targets whilst slapping the shit out of the trigger when appropriate, for that matter.

Rodent made me read the list before each stage starting Tuesday morning. Initially I found myself feeling every bit as nervous as I was on Monday, but with one key difference: I allowed myself to not care...not about results, because I'm human and have an ego, but rather about not caring about how I felt about results. Instead I simply watched the sights and felt the pressure of prepping the trigger as it rolled off under my finger another 400 or so times that week. I came back pretty far that week and ended up 7th while supporting my Team for whom I would have done anything. Still have that gold medal. And that list.

Since then I've had my share of blowouts and also did well much of the time, but a foundation was there to build upon. It was simple: choose results and kick open the door for the ego to intrude where it doesn't belong, or choose process and leave the ego to do a job it can actually do well.

Since retiring from competition in 2004 to devote myself fully to teaching, building and my LE work, perhaps the greatest, most immediately practical insight that others here have also kindly shared with you has been reinforced by my students time and again: let yourself have fun. I agree, the last thing I still do before the "beep" is smile, and thank my Lord for yet one more stage to burn before He calls me.

Without meaning to presume, I have faith that, like me, you won't ever be "OK" again. What you can and will be is different, and in some ways better than ever. Different can be OK. I pray that God helps you and heals you. If I can be of any service to you at all in your recovery and fulfillment of your goals, please don't hesitate to ask me. Anything at all.

I thank everyone for indulging this long post and do hope it's helpful in framing some core concepts.

-Bruce

Bruce,

That was fantastic. Thanks for sharing something so personal with us.

[benos]

Bruce,

Thank you for the deeply heartfelt and powerfully moving post.

Thanks to that, I now have a little bit better of an understanding of why you have always been one of my favorite people on the planet.

be

[kimmie]

Grayguns - thank you, thank you, thank you. Your post is inspiring. In no way have I been through what you and the o.p. have been through. And in no way do I have a stellar 'past' shooting history to compare my 'today' self with. I didn't come to this sport until my mid forties. A woman who was never athletic or coordinated and had never held a gun before. (I cringe when I see videos of myself stomping through a stage! Oh what I wouldn't give for the grace of a Lisa or a Julie) But I fell in love with shooting and embraced it like I'd never embraced anything before. And actually, my lack of athletic ability wasn't a great detriment. So my demons don't revolve around the loss of a previously held shooting ability and coming to terms with the loss of that or the loss of any physical ability. But in a way, I still suffer from a loss which creates the same issues for me in the mental aspect of the game. I soooo understand and identify with the self defeating attitude, the negative self fulfilling prophecy and the beating myself up after a poor performance. And the inconsistency. I recently shot Area 2 and I felt good going to the match. I had been shooting pretty well prior. And at Area 2 I shot probably the worse that I ever have in the years that I have been shooting. Pressure? Probably. Ego, well, having never been a star, it wasn't all about that, but being squadded with my mentors, Kay and Lisa, made me want to show them some improvement since the last time we shot together. i.e. I felt the need to not 'disappoint' them. But what I noticed most, and what I had been noticing for sometime since I hit my 50's, but never addressed, was a change in my 'mental' abilities. I had always been 'smart'. I read 2 or 3 books a week. I did well in school. I had a phenomenal memory. Taking tests was a breeze. But 50 came and along with my 20/20 vision disappearing, it seemed my brain starting turning to mush. No, I don't think it's early dementia (sm). But I do think it's part of the aging process and having been so 'sharp' mentally most of my life, I'm having a hard time dealing with this difference. I need to make lists. I need to repeat things several times to commit them to memory. I need to read something complex more than once to understand it. I recently had to take a registry exam for my job and it was the most painful thing that I had done in years. The studying was pure torture. This is still kinda new to me. And I'm not liking it. But I need to address it. At Area 2, I realize I had no focus. Not what I needed. Even though I walked a stage 4 or 5 times, I got 3 FTE's for running right past targets that I had looked at those 4 or 5 times during my walk throughs. Geez. That's not even poor shooting skills.

So, I guess what it's all about is accepting and learning to adapt to our constantly changing physical/mental states. Because if we live, we are bound to change. Be it illness or just nature taking it's course. I need to come up with a plan for who I am now and stop whining about who I used to be. And stop setting myself up for failure because I'm not that young girl anymore. There's nothing wrong with me, I'm just evolving. What I realized at Area 2 was that where in the past I could look at something once and remember it, I now need to look at it 4 or 5 or even 6 or 7 times. I need to accept that. I never had to focus because it came naturally. Now I need to make a conscious effort. Not bad. Just new. And I bet that as soon as I accept and address those differences, I'll find a way to compensate for them.

This thread and the replies have been an eye opener for me. Thank you all!

Edited November 25, 2010 by kimmie

[benos]

A great book on this thread's topic is Lanny Bassham's, With Winning in Mind.

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[austin rick]

This has been a great thread. As a new shooter at age 53, I have made many new friends and I'm the only one that judges me by my scores (and I'm working on that!).

[Bouttime]

WOW! what a post. I started shooting about two years back, I'am 68 now. I was on the Marine Corp Rifle @ Pistol team in the early 60's. Shot some Trap and Skeet after I got out. But them life became God, Family, and work.

Memphis, I can plan out a COF and have a mind set how I want to shoot it but some times it just does not work out. I thank back when I was in the service and (I was good) and wish I could still shoot that way again, but it is not going to happen.

I guess what I want to say is, take the stress off and just have a good time. Forget what it use to be and take what you have now and build on it. Less face it, when you are on the COF by yourself, you are in your on little world just for a few seconds.

I think you will make progress if you just relax and enjoy. Don't be so hard on yourself.

I love this sport.

[jameswilliam]

Mind is a way to thought about any topics. So there is required to control on the thoughts and be optimistic in any way. To control on the thoughts then there is required to follow the meditation exercise regularly. Also concentrate in a single activity at a time which helps to increase the concentration level and gain the confidence.

[Graham Smith]

I've always been the kind of person who has two or three tracks running in their head at all times. For example, as I sit here typing, I'm also thinking about things I need to get at the store and things I need to get ready for some rifle shooting this weekend and something I'm waiting on from a customer, etc... When shooting matches, I've been able to put a lot of this out of my head but it tends to get replaced by other stuff. Late last year, I was able to get this focused onto things that would improve my shooting (like my grip) and my scores went up.

But this year, since I've taken over as match director, I've got a whole new pile of things running though my head demanding attention. Even when I shoot another match, I'm busy looking at things and cataloging ideas for stages, etc.

Short of drugs, the only thing that is going to solve this is time. I just have to keep plugging along and not worry about the fact that my scores are going to suffer for a while and in time I'll be able to start concentrating on my shooting again. I hope.

[jwfuhrman]

I have the same issue, except at Pistol Only matches. If I screw up one time at a Pistol match, the rest of my day is shot. But with 3gun, I'm honestly enjoying the day so much I don't care what happens. 3gun is what I consider my "calling" as that is what I love to shoot the most, so unless I have a REALLY bad day, not much gets me down at a 3gun.

Pistol I'm so focused on the match, that I can't relax and just shoot. Although, some times, I'll be in the middle of shooting a stage and start thinking about random ass stuff that has nothing to do with what I'm doing..... those are the times I do my best hahaha. Normally its something funny someone said long ago, or it will be a song I recently heard or like.... If I could shoot a match while listening to my ipod, I'd do much better.

Edited May 25, 2011 by Jon Fuhrman