And if you can't get that sob to shut up, tell him he best say positive shit like -- how great you play pool and this shot is a piece of cake -- or next time he can stay at home. Like kids, you learn to handle 'em out of necessity.
Right you are!
You can train that part of your brain to not say anything negative. For a few years I took all negative words out of my vocabulary. Sounded pretty contrived sometimes when "No" was all I was saying and it took three sentences to do it but when I quit saying negatives I eventually quit thinking them too. Doubt is as deadly as something negative. Modesty, even false modesty, is deadly too. You know damned well that you came to try to win but when you put your money up you see three or four or even more top players. Easy to say you are just here to donate or something similar. Can't beat so and so. Odds are pretty good that somebody else will take out the person you don't think you can beat, don't say that bullshit!
When it seems silly to say something positive sometimes I just say it with a smile, "I'm in it to win it!" Or I say something like Fat Albert before cosby proved to be such a dick. "Hey, hey, hey, I am here to play!" I had a good performing guy in my crew at work many years ago. His only fault was that he blew his own horn a bit too much. He said, "plenty of people to talk bad about me, I don't need to help them." I realized he had a point. I found myself performing far better than I had any right to many times. I honestly believe it would have never happened if I would have spent my time talking modestly even if it was false modesty. "I'm here to kick ass and eat ice cream and they are all out of ice cream!"
I hadn't been to a pistol match in a year. Everyone else was tuned tight from one or more weekly competitions for months. I loaded up my pistol and a couple of friends so I would have shoulders to cry on while driving home. First or second stage I fat fingered the trigger and broke a shot when the sights had dropped into the nine ring. Never do that when I was in tune! A stage or two later that one dropped point was all I had dropped. I try to dodge the crowded end of the line but it makes a difference in time. The starting buzzer is over there and it takes a hundredth of a second or so to get to the lonely end of the line. I left my friends and wallowed in amongst mostly strangers. That one shot I fat fingered was the only point I dropped. 599/600, I won. It would have never happened without the change in mindset. My mistake to even come not expecting to win. The next year I did the same thing, didn't enter a match until the end of the season. That season I went planning to win and I did a little better. 600/600. The man that created the matches asked me if I had been practicing somewhere else. When I told him no he said that this pissed him off, these matches were supposed to be hard. I pointed out that I was the only one that shot a six hundred. I went to the match planning to.
Defeatism creates nerves. Something else I learned to do is see myself as the pacesetter. I don't have to beat anyone else, they have to beat me! That shift in perspective works wonders for nerves too.
I knew I was full of crap but I was a young man and it was a popular wall poster and t-shirt at the time. On the road, just before I walked through the door of some pool hall I didn't even know existed until ten minutes ago or less I would think to myself or even say out loud if I was alone. "Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for I am the biggest meanest son of a bitch in the valley!"
I piss off some even here on AZB because I talk good about myself. Fugget, my guy was right. Plenty to talk bad about me, why should I help them. When I get ready to compete my head is in the right place.
You can say you have to beat the field or you can say they have to beat you. Both true but one perspective sees you looking up a mountain, the other sees yourself at the top of the mountain and anyone wanting to win has to topple you.
The best cure for nerves is a positive attitude. I went to a big match that started at eight AM. I got there at seven. Bumped into a friend that was sizzling and shooting off sparks he was so pumped. He had been up since two AM, excited, ready to go. I don't remember how he did that day but I do remember he went on to be ranked Grand Master worldwide a few years later.
Hu
I asked him to spot me 10k which got a decent laugh haha
