Stepping Up – If you want it, what are you going to do to go get it?!

I am very grateful for the life I have. My parents were blue collar workers who did everything they could to make sure my brother and I had what we ‘needed’.  The biggest gift my parents gave me was the motivation of hard work.  If you wanted something bad enough, you would work hard to go get it.  You never left anything to come to you in life.  To this day, I do not think I am the smartest person in my field, but I put forth the discretionary effort to set goals and work relentless to achieve them.

I was recently at a conference with a couple exceptional speakers.  On the first day, I was fortunate enough to meet Dr. John Izzo, author of the book Stepping Up.  His message was succinct; we need to take responsibility for how we perform and make change.  I can spend hours practically applying his key concepts to the business world, but instead during our discussion I thought a lot about shooting.

Over the course of the past two years there has always been a lot of, let’s just say, reasons why someone places better than us in competition.  Some of these reasons may be legitimate IE; you do not maintain a preventative maintenance regimen on your firearms, you make changes to your setup prior to a match, the ammunition you use is problematic during the cold, etc.  One of the many concepts he talked about was taking 100% ownership with 0 excuses.

The key takeaway, for me, was you have choice.  If you are satisfied with your current placements and results, then keep doing what you are doing.  If you are not satisfied with how you are doing, then what are you going to do to CHANGE things?  As a previous mentor has told me, hope is not a plan.  We must make a plan to change our course.  What is your plan for the rest of 2018?  Are you going to practice at all?  Are you just going to shoot local matches?  Are you going to get help from an expert in the sport?  What is it?  In order to truly get better you have to write down a plan and hold yourself accountable to it.

What am I going to do differently? My wife and I are making a large financial decision to sell our home and buy a home with property to have a range.  This will allow me to shoot more and not compromise the time I have with my family.  This change will also allow me to expand what I truly love to do, teach.  It will be great to have a place to bring fellow competitors to where we can work out some of their stumbling blocks and continue to grow the sport.  I truly believe focusing on the fundamentals makes both the teacher as well as the student better.

Just remember, results lag change. If you change something in your routine, your equipment, etc you will not see the results immediately in most cases.  Just know you are making the right decisions and positive results will follow! Now, what are you going to do?!

See you out on the range soon!

Steve