Whenever he saw fellow competitors staring for a long time at a results sheet at an event we were at, a training partner of mine would mutter ‘keep staring, they’ll change soon’.

Of course, no matter how long you stare at your results they won’t change, but nonetheless, I liked his humor because it kept reminding me that if I continued to work on what I could control the results would take care of themselves.

I took this to the extent that I’d never bother to look at a results sheet for the first few days of a competition. I had a pretty good idea of how I went each day and not ‘caring’ about the initial scores helped me to focus on the process and my own performance rather than think about the outcome in a few days time.

The challenge comes in maintaining the process-orientated focus while you’re in the middle of an event. One way to do this is, before the start and even during the event, to remind myself of a few key technique or tactical areas I know I need to work on. I do this by reviewing a half-page list of things I wanted to work on - gathered from errors made and refined over previous months.

So:
Don’t put the cart before the horse.
Watch the pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves.
Focus on the process and the outcome will take care of itself.

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