On the verge of the greatest year in the history of professional golf, Woods had everything to lose, yet he refused to wilt on the biggest stage in the biggest moment. Staring at an unsettling, sliding putt on the 18th green, knowing May had just made another birdie and knowing a miss would mean defeat, Woods faced elimination stout and strong and undaunted. He, like Hogan and like Nicklaus, also was fearless. “You have to reach deep inside yourself and you have to keep making birdies. We never backed off from one another. Birdie for birdie and shot for shot, we were going right at each other. That was just so much fun. That’s as good as it gets right there.”
There are many men who play golf exceptionally well when the issues are small, but who collapse when anything of importance is at stake. What causes the detonation is fear — lack of confidence in the swing — making them unwilling to trust it with anything that really matters. In the face of such an obstacle, tension takes the place of relaxation and strain upsets rhythm.
What happened to improve the last time at the wheel over the first? Experience, namely, the kind of experience that breeds calm, comfort, and confidence. If fear is the great enemy, its conqueror is confidence. Confidence does not ignore fear, it overcomes fear. Confidence starts with knowledge, understanding, and accomplishment.
Fear comes in many forms. We fear failure and ineptitude. We fear embarrassment and the unexpected. Insidiously, fear travels in disguise, largely because we are afraid to admit we are afraid. Only cowards are afraid, and we are afraid of being labeled a coward. We are so attuned to fear that we have become adept at living with it, and learning to hide it from those around us.
A mistake with a car might kill you; a mistake in golf probably won’t. We learned to drive with increasing skill every time we got behind the wheel of a vehicle, and along the way, we learned to drive with confidence.
This illustrates 3 foundational mechanisms of human thinking. First, the mind automatically responds to the questions we ask ourselves. Second, the questions we ask ourselves determine where we focus our attention in the sense that, while you were asking those questions, you were not thinking about anything else. And third, the answers to the questions we ask ourselves often come back in visual form.
Much like if the mountain climber were suddenly to ask himself, “What if I fall?”
In nearly every case, the answer to a question of uncertainty is: “What am I going to do about it?” We are telling ourselves to look objectively at our particular uncertainty and deal with it thoroughly.
After lifting the trophy, he said, “From tee to green, it was not even close to one of the best tournaments I’ve ever had. But as far as hanging in there and doing the things that were required on a very difficult golf course, this may have been the best.”
They don’t understand that the guy who is trying to win a golf tournament out there can look so calm. The guy is not calm. He may look calm and he may have learned how to control his emotions, but I can assure you he is not calm.
No matter how many times you win, the nervousness is there — and it is great. That’s the best thing about it, to put yourself in that position and to get nervous, to really get scared. It is what it is all about.
People don’t understand how wonderful that feeling is. To absolutely be scared to death that you are not going to be able to perform. And then you do. You pull the shots off — sometimes to your own amazement. It is an incredible feeling. That being scared, that’s fun. That’s good. If you are not scared, if you don’t get that adrenaline pumping, all you can do is average things. I love that. And that is the thing that people don’t understand. If you are not scared, it means you don’t care.
In addition to the inability to concentrate, there can be body tension, loss of sensation in the hands, increased heart rate, dizziness, shortness of breath, sweating, and in extreme cases, nausea, constipation, diarrhea, muscular pain, skin afflictions, and even impotence.
I’m not trying to achieve the clinically perfect round of golf. Nor am I lessening my search for perfection. It’s just that I’m being less hard on myself when I fail to achieve it.
The point is accepting what is bad and just going on. Learning to be lighter, that really helped.
The cortex, which is responsible for rational and conscious thought, is a relatively recent evolutionary development. Before the development of the cortex, humans developed the amygdala, also known as the fear system’s command center. The fear system is like a throw switch or a fire alarm or a default mechanism that is able to override the conscious mind in large part because the cortex has few dedicated resources or pathways to influence the fear system, while the fear system has a number of resources to dominate the cortex.
Poetry begins with a feeling and finds a thought.
I had 4 holes to play and those 4 holes were the most important holes of my career and I was going to give it 100% on each and every shot. Somehow I pulled myself together and made some good shots again. I guess I’ve got a little bit of fight in me when it counts.
In that fraction of a second, a mixture of chemicals and stress hormones begin bathing the muscles, causing them to tighten. Blood pressure rises, pupils dilate, digestion shut down, and capillaries constrict, discharging the “fight or flight” response necessary to survival. Almost a full second later, the cortex receives the message, and the person is able to process the word “dog” and to think in rational terms about the situation.
Golfer who “choke” often report being unable to focus. Perception changes, so that those golfers begin to perceive normally innocuous situations as threatening. Where they used to see only fairways and greens, they now see only hazards.
Fear plays trick on memory as well. The brain has evolved to remember fearful situations so as to be able to avoid them in the future. Many chemicals, such as adrenaline, act like yellow highlighters to ensure the brain remembers fearful situations.
Many competitive golfers who are caught in slumps report that, after a round of golf, they simply cannot remember any good shots. The negative, like cream, rises to the top of their memories.
You have to be there a few times to understand how to handle it. I mean, I was just as nervous today as I was last year at the US Open. My hands were shaking just as bad, my stomach was churning just as bad. But I reminded myself of what I had to do, to hit the golf ball, to make the putts and keep myself focused, and I got through it.
Norepinephrine tenses the muscles. Every teacher of the golf swing in the world will tell you that a proper golf swing cannot be executed with tightness in the muscles.
When an event is interpreted as exciting, the body relaxes. When it is interpreted as frightening, the body tightens.
Low self-efficacy results in interpreting physiological change as fear rather than excitement.
Anxiety usually makes its first appearance in our hands. When blood flows away from our extremities, the result is that we often lose feeling in our hands. To regain the ability to feel the club in their hands, golfers do what come naturally — they grip the club tighter.
The 3rd way that tension and fear influence the golf swing is that golfers change their rate of acceleration on the downswing. When players get nervous they often hit the ball short because they decelerate. We call this trying to “steer” the ball or “holding on” too long.
Again, the focus is on the result, when the focus should be on the process.
Most PGA pros would tell you that, on a scale ranging from 1 (very loose) to 10 (very tight), the ideal grip pressure is between 3-6.
Golfers who have too much tension in their hands very often block the ball out to the right because the club does not fully release until it is too late. Once they do release, it is often a quick snap, resulting in just the opposite, the low hook.
- In the tighter matches, you seem to put yourself in a frame of mind that allows you to focus and slow everything down.
- All I do is stay in my same routine. Even though I have certain putts that are bigger than others, you never see me out of rhythm, I always stay the same pace, do everything the same. So what I did the first hole today and the last hole today is exactly the same. There’s no change. I think that’s probably one of the biggest keys. That’s what Nicklaus was so good at. You could time him. Every routine he had was exactly the same.
From his youngest days, Jack Nicklaus was well known for his attention to details of 2 things: the mechanics of his golf swing and the most minute distinctions of each golf course. Jack carefully measured distances of the courses on which he played. He studied them closely and meticulously. He never misunderstood the unalterable truth that golf is always a game between just 2 players: a golfer and the golf course.
Jack was not interested in the rumor mill, predictions about who would win, or the personal affairs of other golfers. He was not really caught up in the people, prestige, or history of tournaments called The Masters, the US Open, and the US Amateur. His mind was squarely focused on the grass fairways, greens, and conditions of golf courses called Augusta National and Pebble Beach.
What is it about that process you like so much?
You’re just perfecting something. You are never going to perfect it but you are getting closer to it. You are learning. You are getting better. You’re learning new shots.
If you are a professional or aim to be one, you love the game and enjoy the competition, and you enjoy the feeling of knowing you’re so good at something, perhaps even better than most others. You love to win.
“Kaizen” is a business term that means an intense effort to improve a process or system by eliminating all nonessential elements as waste. Kaizen is the idea of continual, measured improvement, regardless of performance. That last phrase is essential. This is what defines a mastery golfer. The mastery golfer is not discouraged by an initial lack of success, rather he is excited at the prospect of the challenge.
Ben Hogan’s real secret? Concentration. “I didn’t win in the 1930s because I hadn’t yet learned to concentrate, to ignore the gallery and the other golfers, and to shut my mind against everything but my own game.
The primary motivation for some golfers is to earn recognition from others. For these golfers, what others say about them is powerfully important, sometimes more important than improving and developing their game. While preparing to hit an important shot, their minds are often divided: One side of their mind is trying to focus on executing the shot, but the other is busy worrying about what other people will think if they blow the shoot.
Pro golfers who play to excel are better able to disregard outside contingencies like rankings, scores, other peoples’ opinions, and even prize money.
Among Nicklaus’s great traits was his relentless focus on the golf course as his primary opponent. Nicklaus was so intent on studying the course that he became relatively oblivious to everything else around him. Make a concerted effort to study the course hole-by-hole. Attempt to plan out the round shot by shot, deciding which par 4s absolutely require a driver, where the safe misses are on par 3s and whether there’s a par 5 you can attack.
Public speaking often fills people with the same type of fear as golf. Even in this most dreaded of activities, people whose reason for speaking is to present information and enjoy themselves typically fare better than people whose reason for speaking is to have the audience perceive them as smart or to avoid looking like a babbling idiot.
The other golfers were playing Tiger when they should have played the course. They found themselves all of a sudden trying to do things, instead of playing the course and playing their game, they’re looking at a leaderboard trying to play somebody else. Tiger played his own game.
The defining features of golfers who possess an ego orientation include a concern with appearing capable, demonstrating superior ability relative to others, and being motivated to play well to show off for others. But there is another, more insidious, side to ego orientation. The driving force of many ego golfers is not simply to demonstrate their ability and receive the approval of others, but to avoid at all costs being embarrassed by a poor performance. Such golfers live in a very real fear of the embarrassment they may suffer at almost any moment. For them, a round of golf is closely aligned with the mindset people adopt for “image management.” Golf is merely a means to the end of boosting their ego, status, and reputation. It’s not about golf, it’s about them and their ego.
Golfers who play to bolster their ego will indeed have their ego bolstered — but only if they are successful. As they saying goes, success is a cheating spouse, especially in a fickle and fluctuating game like golf.
He’d lost by 5 strokes in front of a hometown crowd to players he used to beat routinely. He felt humiliated and foolish. “Like a choking dog,” he said. From that day forward, Mike was unable to play well. Competition sent him into a panic, and instead of looking forward to tournaments, he dreaded them.
And to gain the admiration and respect of other golfers, you cannot play golf for the reason of gaining respect and admiration of other golfers. Awards, recognition, and prizes, if they are to be had, must follow as natural consequences of hitting great shots. The ability to hit great shots must come from passion for learning and playing the game.
When you require the approval of others, you give them the key to your emotions — and you forfeit a fair amount of control over your confidence, too. Ego golfers view a bad round of golf as humiliating, debilitating, and embarrassing. As a result, they play with the ever-present sense that humiliation is just around the corner. That, friends, in a clinical setting might otherwise be described as neurosis; for our purposes, here it’s called playing with fear.
For ego golfers, a golf round can be an emotional roller coaster — euphorically high at certain times, excruciatingly low at others — all depending on how they think they are being viewed and evaluated.
Seve Ballesteros once quipped that in the days when he was at the top of his game he would cry on the 10th tee because he had only 9 chances left to make birdie. Now he cries because he has 9 holes left to play, which leaves him 9 more chances to make bogey.
Ego orientation often paralyze performers with the fear that their performance will not be good enough.
The truly dominant, truly fearless golfers play to the level of their capabilities, not the level of their competition.
Tiger once said, “I will try as hard as I possibly can. Just like I do every round. That’s a given. My effort, that’s a constant.”
Every tournament you start off even on Thursday, and whatever you’ve done a week before, you can throw that out the window. To me, every time I tee it up, it’s a new event. You need 100% focus on that event.
First, someone who typically has a strong mastery orientation can slip into thinking about results. Second, playing an opponent often leads golfers to play to the level of their competition rather than to the level of their capability.
The player must know the course. He cannot lose his concentration. Jack would get so set on remembering the course and thinking about his next shot that he would stare straight ahead with a stern expression.
Through learning how to read a golf course came an ever sharpening awareness that one’s true opponent in every golf contest is never another player, or even the entire field, but always the course itself.
It sounds funny, but I never really knew exactly how many under I was. I knew obviously I was playing good, but it doesn’t really matter how many under you are. I kept trying to hit good shots and trying to keep making birdies.
I knew if I played a good round I would be in there in the end. I just tried to stay focused and play one shot at a time, not really let myself think about it. It’s hard to do, especially knowing that you have a little bit of cushion on that back 9. And I just tried my best not to think about it. I think I did well staying in the present.
Because confidence is a direct function of control, and we can’t control what other people do, attention to other golfers undermines our confidence. Finally, attention to what someone else is doing takes away from the most fundamental component of golf: hitting the ball at a specific target.
Ego-oriented golfers tend to inflict a great deal of pain on themselves after playing poorly. They drive pain deep into their minds, and usually leave the golf course as quickly as possible because they are embarrassed. They approach future challenges with fear or panic triggered by questions like, “What if I play badly again?”
I didn’t fail 1K times. The light bulb was an invention with 1K steps.
His first 5 attempts at the Tour de France resulted in dropping out because he couldn’t finish the race.
There have been many players who have possessed all of the attributes necessary to win with the single exception of sufficient confidence in themselves. An inner certitude about one’s abilities is a golfer’s primary weapon, if only because it is the strongest defense against the enormous pressures the game imposes once a player is in a position to win. Golf’s gentlemanly code requires that you hide self-assuredness very carefully. But hide it or not, you’ll never go very far without it.
I saw many players hit the ball better than Jack. But none of them had his mind. Nobody, and I mean nobody had his confidence under pressure. The bigger the stakes, the more confidence he became. That’s what won him the Majors and all those tournaments. And, oh boy, you could just see it. He was as confidence as a lion out there.
High self-efficacy helps create feelings of serenity in approaching difficult tasks and activities. Conversely, people who doubt their capabilities may believe that things are tougher than they really are, a belief that fosters stress, depression, and a narrow vision of how best to solve a problem.
But Player was a relentless practicer, especially in the short game. He routinely would not leave the practice bunker until he had holed 3 shots. Also, decades before it became standard in the game, Player was a workout fanatic, driven to improve his chances of success by being stronger and fitter than any of his rivals. But standing supreme in his approach to the game was an indefatigably positive mental outlook. He simply would not let himself be denied, regardless of the obstacles he encountered. In fact, he asserts that he welcomed any hurdle. His words are inspiring.
“People who want to resist and avoid adversity are cheating themselves. It is how you handle adversity that defines you as a person, as a golfer, and as a champion. I see guys out here all the time who let the littlest things undo them, undo their confidence, undo their motivation. I say, “Get in there and play the game with some courage, man! It is part of the game to have bad times. It is built into it, I think, to weed the weak people out. Nobody has good times all the time, so get up and fight! Show me some courage! Show me some patience. Show me some determination, for goodness sake!”
On a scale of 1-00, I’d say my confidence was usually a 105.
I refused to lose my self-confidence, and you have to continue to believe, because if you don’t have the confidence, no one is going to give it to you. They are going to try to take it away from you. So even when I am not hitting the ball well, I always tell myself, “It can change at any moment. Hang in there!”
The great misconception of many beginning golfers is that failing will somehow lessen or embarrass them. For them, failure is something to be avoided at all costs. Yet, when I interviewed som of the top golfers on the PGA Tour, I discovered that they consistently not only welcomed failure but invariably pushed themselves sufficiently hard so they could discover their limits. They viewed every challenge simply as an obstacle to overcome, as another mountain to climb, and they held on to the firm belief that failure signified that they were pushing themselves sufficiently hard.
Golfers who practice sloppily tend to play sloppily under pressure. Stubborn golfers who refuse to adapt find themselves surpassed by technical and technological innovations. Golfers who have bad tempers play badly on courses that require patience. Golfers who are too passive have difficulty tapping into “the fighter instinct” required to conquer life’s many battles. And finally, golfers who do not find effective ways to nurture their own self-confidence are doomed to be victimized by the type of paralyzing fear that leads to choking, and which ultimately ensures they lose their love for the game.
Adversity is the very ingredient necessary to cultivate mental toughness.
The speed with which ecosystems recover from damage is the defining characteristic of their health. A fit golfing mind displays similar restorative powers. When they make mistakes, psychologically resilient golfers are able to immediately forget about them and get fully involved in the next shot. In fact, the key to that recovery is their ability to immediately focus on the next shot.
You put the big heat on Justin — the most people, the most pressure, the biggest scrutiny, the biggest chance for distraction — and he thrives on it. Put him in the middle of the ring, put him in the biggest circle, and he’s gonna take out his bag of golf tricks and show you how he can use them. This kid ain’t afraid of excelling.
Does my dad dwell on mistakes? He doesn’t even remember them. Most of the time, when it comes to golf, he doesn’t acknowledge them. In his mind, they didn’t happen.
I didn’t have time to dwell. I was too busy thinking about my next shot. There were other guys out there trying to win the tournament too, so I wasn’t busy asking about why the ball flew where it did. I was busy asking myself what I needed to to do in order to win the golf tournament.
The keystone of her coaching was an idea she called Vision 54, a belief in the possibility of making birdie on every hole.
Tiger Woods burst onto the scene in 1996 with the goal of winning every professional tournament he entered.
If I show up at a golf tournament, my number-one goal is just to win.
For me it comes down to having belief in myself. And I have always believed in what I can do. Even when I wasn’t playing my best, then I had to root my confidence, not in my shots but in my ability to manage myself and my game. So if I am not out there playing my best golf, I know that. I know what my best golf is and what my best shots are, if I am not hitting the ball perfect I have to figure out how do I take 10 or 15 or 20% of my game away and play with the other 80% to maximize what I can do. People will say that is negative talk, but it isn’t. It is actually more confidence because once I realized where my game was, I was able to manage it better and play the correct shots, knowing when to take risks and when to be patient.
Make no mistake about it: Winning is the most powerful confidence booster, and all the psychological card tricks in the world can’t undo that simple fact. Winners know what it takes to win. Indeed, their sense of self-efficacy goes into hyperdrive the moment they come to be aware that they know what it takes to win.
Winning is a habit. So, unfortunately, is losing.
Nicklaus once suggested that a golfer has to do everything he can to protect his confidence, which is why he has “made a lifelong habit of favoring the positive over the negative.” Indeed, failure is so prominent in golf that Jack began to explain failure as “so-called failure” as a way of illustrate how golfers should think about mistakes as opportunities rather than setbacks.
I play with guys who hit it further, who hit it straighter, who hit it higher, who putt it better than me. But for me, it doesn’t matter. None of it matters because I am able to take what I can do and put it together in a way that allows me to play my best. Some people don’t get it, they can’t do that because they lose their confidence. And that’s the best thing I’ve taken from my experiences over the years.
Golfers who were unsuccessful tended to look for reasons not to play well, and they undermined their own sense of self-efficacy. They invoked every flaw, weakness, or shortcoming in their games as reasons they weren’t ready to compete at the highest levels. Even before they showed up at a golf course, they would be talking about how they never play well on this or that course, how the course doesn’t fit their game, or how some turn of events put them at a disadvantage. Conversely, successful players were able to look beyond personal shortcomings and flaws and instead rely on what they do well.
The lesson is that experiences alone do not breed confidence. Nor does success by itself result in a corresponding confidence. Rather, it is the “meaning” that we give to these experiences, and how we interpret success that ultimately undermines how we face future challenges. Does a missed putt on the 1st hole mean you are putting poorly, or does it mean you are due to make one eventually? Do consecutive bad scores mean that you are getting worse as a golfer, or that you are improving because you are learning what not to do? Most golfers who get fixated on scores will tell you that bad scores are a sign they are getting worse.
After all, even in the face of continual improvement and numerous successes, people often lose their confidence. In part, this is because when competing people gauge their own performance in relation to the performance of others.
There are 2 key problems with rooting your confidence in how you perform relative to other golfers. The first problem is that in competitive golf you lose much more than you win. The second is that you have no control over how other golfers will play on a given day. Imagine shooting a 71 and losing your confidence because your playing partner shot the round of his life with a 68.
Much of the success I’ve had helping golfers has boiled down to teaching them to teach themselves to ask the right questions as they play. Asking “What is the best strategy for this hole?” and “What is my target?” focuses golfers’ attention on the course and on the shot which, in turn, means that they do not focus on other golfers and their performance.
Praising with statements such as “You are terrific!” or “You’re just so good at this” can often have the opposite effect you intend. Rather than praising for ability, we should make it a habit to praise the effort, persistence, and perseverance that it takes to succeed.
Dealing with the losses time after time, it just gets frustrating. It can wear on you, except that you just can’t let it.
I felt very calm. When I was out on the course, I didn’t feel the anxiety of “Is it slipping away?” or “How is the tournament going?” or who is doing what. It was more like, “Hey, let’s hit some shots.” I was very confident today that good things would happen.
The difficulty lies in the fact that golf is so very, very sensitive to psychological and mechanical fluctuation. Even subtle changes in an individual’s mood, tension levels, confidence, muscular stiffness, or swing path can result in dramatic differences in shots in subsequent scores. Thus it requires a precision and consistency that other sports do not.
Tiger knows that we all go through daily fluctuations. We are just a bit different from one day to the next; some days we are tighter or stiffer, or our tempo may be a bit quicker, or we are perhaps not seeing the greens the same way we did the day before. Self-knowledge and self-understanding are what allow Tiger to know whether he has to play with his A, B, or C game.
Even golfers who know that they need to stay in the present don’t necessarily know how to stay in the present. The solution is not to simply tell yourself to stay in the present. Telling yourself to stay in the present is like telling yourself “Don’t worry”. Telling yourself not to worry usually means that you are worrying, and that is likely to create more worry. Telling yourself to stay in the present usually means you aren’t in the present.
The better way is to do the things you naturally do at those times when staying in the present is easy. When golf is easy, golfers ask themselves the right questions automatically. They don’t have to think about asking themselves natural questions like “How do I want to play this hole” or “How do I want to play this shot?” They just do it. They do not need to remind themselves to stay in the present because they are in the present, asking questions that focus their mind on hitting shots.
I was in total control. I was never fast with any swing, which is phenomenal for me. I was walking at a speed in sync with my golf swing. I felt together. I was never upset, and I never let anything bother me. I stuck to my game plan and didn’t deviate.
I decide I wasn’t going to deviate, no matter what. Believe me, every player looks at the scoreboard. You can’t miss it. I wish I didn’t have to look at it. It can make you change your plan. But today I never deviated.
Thursday, we played in terrible weather, and that was as trying as shooting the blowout round. The thing was I continued to do my best and tell myself, “Don’t deviate.” I guarantee you I won the tournament on Thursday.
I pride myself on being able to handle the pressure and control myself mentally. I’ve been known as a frontrunner. When you’re in front, I know you have to live with the emotions of leading. I know emotions. That’s what separates you on tour.
“What’s my target?” Asking that question brings golfers into the present.
A golfer’s quiet mind goes something like this:
- What’s my target?
- A specific target is picked out.
- The target is locked on to with 100% concentration.
- A fearless golf swing is made at that target.
Sometimes when you’re not under pressure, your focus is not there, and you might not make the putts. But when you’re sort of under pressure, it’s a must thing; you must focus and you must make the putt, and that’s what I feel when I stand over it.
Attributions are psychologically interesting because they are based on perceived — rather than actual — causes. They are immensely important because inaccurate attributions are often the critical element that instigate and sustain the ruts that golfers all into.
It begins with missing the short putts. Pretty soon you begin to fear leaving yourself a long putt or a chip shot, which in turn puts heavy pressure on your iron play. Then, because you feel you have to hit every approach shot stone dead, you become afraid of missing fairways, and pretty soon you’re playing scared on every shot. And the noose keeps tightening until eventually all your confidence is gone and you’ve completely lost the knack of scoring.
The first and certainly worst mistake was, to put it bluntly, complacency. I assumed I could go on living on my talent without really working on my game. Mistake No. 2 came when with the big cut in tournaments came a cut in practice and playing time of almost half.
All good teachers know that it is important to foster in their students the belief that talent and ability are changeable, controllable aspects of development. Instead of praising students for their ability, good teachers praise effort, perseverance, and persistence as ways to overcome obstacles.
Mostly only me. I am the only one I can control. They will ask me, “Jack, you have a great field this week with Palmer, Player…” I say, “Oh, they are here playing this week? I didn’t know that.” Because, as a competitor trying to win the damn tournament, I couldn’t care less. I am here to prepare myself for this golf course to be ready to play on Thursday.
Failure engenders anxiety and success often breeds pride. Consequently, human beings have a tendency to provide highly inaccurate explanations for their failures in order to avoid anxiety and for their successes in order to take more credit than they rightly deserve.
All my life I’ve tried to hit practice shots with great care. I try to have a clear-cut purpose in my on every swing. I always practice as I intend to play. And I learned long ago that there is a limit to the number of shots you can hit effectively before losing your concentration on your basic objectives.
Fighters pilots understand the critical importance of habit. I asked one how he managed to keep his concentration while having surface-to-air missiles shot at him. He didn’t hesitate to tell me that it was “training” that made him successful: “Up there, you just do what you are trained to do. You don’t really think about it too much. You just do it.”