John Wooden once said, “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” If you’re into archery or bowhunting, you’ve run into this wall before.
Maybe it’s a bad arrow that doesn’t hit the mark. Maybe you trained all offseason, showed up to an event expecting a personal best, and conditions hit you with minus-10 temps and 40-mph winds. Maybe a judge’s call didn’t go your way and cost you a championship.
I’ve been through all of it. A coach once told me to expect one or two calls to go against me at every single event. It may not be a bad arrow call. It could actually be a bad weather forecast or bad range conditions. Any of these can have a negative impact on your mental status. Once I got my head around that, I stopped letting those moments wreck me and started putting my focus where it belonged.
Injury is another big one. I came back from major shoulder surgery knowing I couldn’t be at the level I was nine months before. But I didn’t focus on the future of being able to shoot again; instead I focused on the NOW and the physical therapy I needed to get done in order to be myself again.
If you’re battling tendonitis, tennis elbow, or shoulder impingement, don’t let frustration kill your motivation. Focus on the PT. Focus on what you can control so you’re ready when your body catches up.
Stop looking at hurdles as obstacles and start treating them as opportunities to get sharper. Put that into practice this week, and I promise you’ll see results downrange.
