Chapter 1-3 创立意识管理系统(一)

While growing up, I don’t remember doing much away from the shooting range. I was too busy training. When all the other kids went to movies, I practiced. I trained an average of five hours a day, five days a week for twelve years before I made my first Olympic team. I shot on high school and college rifle teams. I would get to school early and train. Then I would train again before going home. The weekends were for matches or all-day training. This should not come as any surprise to you, all Olympians train hard. What I have learned since is that I did not need to spend that much time and effort. I did not have a Mental Management? System then. If I had, I could have done better on half of the effort and half of the time. But I am getting ahead of the story.

I vividly remember my first Olympiad in Munich, Germany. It was 1972 and my teammate, Jack Writer, was the best shooter in the world. He had won all three pre-Olympic World Cups and was the hands-down favorite to win the gold. He was National Champion, held the world record and was the reigning World Champion. Jack had two problems. First, there is always more pressure on the favorite. I was confident that this would be problematic for him at the Olympics. He’d won the silver at the previous Olympics in the event and anything less than the gold would be disaster for him. Most people buckle under that kind of pressure. He had another problem as well; ME! I occasionally beat him in training and it was occurring more often the closer we got to Olympic day.

I thought Jack would pressure out and I would win the gold medal. Olympic day came. I was physically the best in the world the day of the match but I had not planned on how the Olympic pressure would affect me. Rifle shooting is the only Olympic sport where you are trying to make the body stop. Jack and I would run three to five miles a day to force the resting heart-rate under 60 beats a minute. If you shoot when the heart beats the movement is severe enough to cost you points. You must shoot between heartbeats. When the match started, my heart rate went ballistic and I began to shake. I shot nine after nine. I was so scared that I lost the match in my first ten shots due to a poor mental performance. At that time, I felt like my world had ended. I’d failed my country, my family and myself. Twelve years of training had not fully prepared me to win the gold. I lacked the mental skills. Jack Writer was the champion that day. I managed to take the silver.

Now don’t get me wrong. The silver is ten times better than a bronze and the bronze is ten times better than no medal at all. But to my way of thinking, the silver is the closest thing you can get to the gold medal and still lose. You are the world’s best.loser. No one is more motivated to win the gold than the one who goes home with the silver. I set a goal to win in 1976. But I knew that to do it I needed a new mental game.