How natural does it feel for you to be present in any given moment, with complete peace of mind? How about when you smash clays? Do you typically feel at peace when you are shooting, or do you worry about if you will break the clays? Maybe you think you will miss a particular shot like you “always do.” You understand the importance of having a strong mental game to play well, but somehow your mind struggles to remain peaceful in the present moment. This is very frustrating. I completely understand that struggle, and I can really help you improve that mental skill.
In all my years of working as a hypnotherapist, I have gained a lot of information that helps me understand the power of the mind, belief systems, perceptions, and how they affect every aspect of our lives. They affect what we see, what we are attracted to, what is attracted to us, and what areas of life we seem to magnetize towards us and happen to notice. As an example, think about what happens when you go car shopping and you have your mind set on a certain car. If you set your mind on a particular car, you will actually begin to notice them everywhere you go. That’s not because folks just went out and bought them all of a sudden. It is because you have your mind so set on that particular car and the details of it in your head that you pick up on them, are now attracted to them, and see them all around you.
You can see this take place in a lot of different aspects, and you need to realize that it affects everything in life. Your mindsets, thought patterns, and perceptions create a filter system through which you see certain things in your life or not. All options or possibilities exist around you at all times. Depending on the type of belief systems you have, you filter certain things in and certain things out. You can see this in your personal and work life, but since I want to focus on your clay shooting, I want to help you recognize that this happens in your competitions as well. Your beliefs about your shooting abilities, your perceptions about what you are and are not capable of, and what you believe are your limitations or your strengths all impact your performance as you step into each competition.
What I would like to discuss in this article pertains to being in the present moment and having peace of mind. To help us look deeper into this, I took a self-suggestion from one of my clay shooting product. The suggestion is, “It is natural for me to stay in the present moment with complete peace of mind during the competition.” The more you wrap your mind around this concept and recognize the importance of being present and having peace of mind in that moment, the more you will realize that a large majority of the time, you are not in the present moment.
Your analytical conscious mind usually wanders around daydreaming or analyzing some subject matter of the past or potential future, maybe judging someone else, yourself, or your circumstance. Because of the way your mind is programmed at this point, a majority of those kinds of thoughts are negative, limiting in some way, or fear-based. Before you can train your mind to be present, you first need to be aware of the tendencies of your conscious analytical mind to wander and how you go into day-dreamy states. If you go into the past, you also need to realize it is just your perception of the past and not even necessarily true. You will want to work on training your mind to be present, on a regular basis, until you get really skilled at just being present.
If you move into the future, it’s like you think you have a crystal ball and are powerful enough to foretell what is going to happen. You get stuck in moments of analyzing with such force and power that you truly believe once you have made a conclusion, that it’s correct and that’s the way things are going to be. It is quite crazy when you stop and realize how much you have been reacting to the stories in your head—stories of what you think should have been, could be, or may happen. All of this is what brings you out of being in the present moment, and it is what keeps you from experiencing peace in your life.
When I say, “It’s natural for me to stay in the present moment,” I am actually giving you a hypnotic suggestion pulled from some of my products. What I speak about in my products and to clients directly comes from my experience as a hypnotherapist, knowing what works to help someone make a positive change. A suggestion given in hypnosis has the ability to go into the deeper level of the mind and cause you to go into autopilot. I also know that with repetition, anything and everything will go into your subconscious mind as well. That is the basis for affirmations, positive statements, and self-suggestions. You can have this suggestion brought into your subconscious through hypnosis, from using one of my products, or you can repeat it over and over and say to yourself, “It is natural for me to stay in the present moment with complete peace of mind during the competition” (it just may take longer to work by you saying it yourself). Then, when you have acquired this kind of thought pattern and when you start to accept it more and more and believe it to be possible, it will eventually become the filter you view life through.
Let’s just say that right now, the filter or thought pattern you have is, “I just can’t seem to stay focused for anything. My mind wanders all over the place and I have a really hard time staying focused.” If you carry that belief system around, you will observe life and yourself in a way to prove it to be true. That is the filter you will view life through. You will see evidence that confirms that statement all around you and within you, period. That’s just how it works and what I meant about attracting, magnetizing, or seeing it, like seeing a particular type of car when you go car shopping.
The effort here is in stopping that kind of negative self-suggestion and getting rid of that filter system, and very purposefully, diligently, deliberately replacing it with a more healthy, positive, and unlimited way of viewing yourself and your clay shooting. I know at first it may seem strange or weird like, “Wait a minute. I don’t feel like this, so why would I say it…I am a realist, so why would I say things that are untrue?” What I am telling you is there is evidence of this in your life that already exists. You just have to start focusing on it to see it. The more you do that, the more you will believe in the suggestion that, “It is natural for me to stay in the present moment with complete peace of mind during the competition.”
It will also help you if you apply some training to yourself where you actually work on being present in the moment and having peace of mind, like getting out of the stories in your head. You need a combination of many things. Work on being present, having peace of mind and not believing the old stories. Affirm this suggestion over and over again, and begin to notice and attract this kind of information in your life so you can view life through this kind of lens. See the evidence of it and say, “Oh gosh, there are times when I am present, and there are times when I have peace of mind.” As you observe and notice it in your life, check it off and give yourself credit for it so you will see that it really is true. The more you do this, the more you will believe this statement, and it will just compound from there. The more you believe this statement, the more you will see it in your life, the more you will live this way in your life, and the more you will experience it in your life. The more conscious level mental training you do on being present and having complete peace of mind during the competition, the more you will have it in your life. You can do this!
As I always say, it’s not just clay shooting. You can and need to do this in every aspect in your life. If you are serious at all about improving your clay shooting scores, I highly suggest you find opportunities in other areas of your life to practice this kind of statement and affirmation. How do you do it? You just drop off the words “during the competition” and say, “It is natural for me to stay in the present moment with complete peace of mind.” Period.
Work on being present and having peace of mind (meaning rejecting stories and getting out of analytical, fear-based thinking). See life through this filter and find evidence more and more every day, of moments when you are able to be present and have peace of mind. Affirm this and believe it more and more each day. Do these things in life and you will excel in your mental golf training to such a level that you won’t have to try to be present and have peace of mind in shooting because you will have mastered it in life. You are the common denominator between your life, relationships, work and what happens during clay shooting competitions. Mastery in one area carries over to all of the others, which should result in improvements to them all as well. Who wouldn’t want more peace of mind in everyday life?
Use every minute of the day as an opportunity to train in these mental skills, and you will master them in your clay shooting, far beyond measure. If you would like any extra help with this, I am available for you and would be happy to assist. I wish you well as you take this teaching and work on being in the present moment with complete peace of mind in clay shooting and in life. Thanks for reading. InJoy your day!