Simple Meditation Tips To Improved Shooting and Better Focus
Hey guys, Chris Sajnog here. In this post, I want to talk about the importance of having a daily meditation practice and give you a few simple meditation tips to help get you started.
What Is Meditation?
We tend to associate it purely with Eastern religion. When I teach meditation, it has nothing to do with religion. So if you have a hang-up on the word meditation, just don’t use the word meditation.
I have been meditating for about 35 years. When I started doing martial arts as a child, I was required to practice meditation. I’ve continued doing that through this day. Today, I meditate twice daily for about 15 minutes, and I will go over exactly what I do in my meditation practice.
Different Methods
There are literally hundreds of ways to meditate. Find one that works for you. Some of the more popular ones are guided meditation. You can get an app called Headspace. They have like a 10-day meditation course where they teach you how to meditate. I highly recommend you just check that out and try it out. I’ve done it and it’s great.
How To Start
What I’d like you to start out with is to sit somewhere where you can put your feet flat on the ground. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. You can focus on a word such as LAM. It’s called a mantra in meditation.
You want to use a word that you don’t associate with anything. Any word that you can associate something with, you kind of start associating stuff in your mind, and you won’t be able to focus.
Common Misconceptions
Next on these simple meditation tips, One of the reasons that people don’t meditate or think that meditation is hard is because there’s no goal that you associate with it. It’s not like playing a sport, playing a game, or making money.
There is no goal to meditation, the whole goal is to meditate. So if you sit down for five minutes, or even one minute, close your eyes, and practice focusing, you’re meditating, and you will see improvement.
Now I recommend, just like with anything else, give it 30 days. 30 days of sticking with it every day and doing it consistently before you say it isn’t for you. There are going to be times when your mind is going to be rushing and thoughts are going to come into your mind. When that happens, realize that’s the whole purpose of meditation.
How Does Meditation Help With Shooting?
Say you’re at a shooting competition and there’s a lot of stress going on. There are noises and there are buzzers and there are people running around. Those are all distractions in your mind. Because you practice meditation, you know how to control what your mind is focusing on.
You can choose your thoughts direct your thoughts and focus your thoughts.
It also works the same way with front-sight focus. Say you’re in a gunfight and somebody starts shooting at you. That’s a lot of mental distraction going on. But because you practice meditation, you know that for a split second, your front sight being crystal clear, is going to be the difference between life and death.
Tips
If you can’t do five minutes, do three minutes, two minutes, or one minute. What I don’t want you to do is sit down for the first time for 20 minutes and you hate it. If you try too much too soon, you’re not going to stick with it. If you just start off slow, you can always add more time later.
The second tip is don’t look for an outcome. The biggest problem is people want to expect an outcome and the only outcome you should have is you saying “I sat down and I meditated today”. So pat yourself on the back for that one.
The final thing that many people get hung up on is they tend to think they’re doing it wrong. Thoughts are going to come into your head. You need to realize that is part of meditation. If ideas aren’t coming into your head, there’s something wrong with your head.
The whole purpose of meditation is going from those thoughts, acknowledging they’re there, and going to what you want to focus on. Don’t get upset with a thought. I hope these simple meditation tips help. Until next time, keep paving your path to perfection.
