Often an archery coach will tell you to visualize your shot, to see it happen. I'm sure someone has told you this before.This is an excellent prelude to your shot sequence. It creates momentum in your mind, which helps you focus and maintain your awareness in your shot. Visualization is a great way to increase the probability of a wanted outcome. It is scientifically proven that the brain cannot distinguish between something you imagine and something that actually happens. The trick is making a visualization that is both easy to repeat and powerful to experience.
First, do not over complicate the visualization. Simply visualize the outcome, which means to see the arrow in the center of the X. This is a simple and quick method. If your visualization is too elaborate, your mind begins to wander, the task becomes too laborious, and it takes too long. Your mind gets bored then you give up. When you just visualize the outcome, the arrow in the target, it’s simple and quick and can be performed very quickly.
The second part, and the most important addition to your visualization, is that you have to introduce emotion into the visualization. So just don’t see it, feel it happen, feel the satisfaction and excitement. Think about how it feels when you look through your binoculars and see that X in the middle of the target. Feel that pride, that confirmation of your effort. Including emotion in the visualization will help set the experience of success into your subconscious. Emotion opens the door to the subconscious making the process much more efficient. Through repetition of the visualization, the subconscious will recognize this outcome as normal and will work with your body to make it happen. Once the mind is convinced that this is what always happens, it will happen more frequently.
In order to make something a reality, we have to think of it and feel it first. All desired outcomes start in the mind. This is a quick and simple way to maximize your visualization techniques, a great way to change your mind and increase your X count.
While this is a great technique to practice on your own, you can also get some help building this part of your mental game. Hypnosis can help walk you through the experience and emotion, further imprinting it into your subconscious and improving your mental game. Whichever way you decide to work on this, outcome visualization enhanced with emotion can help get you to the next level of confidence and accuracy.