GregH

For me, confidence has always been easy when it comes to seeing deer. I've always felt like I was going to see something from my stand. I've gone as long as 12 days without seeing a deer but each time I went out, I was confident that today would be the day. I still feel this way today.

Back in the '70s, I took up weight training. I used to read as much as I could about it. This is where I first heard about confidence and visualization. So I started practicing it and it worked. I used confidence, concentration (focus) and visualization. To me, all three were important. It didn't come overnight, it took practice. A lot of talking to myself, "yeah, I can do that", then picturing myself doing it perfectly then just doing it the way I saw it in my head.

After a while, I found that you could apply this technique to almost anything that you were trying to do. It didn't matter if you were trying to shoot your first 300 or benchpress your first 300. It helped. Then I started reading about it in the hunting mags and I thought, why not, it seemed to help with everything else. So I began using it for hunting.

I feel that, like everything else that evolves, so does your technique for this mental aspect. Are the changes that different from 20 years ago? I don't think that there has been any drastic changes in my mental approach, more like a gradual refining process that fits me personally. I've found that it is important to keep an open mind and be willing to try new things as they come into view. Always give them your best shot with full confidence. Otherwise, you may discard a valuable technique or idea that wasn't given a fair chance.

This works for me.