Reach Your Goals By Hitting Your Targets.

Receiving one of the most important lessons on focus very early in my military career turned out to be a very lucky break. When I enlisted in the military I asked for the shortest technical school available, and that turned out to be security police. I was assigned to a very small base and my primary job was to guard airplanes at night by myself in the middle of nowhere.  After doing this for a month where I was so cold, the outside of my uniform literally frosted over, I realized I needed to find something else. You could squeeze the arms of my outer jacket and watch the frost crack.


What amazed me about this job is that there were guys who have been doing it for over five years without progressing to anything else.  Personally, I needed to find something better and quick. So I started asking around the base what my options were. I learned first that school was the normal way out and the next opening was a year away.  Eventually I stumbled on a little known benefit of military life, the base marksmanship team.

It turns out that the marksmanship team was allocated time every week to practice. Lucky for me tryouts were in two weeks. When I made the team I was ecstatic, even though I was the absolute bottom person to qualify for the team. The victory was even sweeter because I was the only new person on the team, everyone else had made the team some year before. As the only new guy, I bumped someone else off the team and had just improved 20% of my workweek.

For whatever reason the team leader liked me, I guess he was impressed with my attitude. The difference of being at practice during the day instead of freezing outdoors at night was clearly noticeable in my attitude. Les “Maspa” Esparza and I have become lifelong friends out of our experience on the base shooting team.

The first lesson and focus Les gave me was at the 400 yard line. Since the shooting team was serious business we didn't just sit down and shoot. We sat at the 400 yard line for over two hours discussing techniques and problems that you could encounter at that distance. One of the first simple problems he covered was making sure you hit your own target.

At 400 yards the target is about the size of the upper torso of a normal person.  At 400 yards this is about as big as your pinky finger nail at arms length Your lane number sits about 2 feet below the target.  At 400 Yards that means the barrel of the gun blocks the number while shooting.  It might sound funny but in the heat of competition many shooters will hit as many as three targets out of their lane. Here was my first lesson on focus. Make sure you find your target before you shoot, hitting someone else's target does you absolutely no good.

Of course it would have been much easier to put the numbers on top of the target, but this is competition.  Target identification is part of the process of military shooting.  You must know who you are aiming at.  The technique is easy, between each shot, breath look at your number, run your sight straight up to your target and fire at the center of mass.  This sounds easy on paper.  I can tell you that I have earned at least one medal because someone with better control received a lower score by hitting the wrong target.  Hitting your target is a 1, hitting the paper around your target is a 0, and hitting anywhere but your paper is a – 1.

If all of us can take that simple lesson out with us into our everyday lives we will find more success and happiness without a doubt. When someone else puts their target in front of you you might hit it, but they get the score.  Even if no one else places the target there for you, if you don't stop and breath between shots, you still might hit the wrong target.  In every day life the equivalent of breathing between shots is asking the question “Is this target moving me towards my goals?” every time someone or something (i.e. research time) is waiting to be added to your schedule.  If you can't say a positive yes, then learn to say “No”.  This will take practice, and will become the fastest way to de-clutter your life and move on with your targets, and then on to your goals.

We each only feels success and achievement we find our own targets and hit them. The only real score that counts to us as our target. Your target might be part of a team target, or it may be a solo target. Either way take this first lesson and apply it to everything you do. Make sure you're looking at your target in your lane so you can focus and hit your target and only your target.  After all, you only get to live your life.