ugotda8 said:
Or you don't.
In my opinion, nothing drives better performance than confidence. NOTHING.
Confidence comes from many things; and yes...it can come from nice new shiny balls, New Felt, New Cue, New tip etc. Is it temporary? Maybe, and maybe not. One thing is for certain...it doesn't have to be.
Anything that makes you feel positive will breed confidence. The key is figuring out a way to hang on to that confidence and ride it until the lights go out forever.
Let's face it...if you can shoot lights out at any given time...you have what it takes and all you are missing is the long term confidence to keep playing at that level.
I say this because I know a lot of players who, no matter what you put in their hands, no matter what you teach them or what you change for them, play just as bad as they did before the change. That's because they lack the ability to play well.
Some folks just don't have the eye hand coordination to be great pool players.
True. Confidence is simply trust in your game. The decision making, the shot making... the whole thing. If we know our chances for a positive outcome on a shot are slim, the resultant miss is not viewed as negative. Thus no loss in confidence. That is correct way of managing your confidence. Is managing your confidence related to placebo effect? Not really, but new found confidence could be a result of the placebo effect.
Now a new tip on a stick which the hit feels foreign to you initially has no bearing on confidence. It has everything to do with the degree of concentration you put into the present shot. So much concentration that self talk has no room in the shot process.
So anything you add that the mind deems as foreign must be analyzed. That anything can become a candidate for a placebo effect tool. I wouldn't recommend becoming dependent on them because they are too short lived. But lets say you usually warm up a half hour before a match, but not this time. Those placebo tools have a way of grabbing your attention and getting you up to speed sooner.
On the other hand you must be aware of overload. The mind has only a certain given bandwidth, or limit in everything it can process. Everything the mind believes is important fills up that bandwidth. This is our concentration...every program we are currently running in our mind is concentration. When the concentration of a shot is working optimally everything in the mind is in order with only essential thoughts (programs) running.
So if the mind has too many important issues to deal with and it is near, or at overload; adding a placebo will not work at all. In fact it can have opposite effect. Thinking of the IRS audit, the argument with the wife, your opponents ethnic slur to shark you, and the new tip just will not work. If all these thoughts are present its gonna be a bad night.
How can we set thoughts aside? It's not easy and we all have different mental mechanisms to do this.
A buddy of mine had to cancel shooting with us at the State Tournament with the death of his daughter at birth. The sub we had lined up swore to play then never showed. My buddy came to play and we felt bad asking. With everything on his mind we didn't expect much, we just thanked him for the chance to play. He ended up playing better than all of us; a runout machine.
His answer why was and I paraphrase here, "Emotionally I was spent, all my cares and concerns in the world were gone. I was numb and I didn't want to nor could I bring myself easily to think of my daughter. I just wanted to do something I enjoyed and get lost in it." He essentially shot without a care... without distraction. We have the mental mechanisms to do it. This is an extreme case of course but being honest with yourself is the first step. Because we are all smart enough to see snake oil when we see it.
We will believe the truth and isn't that the basis of confidence any way?
P.S. Good post ugotda8 on confidence!
He got his money back!
