Attitude Is Everything

I wrote this after my first World Championships, where things didn’t quite go ideally. However, it engraved in me a valuable lesson I’d like to share with you. Even though published in 2006, and my writing style is a bit out-of-date, the message rings true today. I hope it speaks to you in your life.

So Remember, Sharp Shots. We can’t control the chaos around us, we can only control our reactions to it. In Sport and Life, Attitude is Everything.

 

Attitude is Everything – Kirsten Joy Weiss 

Gliding through the sea on her surfboard, Bethany Hamilton searched for the next wave she would ride to shore. Without warning, a shark came up and bit off her arm, sending shock, fear, and panic piercing into everyone around her – but not Bethany. Bethany looked at her friends and wondered why they were upset. She was aware of the problem, but remained unbelievably calm, swam to shore and got help.

Why was Bethany so calm in the face of such a horrific situation?

A similar situation occurred in the Amazon jungle. A doctor was approached by a boy for help. His arm was partially amputated and yet he climbed and crawled through miles of jungle to get to the doctor without a trace of panic. In this situation, the doctor immediately went to give the boy a shot of Novocain and the boy screamed from the prick of the needle. Why hadn’t he screamed over the much larger injury that almost certainly gave him more pain?

Our brains are amazing. In a panic situation, where we are injured, it shifts into survival mode. After the initial pain, our brain already knows that our body is hurt and needs attention. To let the pain continue would only hinder our ability to seek help or help ourselves. The reason why the little boy was so aware of the tiny pain from the needle was because it was a new sort of pain. His brain was alerting him once again to be aware that something wasn’t quite right.

Now take a different situation.

You are at World Championships. You have been training very hard for this. You are into standing and are shooting decently. Things are going fairly smoothly. BAM! The screen flashes: 6! You are shocked! You think, “I haven’t done a shot like that in a very long time, and I do it in World Championships?”

How do you respond?

Or take another situation, much less dramatic but equally as significant. Again, you are on the line at World Championships, but this time it is in the prone competition. You are shooting your shots one by one, it’s not too bad, but you’re aware of something. You have this low underlying buzz, like a mosquito flying around your head whispering, “Something’s not right.” But you can’t put your finger on it for almost the whole match. Then you put your finger on it – literally. Your trigger is malfunctioning and has been intermittently the entire match. It is not over yet. You have 19 shots left. What do you do?

As shooters, we experience situations, both mentally and emotionally challenging.

There is no automatic “survival mode” that our brains can just kick into with ease.

In both these situations it is critically important how we handle them. That makes all the difference between a good performance and one that we might as well not even have shot. When we shoot a bad shot, we may very well feel like we have just been attacked by a shark, caught off our guard, and not sure what the next move should be. Do we let panic set in? Do we embrace the adrenaline and let our body race as much as our mind? Do our minds immediately flood with negative thoughts, seeking to blame something. The heat, the range, ourselves…

Or is the problem less pronounced. The match isn’t going as you thought it might. You try everything you know, but the needle prick of less-than-perfect shots is telling you to be aware that something isn’t right. You check everything you know to check, and still the problem stays. Your time is running out, you have to keep going. What happens to you at this point? Do you get frustrated and mentally give up, throwing shots indiscriminately down range? If and when you realize the culprit, what is your next move?

The previous two shooting situations happened to me while I shot in the World Championships this summer [2006].

Both were unexpected, but not improbable or unforeseeable.

Going into a match it is good to have a thorough plan, but not a rigid one. This means that you should think about situations that could occur in the match both good and bad, and what your plan will be in those cases. Your plan should be like a tree. If you just have one rigid stump of a plan, if something goes wrong you have nowhere to go. You should have a main plan, with specific alternate plans branching off in case you need them.

But, the most important thing is how you handle initial disappointment or even panic. If you let it overcome you, then no plan in the world will save you. During my matches, I knew this was critical and I’m not one to easily let negative talk or panic take over. I kept talking positively and trusting myself, and knew that one simple shot did not define me. In prone, I became aware of the trigger problem, knew I couldn’t have it fixed and finish the match in time, figured out how I could work with the trigger to finish the match and decided that I’d finish strongly. 19 shots left. 19 shots fired. 19 tens recorded.

The bottom line is: Let nothing shake you.

You can not control what has already happened, but you can control how you react to it. Don’t let the past define you. You are defined by your future.

You know what Bethany Hamilton is doing right now? She is surfing. With one arm, she has adapted and surfs without fear of the past. Did she foresee that the shark would bite her? Of course not. Was it improbable? No, sharks occasionally bite surfers. But when it happened, it was certainly unexpected! Yet, Bethany followed an alternate plan, and she keeps surfing, even training for competitions. Maybe she will win a championship one day; she definitely has the attitude for it.