I am going to take you serious that you say such things about yourself. If so it is the wrong move. Watch old video of Efren. When he missed a shot he grinned, rubbed the back of his head, and reset. The miss and the thoughts about it were behind him. Seemed like a great idea but I'm not much on grinning and the bald spot on the back of my head was growing fast!
I couldn't do it in exactly the same manner but I could do the same thing. I acknowledge to myself that I had just made a dumbass move, then I follow-up by saying that isn't my normal and I move on.
Two things are important: First I bash what I did not the entirety of myself. I need mistakes to carry a penalty so I put in that one second or so of punishment. Now the mistake has been acknowledged and dealt with, I move on. If I left it hanging unresolved, I can't move on.
I shot a sixty round weekly pistol match for a few years. The framework and structure made it much easier to analyze than a pool tournament. I let one shot go a little astray most weeks. Taking a look at the results over the entire past season it was obvious that my perfect scores were just as abnormal as letting two or more shots go astray.
I would have liked to think that my normal was perfection, or even perfection most of the time. Nope, dropping a point or more on one shot was my normal. I still kept trying to improve but I didn't get upset about a shot going an inch or two out, that was my normal.
If a person finds a firm measuring stick for pool they can set firm and realistic goals. Most of us aren't going to be best every event, nobody else is either. Realistic expectations are a big part of putting our game together. If we are a top ten finisher at the moment we need to recognize that and try to move into the group of top five or top three finishers. At some point we start getting our share of wins but they aren't likely to come when we are a second ten finisher. Realistic goals and expectations are a lot easier to reach than daydreams.
Hu
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