I had the opportunity to shoot with my son and friends a couple of days ago. One of the things we often do is a one arrow ‘shoot off’ at the end of every practice, or when one of us has to leave. Well my son and I were just getting to the range when some of the others were getting ready to leave. Of course we couldn’t let anyone go until we had our one arrow shoot off. We slapped our equipment together and 5 of us stepped to the line and gave it our er……best effort.

Well, in my haste to set up, I moved my sight to an incorrect position and scored in the straw at 70m. The arrow in the gold was my mulligan, which of course didn’t count. 

The point of this post is to have fun, stay positive and accept our errors. When was the last time you solved a problem while being upset? Well I believe my track record is 0 for 61 years. I often shoot with youngsters who get really worked up about shooting arrows poorly. Instead of being upset at a result, why not look at the result and get curious about why it happened and what steps you might take to solve the error? With that attitude, you stand a chance at solving shot errors. 

It all starts with attitude. Bring a positive mindset with you to practice every day! We all get upset about shooting poorly, but put aside results and look for causes. Don’t get me wrong, a positive mindset doesn’t mean you’ll always ‘figure it out’, but you are at least giving yourself a chance. I’ve had many practices and tournaments where I just couldn’t find my groove, or figure out my error, but because I’m a natural optimist, I’ll stick with it and perhaps in a few days, or weeks, find the issue which had been vexing me. 

Get out there, have some fun and figure out the sport you enjoy!