Squiggly sprint 24: Day 18 - Emotional control

Day 18 of the SquigglySprint, and the topic today is managing one’s emotions.

I recently trained for a morning with an Olympic silver medalist in archery (blogpost), which is obviously a rare opportunity. I’ve always been a proponent of the idea that books on business leaders can puff up their subjects, and ignore the effect of luck or happenstance. 

If you want to learn about success, study sportspeople. All of their wins and losses happen in public view, and excuses are harder to come by. A lot of them will try to find excuses for psychological reasons, but ultimately the results on the field are what matter. You’ll learn more from Wayne Gretzky and Richie McCaw than Steve Jobs or Bill Gates.

A line from that coaching session stuck with me. To get a bullseye at 70m, you have to place the tip of the arrow in space to the tolerance of the size of a ballpoint pen. That’s aside from a dozen other aspects I could mention.

So I am sitting on the sofa, watching the Olympic teams event a few weeks ago. The South Korean Women’s team are up against China in the final. South Korea has NEVER lost this event at the Olympics, but China takes the match to a tie-break. When the final South Korean takes her final shot, the Chinese archer is still to shoot. So she has to shoot the best she can, and if it goes wrong, her nation loses their most sought after medal for the first time.

And she sticks it right in the middle for a 10.

That is emotional control you won’t learn from a business book.

So what advice can I give from this? One thing I have learned from archery is that being relaxed is the best thing you can do. My best ever trio of arrows was doing a quick demo for some beginners where I joked I hadn’t shot that bow for a while, and I stuck all the arrows touching each other. You will see archers on the line laughing and joking, sometimes ever yawning to relax themselves. The heart rate monitors at the Olympics show lower BPM than many people are at rest.

The other thing I will recommend is a great book called “With Winning In Mind”, written by an olympic champion shooter. It’s the best mental management book I’ve found, and compulsory reading in my archery club.

https://www.amazingif.com/listen/skills-sprint-managing-emotions/