Arrow whispers - objectives or better not?

I'm sure all of us have said it before, or at least heard it from another shooter. It's about a sentence, a thought that, however understandable it may seem to some, just didn't quite make sense to me. Namely, that the best performance is the one for which you have no expectations. I can well understand the reason for this view, because at first glance it seems to me as if that is often the case. But the whole thing still didn't feel right. At some point, however, something clicked for me, and I was able to form an opinion that also made sense to me. And it is precisely these thoughts that I would like to share with you.

I'm convinced that we are always greater than we often give ourselves credit for, and that we can only move toward this greatness step by step, if our thoughts allow it. Why we still perform better, not only despite, but precisely because of, the absence of our goals, is explained to me as follows:

We may have countless beliefs and patterns within us, but it is only our lifestyle and current actions that ultimately determine which of them are actively at work within us and which are not. So, if we decide not to set a goal and yet, ultimately, can repeatedly see a clear improvement in our performance, a closer look at our true beliefs certainly can't hurt. After all, what if the size of the goal isn't the problem, but is merely triggered by it? What thoughts and feelings really arise within us when we dare to think beyond our usual expectations? Do we dare to dream playfully like a child, or is it perhaps an old wound that we are still scratching at without realizing it? What kind of thought is it that becomes active within us as soon as we see our goal in sight, and does this thought actually move us forward? Perhaps it is also showing us a long-outdated limit that we still cling to from our childhood because we are simply not sufficiently aware of it. Pain we've experienced around a topic, only to then accept a conviction we've gained from it as absolute truth. If we first give all of this the space it needs to heal, and only what becomes visible can heal, we make room for something new. After all, if deactivating a blockage within us visibly improves our own performance, what would we be capable of if we didn't just resolve it, but actually replaced it with something powerful?

Bettina Platzer