Specific Topic

[Hardball]

Cool topic, serious question.

At what point does one's mind turn obstinate ideas, like "I WILL do this", or, "I WILL do that" into the confidence that whatever it is, will happen when it should? We all know that through practice we become more smooth in motion, whether it be a draw, or a shot on that 50 yd. harcovered target; but at times, we all have had that one thing that we wanted to accomplish, and were obstinate enough to keep trying it till we got it. My obstinate object is competitive in nature and includes me going as far as I can as fast as I can. Speed of life, so to speak. I want to make more, shoot more, care more, and basically experience new and exciting feelings through constantly learning and improving.

A friend of mine put it perfectly the other day. His comment to me was about how he had amazed himself with the things that he has learned, but almost feels embarrassed when he wins because of that feeling of disbelief and lack of self awareness. We all see how others do things and we all know how we should do things in the sport, again, whether it is the draw or the hard shot, but we can't quite see ourselves doing them perfectly everytime, if ever. At what point does the confidence take over for the feeling of "I shouldn't be here" or " I am JUST a B class shooter, I don't know how I did that..." etc.? Next question is similar in nature: How do you trigger confidence in yourself? I am not asking because I don't know what works for me, I am asking how you do it. Mental relaxation is a form of confidence. Confidence in the fact that there is nothing to worry about, nothing weighing your mind. How do you transfer that confidence into the confidence to succeed?

[Sgt Rock]

How about?

Persistance= refusing to give up or let go;  persevering obstinately.  The continuance of an effect after the cause is removed: persistence of vision.

I will succeed, I visualize it.

Conficence comes naturally from success.   Confidence is that belief you will succeed.  

I believe it is what seperates the leaders or winners from the followers or ones who just play the game.

PaulW said to me Saturday, while I am studing a stage and talking about a target, wait, if I give you a dollar can you hit that target on command?  Sure, I said....well okay there you go.....just shoot it.

Amazing, you know it....sometimes it just takes someone else to reinforce it.

[Flexmoney]

I think that a large part of what you are asking can be found in the basics.

Time and effort spent building a strong foundation will pay great dividends at the upper levels.

[Phil Dunlop]

Brians book is all about operating in the present tense.

Doubt and anxiety are symptoms of our minds being elsewhere, usually hung up on results or questioning our preperation.

The way we view the world, whether we are possitive or negative, is learned behavior and by the same means we can change.

There are plenty of books on this subject that explain this better, but for me I find telling myself possitive things about my shooting really helps.

[Hardball]

Nice answer David. I like that. You know, Sunday, both of us could have used a little bit of confidence. Visualization wasn't enough. Both of us fell to poor mental preparation. You shoot better than you let yourself shoot. I can see it in you. I shoot better than I allow myself to at times. Conservative vs. flat out. I think the statement of the century has been, just shoot. Nothing more, nothing less. Just shoot. Lead the way!

[benos]

Hardball,

Depending on your Temperament Type, confidence is observable in two different forms. Some basically just feel confident about anything they'd like to accomplish. Most Extroverted types are like this. I call this "false confidence," because it doesn't necessarily have any basis within the reality of performance. Nevertheless, in another sense, it is not false, because if you truly believe in yourself, it's amazing what you can do.

The other type of confidence is the product of belief in your demonstrable ability. This type of confidence usually only arises after long training, and is simply confidence in your ability to execute what you know you can do. I call this real confidence. Typically, introverted types share this form of confidence.

Once the real confident type has developed faith and confidence - watch out. They can be the toughest competitors, especially if they are blessed with good motor and spacial perceiving skills. But until they develop unshakable confidence, real confident types need to make an effort to arouse faith and determination, which is rooted in their past experience - to do what they know they have trained themselves to do. Eventually, with experience, doubters can become very confident.

Where the false confident types can hurt themselves is they tend to act too quickly, because they feel they are going to succeed - no matter what. They may not consider enough options.

Did that help?

be

[Singlestack]

BE, I'm feeling rather exposed after reading that post.  

[PaulW]

Brian that is just awesome.  I mean it's as though you just looked into someones soul and figured out if there were exraverted or intraverted.

Confidence can be very fragile at times.  A few months back I was shooting a match, a lot of moving and shooting, I was hooting a lot a D's and then came a stage where I had 2 misses......what there is no way I had two misses!!  My confidence was shakin, I know I called the shots, where did the bullets go??  Come to find out my scope mount was loose and I could move the scope up and down about a quarter of an inch.  Confidence came roaring back.

When Sgt Rock (David) was talking about the classifier and when I said "If I gave you a dollar right now could you hit that target?"  He said yes, and I said then you know you can hit that target at this distance, now just do it.  Just shoot the target.  When talking with David I could tell right away that the seed of doubt had already crept in.  When faced with a difficult task or difficult shot I often bring back positive memories of when "I DID" make that difficult shot.  Don't let that seed of doubt come creeping in, replace it with positive thoughts of past successes.  The mind is a funny thing, and what you feed it is often what you get.  Negative thoughts with usually reep negative outcomes.

A little bit of the subject is after Sgt. Rock finished he was dissapointed and frusturated at himself.  I heard him mumbling on about how bad he had just shot.  We all have beaten ourselves up over having a bad stage.  The thing is did we mean to miss that target?  NO  Did we mean to screw up the stage?  NO  The *ONLY* thing you can ask yourself is to do the best you can, right here right now.  Step up to the line and do the best you can do.  Will it be THE very best you can do?  No, not always, sometimes yes.  But don't beat yourself up over it, it was the best you could do at the moment, because thats what you did.

Sorry David, I am not picking on you, just a good example.  And oh, by the way, I had a miss on that long target as well, does that mean I owe you a dollar?  

[Sgt Rock]

PaulW,   Hell, no....I owe you!  I did learn albeit after the match was over on the long road home.. but I did figure it out.

Now I am hungry for more.

[PaulW]

Right on Sgt.!!!  I love your spirit, drive, and determination.  That in itself can take you a long way.

Now, learning how to call those shots...........

[Bigbadaboom]

   OK, Here goes! Life experiences make us who and what we are. What works for me is to look back at something that I am very good at, Hardball try baseball, and ask what is it that I apply to that activity that will help me here. Also, attitude improvment, When I started shooting IPSC I let the little things get to me. When I stopped letting the little things get to me I started improving at an astonishing rate. Hardball and I have a very good friend that got us into IPSC and one of the first things he told me was " learn how to mannage the stress ". IPSC is a stressfull activity, there is no way around it. People can tell you to relax but that, to me, is not the answer. I am suppose to wait for a buzzer and then draw my gun, run and shoot as fast and accurately as I possibly can and you want me to do it relaxed, I do'nt think so. What I do need to do is control the stress. I finally got a grip when I looked back about nine years to my days in the Army where I did some intense training including a lot of live fire, airborne ops ect. and contemplated what it took to get to the high level of skill that I was at while always under tremendous amounts of stress. It took some effort but once I found my stress control it has all been coming together wonderfully. Hope this helps.

[BSeevers]

I read about beating yourself up after a poor porformance. I do it too. Here is how I do less to myself. The truth is if you do the El Prez down 2 in 4.66 or down 15 in 8.66 it's done. You can't change it. Accept it if needed and move on. Sometimes I need more stress to get me interested in my shooting but that's another story.