Your comfort zone doesn't stay the same. It is either growing or it is shrinking.
I just spent a couple of days training with Tyler Styer. I was the student on this one, not the instructor. This is not the post to discuss what I learned, but I wanted to share one of the realizations that dawned on me while I was there: I have made a lot of concessions in my pool career!
When I was young my attitude was much like Tyler's. I wanted to be the best in the world. To get there I had to learn every shot, and be the best at everything on the table. I had the 'let's go get it' mindset. As I aged though things started to change. Years and years of feedback showed me that I wasn't good as certain things, that maybe I would never learn how to do this or that. So without realizing it, little by little, I started to accept limits. I can't do this. I'll never do that.
It's almost like I drew a box around the skills I had and said "OK, I can do these things, I can't reach outside the box or I will fail". Now, there were many positive things about this. I have developed a game that allows me to compete at a high level without doing anything difficult. That has resulted in high percentage pool that stands up to pressure and holds up under strong competition. So that all sounds good.
But my comfort zone hasn't stayed constant. See, when I had the "I want to learn everything" attitude I kept expanding. Shots I was comfortable with would get easier as I learned to get further and further developed. But once I drew a box and worked around things outside of it, my comfort zone started shrinking. When I drew the box I was ok at the edges of the box, hey, I drew it there because I was ok with those parts of the game. But gradually as I forgot there was pool outside of my comfort zone, the edge of the box started to become the new extreme. It was the extreme of what I would go for. So little by little that became uncomfortable for me. So I would contract my box a bit more and avoid these things too.
As years passed it seems that I started shying away from things that used to be staples in my game. I became too conservative and too tentative. My comfort zone had really shrunk up to a point where it was starting to hurt me. The worst part is it happened without my knowledge. It wasn't a strategic decision to optimize my pool game, it was a slow reaction to my mindset.
I have come to believe we need both outlooks. We have to be realistic and understand what high percentage pool is, what we are good at and can actually count on, and build a game that is supported by our strengths. But we can't allow our comfort zone to shrink, either. We need to keep expanding it, if only so it doesn't contract. I am recommitting to working on these things and meeting them head on. My goal isn't to build these into my pool game because I still believe in keeping the game simple and easy, but my goal is to make sure my comfort zone is expanding, not getting smaller. We can't all reach the highest levels but we can all keep striving.
I just spent a couple of days training with Tyler Styer. I was the student on this one, not the instructor. This is not the post to discuss what I learned, but I wanted to share one of the realizations that dawned on me while I was there: I have made a lot of concessions in my pool career!
When I was young my attitude was much like Tyler's. I wanted to be the best in the world. To get there I had to learn every shot, and be the best at everything on the table. I had the 'let's go get it' mindset. As I aged though things started to change. Years and years of feedback showed me that I wasn't good as certain things, that maybe I would never learn how to do this or that. So without realizing it, little by little, I started to accept limits. I can't do this. I'll never do that.
It's almost like I drew a box around the skills I had and said "OK, I can do these things, I can't reach outside the box or I will fail". Now, there were many positive things about this. I have developed a game that allows me to compete at a high level without doing anything difficult. That has resulted in high percentage pool that stands up to pressure and holds up under strong competition. So that all sounds good.
But my comfort zone hasn't stayed constant. See, when I had the "I want to learn everything" attitude I kept expanding. Shots I was comfortable with would get easier as I learned to get further and further developed. But once I drew a box and worked around things outside of it, my comfort zone started shrinking. When I drew the box I was ok at the edges of the box, hey, I drew it there because I was ok with those parts of the game. But gradually as I forgot there was pool outside of my comfort zone, the edge of the box started to become the new extreme. It was the extreme of what I would go for. So little by little that became uncomfortable for me. So I would contract my box a bit more and avoid these things too.
As years passed it seems that I started shying away from things that used to be staples in my game. I became too conservative and too tentative. My comfort zone had really shrunk up to a point where it was starting to hurt me. The worst part is it happened without my knowledge. It wasn't a strategic decision to optimize my pool game, it was a slow reaction to my mindset.
I have come to believe we need both outlooks. We have to be realistic and understand what high percentage pool is, what we are good at and can actually count on, and build a game that is supported by our strengths. But we can't allow our comfort zone to shrink, either. We need to keep expanding it, if only so it doesn't contract. I am recommitting to working on these things and meeting them head on. My goal isn't to build these into my pool game because I still believe in keeping the game simple and easy, but my goal is to make sure my comfort zone is expanding, not getting smaller. We can't all reach the highest levels but we can all keep striving.
