One of the things I love most about my work is the large diversity of goals and aspirations my clients have. Everyday brings new challenges, and new opportunities to help people just like you, to reach their highest potential in life.
To illustrate this, I’d like to share with you Evelyn’s story (name changed for privacy of course).
A few years back, Evelyn approached me to help her resolve a troubling issue she was having.
See, Eveyln competed nationally in rifling. And she was good. Very good. One of the best in New Zealand in her category in fact.
However, she knew she was capable of doing even better.
The problem was that in sets of ten shots, she would land the first 7 shots flawlessly, but invariably choke on the last two or three shots. She took her sport very seriously, investing time and money to compete and she was even more invested in doing well.
There was no apparent reason for her misses, but every time it came to those last few critical attempts at the target she would over-think, and miss the shot.
Now, similar to golf, riflers invariably have a rhythm or routine leading up to each shot.
Unfortunately sometimes those patterns or bad habits which have been so deeply ingrained, can be self-sabotaging, and in Evelyn’s case, she’d get excited every time she’d approach the end of her set.
She’d start thinking: “this time I’m going to make it, I’m going to have a great run through.” The distracting thoughts then increased her heart rate, and she’d try to overcompensate, and then invariably miss the target.
Desperate for a solution, we worked together to find the answer.
I helped her to create a new thought pattern habit, that whenever she put her finger on the trigger it was as if she was taking her first shot, calm and relaxed.
Shortly after our sessions, she went to the qualifiers for the NZ international team. As you can imagine tensions were high.
Just after her ranging shot to make sure her gun was sighted in, the unimaginable happened: her scope fell apart, and the lenses popped out.
She was now completely unable to even see the target, but by the rules of the competition she had to continue.
Scrambling, she tried tying her scope back together with string. That took so long that after a couple shots that were nowhere near the target her spotter was called away to help someone else.
So there she was, a useless scope, a gun that wasn’t sighted in, two shots wasted and no spotter.
She told me quite frankly that, under normal circumstances she would have gone to pieces right then and there.
What happened instead was quite spectacular. She took a deep breath, relaxed, and thought up a new plan.
She took off the broken x10 scope, replaced it with a spare x7 scope that she had with her. This scope under normal circumstances would not have nearly enough zoom, but she was calm and working with the resources she had available.
She then proceeded to hit the target perfectly.
Every time she squeezed the trigger, she said she heard my voice in the back of her mind reminding her of the process and felt a total zen-like calm.
She made it to the Nationals team and proceeded to join the international competition, representing NZ around the world and making us all proud. And for this I say thank you Evelyn.
Last word on this:
If you’ve been struggling, if you feel you have a bad habit that is holding you back in life, including negative thoughts, negative beliefs, poor self-talk, constant self-doubt, whether on the sports field, in the office, or in your relationships, let’s talk and see if we can help you to break free.
If you’re curious to find ways to ‘un-stuck’ yourself, schedule a free 15 min discovery call and I’ll show you what hypnotherapy can do for you.
