Andrew,
Throughout my life, I have had a terrible temper. My desire to be a better person has resulted in a life long project to try and figure out how to be a nice person even when I feel angry. I certainly don't have any definitive answers, but I would like to know if you can relate to any of these things:
1) I sometimes find myself disliking certain opponents. It could be for any number of reasons, usually stupid. "His stroke looks like crap, why should he get out?" "This guy can crap in more balls than he can make!" "Why does this jerk have to make retarded comments while we are playing?", and so on. I find that *really* treating my opponent as I would like to be treated (love your enemy, so to speak), is tremendously helpful. Even if I don't fully believe it, I try to cultivate a hope that my opponent does well. I try to really watch and see how he gets it done. I know that good play by him gives me the opportunity to really shine. I like to applaud his genuinely good shots and take a real pleasure in watching them. It can be frustrating as hell to watch him do it over and over, but hey, if he's getting out awesome he truly does deserve to win, and I should take advantage of watching that good work. So I guess this boils down to "try to take pleasure in the game of your opponent". I find when I come to the table for my turn, I am very calm and relaxed and ready to do my best.
2) You mentioned that it is the shots that you *should* make but don't that really bother you. I must say that this sounds like a self-image thing. For many of us, our self image is wrapped around the quality of our pool game. We are worth something as a person if we shoot a great game of pool, worthy of the respect of others. Obviously this means that we hate looking bad, we hate looking like we are less than we are. As such, we try to *show* our quality on the table. I think an excellent approach to combat the pitfalls of this type of thinking is instead to look at our match as an opprtunity to *find out* what our quality is on the table. Notice how that is very different than showing it. When we try to show it, we bring an expectation to the game, which we will sometimes (many times) fall short of. When we approach the table with the "lets-see-how-I-handle-this-one" attitude, at least for me, I feel much more likely to really pay attention to the shot at hand, much less likely to worry about missing or screwing up, and generally more successful overall. I tend to perform very well in tournaments. As the tournament goes on, I tend to get stronger. I think this is due to this type of attitude. I don't want to show the guys how good I am. I want to find out for myself how good I am. I try to maintain a light attitude if I can. Don't get me wrong, there are still times when I feel overcome with absolute RAGE! But those times are getting fewer and farther between, and the degree to which I act out is significantly less as the years go by.
3) I think a great goal is to be a pool player that other people enjoy playing with. I always remember those people who lose a match to me, but come up and shake my hand with a warm genuine smile and tell me I played well. I make a strong effort to compliment the other player if I can. Of course there will be times when someone I know plays terrible, and I'm not gonna tell them they played great. I might say something like "I know I didn't get your best game today, I'm lucky to get by you". I guess the idea is that maybe it is nice to think about pool in terms of what you bring to the other players. In my pool league, I am significantly better than the other players, and sometimes I get some crap for that. However, I have tried very hard over the last several years to really try and be very nice to everyone on the other team, expecially my opponent. It seems like this is working, as I find that most nights and most teams seem to get along with me very well lately. In regular tournaments, with more skilled players, I never have any issues with people, in part because I make a concerted effort to be a very respectful opponent.
So I don't know that this is really innovative advice ha ha. I guess one thing I would recommend is some time to really spend some dedicated thinking on why, *exactly*, you get upset. It is not because you missed the shot, I guarantee you that. Missing the shot provides some sort of threat to your psyche, your ego, the person you think you are. What is the exact nature of that threat, why should it bother you? This is not something that will become obvious right away (unless you are much luckier than me!!). And it certainly is not something that is likely to occur to you at the moment of anger. Hmm...I guess this is starting to sound familiar...1) Love your enemy as you love yourself 2) remain humble 3) treat others as you would like to be treated. Easy to say, very tough to do.
Good luck, don't give up on it. It requires a constant effort! I'll be trying too!
KMRUNOUT
It also helps that I don't like to gamble so the game is about learning, competition, etc and not my rent money on the line.
