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How's Your Ego?
JTH:
I was talking with a certain female shooter recently, and she related to me a conversation she had with someone who told her that he'd never want to do competition shooting, "because he'd get too competitive about it."
Her response (and her opinion about that statement) got me thinking about ego, so I had to write about it.
http://precisionresponse.wordpress.com/2014/10/17/hows-your-ego/
I note: My comment about thinking that person just said "I suck at shooting and don’t want anyone to know" doesn't apply to everyone I run into. In particular, I want to specifically say that while Shawn and I go 'round and 'round about competition shooting and disagree strongly, I know perfectly well that he doesn't suck at shooting. I've seen him shoot, and he's got skill.
He's just wrong about competition shooting. :P
Some other people don't want to try any competition shooting because they don't have time, or they already have enough hobbies, or their wives or husbands need them at home with the baby, etc---there are certainly plenty of valid reasons for not trying competition shooting.
But most people don't give valid reasons. Instead, they make up ego defenses, and it is noticeable when they do so.
So I've got to admit, watching the number of people who talk up their shooting (I'm not talking necessarily about here on the forums, but everywhere such as gun shops, bars, shooting ranges, and the Internet in general) but can't ever be found at a match or putting their skills up for display or notice, and make up excuses to not try a competition---I do often think exactly what that female shooter said:
“What I heard was ‘I suck at shooting and don’t want anyone to know.’ Isn’t that what you heard? That’s what I heard.”
One thing I hear a lot from people who get into competition shooting: "I never realized how much BETTER I could get." Why? Because if you never compare yourself to anyone, you don't have any sort of realistic view of how good (or bad) you are.
How good is "good enough"? Plenty of people have opinions about that. Many of those people, however, don't seem to have any actual comparative basis for their opinion.
So how's YOUR ego?
(Mine, you ask? Well, I regularly get stomped by a number of people every year in matches, and I keep going. And I put up my shooting on YouTube so people can make fun of me. Though I will admit, I think seriously about kicking Ben Stoeger in the groin right before he runs a stage about 3-4 times a year to make the rest of us look better...)
gsd:
Well said. While I don't shoot many competitions or matches, when I do its more about the fun and test in myself than winning. Case in point: I came in last at the last match :)
SemperFiGuy:
[quote]Case in point: I came in last at the last match [/quote]
Please don't mess around in my territory.
Thank you.
sfg
mott555:
I'd love to get into competitive shooting, only issues are time and cost. Personally I'd be more interested in long-range competition but my Remington 770 just isn't cut out for that. I'm sure I'd suck at the start, but you can't improve without trying. I'd be doing it for fun anyway, I'm really not that driven to be or to claim to be the best of the best.
I recently took my sister to a private range operated by a police instructor, and he taught her how to use a handgun. He said something along the lines of "I much prefer teaching women shooters because they aren't afraid to admit they don't know what they're doing. Most men come in here with an ego and want to prove they already know everything and that makes it hard to teach them anything."
Mali:
Well said, jthhapkido. My ego takes a beating regularly so I am more than happy to admit I suck at shooting right now. But then I am a consultant by trade and my job is to teach others what I do know and learn about/improve upon what I don't know so we can then sell that knowledge as well.
I run into a lot of people that hire us to fix issues they are having but then won't admit they don't know what they are doing when I show up to help them get out of the hole they dug. If people were more willing to learn from their mistakes then they would find out they would improve much faster.
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