SPM Billiards Magazine Issue 34

How to Put Yourself “In the Zone”

By Dominic Esposito, a.k.a. The Drill Instructor

Did you know that The Drill Instructor is giving away 5 FREE Gifts guaranteed to impact your pool playing skills?

How often have you missed an easy shot and then lost concentration?

How do you regain lost confidence, especially when playing an opponent that you should beat?

Most pool players don’t realize that this sport is 50% psychological.

You’ll always be better off when you’re not being self-critical and afraid of losing. However, every player at some time point has a moment when confidence weakens and concentration wobbles.

Years ago, I created the solution to this problem. Working with a friend and fellow pool player who is a certified hypnotist, my eyes opened up to the very thing I had been searching for.

Experts have long established that hypnosis is a fast and effective way to learn something new. It’s also a great way to relearn or unlearn harmful habits and patterns.

It’s simple; hypnosis essentially involves a willing focus of attention on a hypnotist’s suggestions. The hypnotist guides a client to use the right outer portion of the cerebral cortex – the frontal portion of the brain. This is termed the subconscious mind because the right hemisphere controls our imagination, faces, place recognition, and multi-tasking just to name a few of its functions.

The left hemisphere, or conscious mind, controls speech and rational decision making, it is how we are critical, analytical, and can only do one task at a time.

The two sides of the brain process information differently and function independently. For instance, when you are playing flawlessly “in the zone,” you’re using the right, subconscious side of your brain.

There’s more. Hypnosis derives its power from being a subconscious state of mind. The subconscious does not analyze like the conscious mind, so suggestions heard enter the unconscious mind that houses our habits and memory, and controls all the physiological functions of our body.

Without going to a hypnotist or playing a hypnotic message, you can, right now, use the power of your subconscious to tap the wealth of pool training that you have engrained deep inside your unconscious mind.

YES! And I created a drill for doing this.

To get back in the game requires tapping into your memory of some past excellent performance. It could be a well-played shot, game, match, or remembering the exhilarating feeling you once had while playing at the top of your game.

Hypnotists call this method or technique anchoring. You dig into your memory and use that as your anchor to get back into being “in your personal zone of excellence.”

Here’s how you do this.

1. Take a break and go to the restroom or sit somewhere quiet and alone.

2. Find something that you can stare at and see yourself. Use a mirror or anything that you can see a reflection of your face.

3. Speak out loud the words, “EveApple.” You can say it to yourself if you’re not alone. Eve-Apple is the key anchor to go into your memory, back in time, to when you experienced that moment you played flawlessly, had a perfect strategy, executed accurate aim, felt your stroke was perfectly in line, and you had total cue ball control.

When you vividly get into that recall state, neurotransmitters in the brain will send this message to every cell, nerve, and muscle in the body. This is what literally transforms how you think, feel, and act!

The mind can only entertain one mood at a time. So, by anchoring back to a positive and winning feeling all the losing thoughts and feelings disappear.

To make this work you have to practice doing this.

I train my players to do this four times a day, every day for one month. They take a few seconds to recall, feel, and get as vivid as possible about a previous experience.

The most effective time to practice is during a time when you’re tired. This can be right before you go to sleep.

Once you have conditioned the unconscious mind to totally respond to your keyword, you have a fabulous psychological tool to restore

The Drill Instructor is a Master Pool Instructor of Pool Instructors. He works with players around the world at every level. Don’t hesitate to call or write him. He can be reached at dominic@thedrillinstructor.us or just visit the website at https://www.thedrillinstructor.us to get access to him and his world-class training.