I got a ton of emails from alot of various people asking about my post on DCP's thread about the "Next Level" and his problem being mental toughness. The problem he has is pretty specific to him, he has made it clear over the last year or two he is a headcase when it comes to pool and lets his emotions affect his game. This is why I offered to answer to him on email instead of answering it to everyone, it may not help others. Nevertheless there is no way I am going to email back all the people and answer all the PM's, even with cut and paste, so I will put a brief explanation below on his exact problem as I see it, having at one time been a headcase when it comes to pool myself and spending years of practice and competition that got me nowhere since my problem and DCP's is not something that can simply be played out of.
Step 1:
As I said, I spent many years in this game as a far too emotional pool player, emotion of the negative and positive type have no place in pool, you want an emotionless state and it took me years of playing to finally relize this and probably a year more of forcing myself to play with almost a apathetic state of mind to train myself to let go of the emotional swings that kept me from stepping up to the next level. You cannot practice your way out of this, practicing without the intent purpose of removing the emotional attachement to success or failure will actually engrain you deeper into the emotional side of the game that leads to terrible swings and highly inconsistent play. Putting yourself into tons of competition to try and "play" your way out of it wont work in the slightest either, if you are loosing in tournament after tournament with the emotional issues then that problem will just intensify.
Getting rid of the emotions in the game is all in your head, and the only way I ever did it was to trivialize the importance of the game while I was playing it. I actually attempted to make myself believe I did not care if I won or I lost. Now of course this made me apathetic to the game for a while, and my drive to win faultered, but at the same time I also lost the pressure that the emotions and swings in my game caused and as such in my apathetic state of just shooting pool I actually won about as much as I did when I was really trying hard and having every happening at the table emotionally effect me.
I probably purposely mentally lost interest in the game for a good 6 months despite the fact I never quit playing, I played alot. It was not just playing for fun, I did not have fun while playing, I did not "hate" playing either, I made myself pretty apathetic to the whole game and the results. I played tournaments and played loose and shrugged off loses, shrugged off bad misses, shrugged off bad luck (instead of getting mad at bad luck I actually went the reverse route and usually just chuckled although not in amusement but instead due to the fact that the pool gods could do whatever they wished and as long as I did not give a **** they really were just spinning their wheels). I played league, and in the regular season which matters little but for seeding, I did not try and shot loose and maintained an irrelevant 50% win percentage in the masters.
After about a year after doing this my mental mindset towards the game of pool was nothing like it had been in the past. I no longer got tense, I know longer got excited before a match, or felt I must win. I had trained myself to simply play pool in a emotionless and apathetic state of indifference. I was no worse a player then before I had started this though, where I once got mad at small things and let the pressure of a match get me down and cause me to self destruct I now was a heck of alot more consistent, in a lack of trying 60% of my true speed, hacking at the balls sort of way.
This switch to "OK, now I simply dont give a shit anymore" was almost instant. It was a mental decision to NOT try to play my best and as such make anyone who beat me largely a meaningless victory in my eyes. A terrible outlook some might think but this was a necessary step to my getting my head straight in the longer term after years and years of loosing due to mental issues.
Step 2:
Now a good year or two after I had dropped my interest and efforts in pool success while still playing non-stop I knew the negative emotions and fear of losing I had were gone. This in hindsite was obvious, as a younger player before I had went through my stage explained in "step 1" I was actually terrified to lose and this created worlds of pressure and huge amounts of negative feelings at my slightest of failings. Bad luck was something I saw as an outrage, I had a hard enough time playing the game and keeping my emotinos in check and playing to the best of my ability without bad rolls and always being a slight bit too light or a slight bit too heavy, ect... Bad luck killed what little confidence I had in the game, and that was not alot to begin with. All that was gone now though, playing my best in front of my peers and proving myself was a laugh, I had spent the last year shooting without a care in the world if I won or lost and not caring if I shot good or not in front of all those people, I often hardly tried at all. I had spent a long period not trying, not really looking at angles, shooting fast and loose, watching TV as my opponent shot instead of the table, watching TV as I shot even sometimes, I made a concerted effort at disinterest and it payed off in the long run for me.
From here though I now needed to start to work back into state where I tried to actually win. This took gambling. Gambling is something I had not done at all in the year of indifference for obvious reasons, I had no ambitions to give money away, gambling is something I would have seen as a donation at that time of catharsis and I would never have been able to remain indifferent in a money match. I used some money I had won in tournaments, I pay $20 to enter a tournament and win $50, well that $50 would then be free money that I would gamble and win or lose I could shrug it off as if I had simply not made the money brackets of the tournament. This was important as while I was now trying to win I still had to maintain the feeling of not "needing" to win and therefore keeping that "fear" of losing at bay (this early time getting back into the actually trying to win state was tricky like that since you dont want to have old feelings crop up). It worked, the money won being a non-issue too lose and my not caring about loosing the match itself from a pride perspective or feeling I "must" win to vindicate myself made me largely emotionless at the table, but different from before I was no longer emotionless and not trying, I was now actually taking my time, stepping into the shot, getting my long abused mechanics back up to snuff and being alot less aloof about the game and instead being more intense in an emotionless fashion.
Despite the feeling that the won money (however much it may be at the time) was loseable I actually never lost it, unlike the past when I would have tensed up, felt pressure, let negative emotions set in, and it would have negatively effected my game, I was much more calm and at peace with the game. I did not make every shot, when I missed I shrugged it off and forgot it in about 2 seconds, I had missed tons of shots over the past year to the point that they could not faze me. A bad roll would not negatively effect me the same way, Why? Because the fear of losing was gone. Where I once had played pool with the attitude that "I must not lose", I now played with the attitude that "I want really to win but if I lose oh well, shit happens". I no longer took my losing nearly as personally as I had once. Losing in the early times before I did all this stuff was like getting kicked in the nuts, now it is something that is little more then a small and very brief annoyance.
This second step is basically getting your game back, spend a year or more without trying to win in the slightest and generally not giving a hoot about your performance until you are totally apathetic to losing and you can bet your mechanics and your drive will suffer. Step 2 is all about getting back those good mechanics, when I was not caring I was not really looking at patterns, I was not standing behind the shot and stepping into it to get properly set up, I was instead shooting without really doing anything that one should at all. Once you actually start to try and get those things back the drive starts to get back, the gambling really helped me speed that up personally but is not required.
At this point I can actually shoot pool at my top level of natural ability that my mechanics allow. Mental problems dont really come into play with my anymore. I have not been in any huge pressure situations like a $200+ event up against a pro or even a top local player, that would be quite the test to see if I could keep a level head because those are the matches I would love to win, but gambling against top players that I very much wanted to win I have been able to perform as needed.
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Now all that said this is what "I" did and it is a very specific case of a person "me" who was WAY too emotionally involved in the game to the point I could not perform anywhere near at my potential level that my natural physical prowess should have allowed. There are people I know that this would not help in the slightest, there are people I have seen that simply dont have the same mental issues with the game and I have watched them go from useless young hacks to world class master level players without the emotional problems I had. There are alot of people who simply have the self confidence in the game and see the glass as half full, unlike me who always sees it as half empty. For those of us that are naturally effected by negative reinforcement instead of positive this game proves to be an extreme emotional challenge and what I explain above is what I had to do to break through this problem. DCP is one of those players that is clearly atm being effected by negative reinforcment, practice wont cure that, competition wont cure that, he needs to completely change his mental approach to the game, and that is a very tricky thing to do as you can see by the steps I took above.
One thing I know, I am alot better at pool today due to those steps I took then I could ever have been if I had not took them at all. Whatever steps DCP wants to take (if any) to fix his issues and get his mental attitude in a proper form such that he can actually perform up to the level of his mechanical and strategical abilities he is definately in need of a completely different outlook to the game and needs to lose the emotional connection to the game. There are some smaller mental things I have changed since that have further heightend my game, mostly the way I actually see the game and the ease of it when played with a mindset that the game is simple, but DCP is far from that helping atm, he has to lose the emotion and the fear of loosing.
. I think it is a good drill even so that appears to be very easy. You have to pick a ball that you are intend to shoot and also you have to go through your own pattern to get out. Also missing a ball means end of the drill and you have to start over. When you go further through the racks the pressure is bilding, because you don't want to miss.
