Frustration, Disappointment and Anger

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When I stand back as watch players throw and miss I often see them react in these emotional ways. I tend to feel them as well and finally came to the conclusion it comes from the human species natural drive to do well.

Doing well ties into my personal philosophy of human survival drives. It also ties in with the group dynamics of our base drive for group status in the drive for group survival.

I needed to come up with something that I could use in a mind-state that would, at a minimum, curb those feelings so the natural human adrenal chemicals released under their influence would not dampen my personal natural throw.

You see, when our emotions are triggered, click and whirr, our brains trigger our adrenal glands and release our monkey brain from its cage and all kinds of disruptive effects raise up to obscure and disrupt our abilities to act, to throw good darts.

So I decided to become, and train, a mind-set of the "Deadman!" A bit like killing the monkey and ignoring those irritating emotions when the darts don't fly true to my target.

How do I do this? Well, as a dart deadman I ignore the emotional reactive responses from a bad throw and just believe the miss is just an opportunity to practice my personal throw. 

I aim for a T20 and miss means I have opened an opportunity to practice my throw targeting my T20 again or to practice and train my brain to mental re-calculate a means to double out another way with the remaining darts in my hands.

The moment I miss I redirect my thoughts to, ‘ok, more practice’ or ‘ok, calculate and focus’ rather than allow emotional tidal waves to inundate my mind into throwing more and more bad throws. Look at it as a means to refocus away from the monkey’s efforts to use emotions to derail my efforts and use a mindfulness, a mind-no-mind, to immediate curb the emotional effects by breathing properly, relaxing the shoulders and face and then to immediately, without hesitation, recalculate. 

I have caught myself missing and immediately saying, ‘crap’, and then feeling that emotional turmoil taking control of my body often to cause additional throws to go awry so my training now is to hit the ‘recalculate’ button or take a mind-set of, ‘hey, more practice shooting at this target until I hit the darn thing’ mentality - dependent on if in practice or competition. After all, if I missed and if I allow the monkey’s emotionally dominance then I will just miss again so why not? Why not simply say no to the monkey on my back and recalculate, breath, refocus on ‘my throw’, target and toss.  With practice and experience it could mean the difference from mastery or just social darts. 

Just call me ‘Deadman!’ Deadman tossing here, deadman tossing!