pete lafond said:
A friend sent me an email talking about golf. It does cast a shadow in billiards as well. We were talking about being in the zone. Here is the reply.
"I read Dianetics <sp?> once. I remember one thing very clearly that made sense to me. He used reading as an example.
If you are reading a paragraph and want to absorb what you are reading, if there is one word you don't fully understand and you skip over it, your subconscious will inhibit proper understanding of the entire. Its akin to being in the "zone". Your performance will not be the best it can be if one small factor is not clicking, no matter how trivial. You may be able to have a decent round of golf, but it will not be optimum and you will walk away feeling not as satisfied or fullfilled.
Just thought I'd share.
The subconscious is a very powerful tool. I mean, if you examine some individuals such as the real-life version of "Rain-man", you can see, to what extent, what our subconscious actually does. Kim Peek is the person the movie is based upon and he is not actually autistic but missing a portion of his brain. This portion filters information into necessary and unnessary catagories. Kim is incapable of doing this. As a result, he doesn't forget ANYTHING. He has difficulty with many other aspects of everyday life. He finds nothing humorous, embarrassing or alarming.
My point, to a certain extent, we remember absolutely everything that happens in our lives. Of course, it's impossible to recall this informatin on demand like Kim can but through our subconscious, we can tap it from time to time. In my opinion, this is relevant in every aspect of the learning process of a sport such as pool. With every experience we encounter, whether it be through participation, observation or imagination, we build upon our subconscious reference base.
There are times when you're playing pool and through your collegiate learnings, you will refer to a system in order to accomplish what the task at hand may be. However, once you have established the proper location and speed you must hit the cue-ball, there is that nagging feeling inside you that it is wrong. You miss and you say to yourself, "I knew I was over/under cutting the ball! I knew it!!" Because of your collegiate-style background, the typical response is that there must have been something wrong with your calculations however, the real answer is, it was the act of calculating that was wrong.
Like anything new, I believe a player needs to devote a certain amount of time to trusting their instincts and learning how to rein them in when necessary. Of course, you cannot approach the table without a thought in mind and expect to play like a champion. You have to know what you're doing and it's your conscious mind that is going to be making the decisions on what the proper strategy is. In my opinion, that is the full extent of the conscious-mind's duty. Beyond that, it is the subconscious' task to measure and execute.
