Bob Fancher is internationally known for his psychological expertise. His book, Cultures of Healing: Correcting the Image of American Mental Health Care, has been used in classes at Princeton, Columbia, Rutgers, and other colleges and universities. Bob is a BCA recognized billiards instructor. Bob is the author of the book, Pleasures of Small Motions: Mastering the Mental Game of Pocket Billiards. which can be found at Amazon.com. Bob Fancher's column "Dr. TBob, Pool Shrink" was originally written for American Cueist magazine and is now available exclusively here at AzBilliards.com. Bob has just started writing a monthly column, "Mind Game," for Billiards Digest. Previous months columns are available here.
	Self-Rewards and Punishments My buddy John Steinhardt is weird, in a certain way. When he gets mad at himself at the pool table, he starts playing better. Every time. Strange, huh? Trying to figure out why self-chastisement works for him set me to thinking about the whole issue of rewards and punishments, in pool. I don’t really enjoy self-punishment, and I wouldn’t recommend it as the primary sort of “self talk.” Still, punishment is as real psychologically as reward, and understanding the mental game requires that we understand both. Let’s start with self-chastisement, then move to self-reward. Long ago, Freud made the point that self punishment based on neurotic guilt causes lots of problems. Pop psychology distorted that into the idea that you should never feel guilty, never think ill of yourself, never be hard on yourself. That pop psychology idea mutated (for pool players) into the conventional wisdom that “beating up on yourself” or “negative self-talk” is just bad for your pool game. However, as the example of my buddy John illustrates, that is clearly not true. You know from your own experience that it is not true. All of us, sometimes, play better if we give ourselves “a good talking to.” Punishment, in fact, has its uses. I do not like that fact, but it is a fact, well established by scientific research. Neurotic guilt leads to bad things; but real errors do not amount to neurotic guilt, and we all sometimes fail to measure up to realistic standards. Sometimes punishment helps move us toward them. Sad fact, maybe, but true. When is it good to get stern with yourself? To speak hard to yourself about the shortcomings of your play? When is it productive to tell yourself, “You $%#@*&^&% piece of ^*&), what the &%^$ are you doing? Get your ^*!)(*&* in gear and straighten up!” Research shows that punishment helps curb impulsive or indulgent behavior. It does not help much in motivating people toward positive goals, however. For positive goals, we generally need incentives. Punishment will never make you act better than you are capable of acting, but it can sometimes curb impulsive or self-indulgent behavior that undermines the best of your abilities. In pool, then, being stern with yourself probably helps when you are shooting poorly because of sloppy, self-indulgent behavior. Like what, you ask? Strutting around like a banty rooster, maybe, indulging in your arrogance. Overpowering your shots to indulge your hostility or wish to hurt the other player. Just not paying attention, indulging your fantasies about how skilled you are. Play motivated by something other than the pleasure of excellence is probably self-indulgent. Under such conditions, getting stern with yourself reins in your lax effort and helps call you back to a disciplined, focused way of playing. However, self-punitive thinking only helps you when you are playing below par for some indulgent reason. It will never make you play better than you already know how to play, nor will it compensate for real impediments to your play. You will never “rise to the occasion,” playing better than usual, through self-flagellation. Punishment does not magically grant you more ability than you possess. Thus, you need a good sense of your real ability, and a good awareness of why you are playing badly, to know whether to be stern with yourself. If, in fact, you are playing below your real ability, and if the cause is self-indulgence, you need to get your mind back on the game. Getting stern with yourself is the best way to curb such behavior. However, to learn to play better, to summon your best abilities, or to motivate yourself when some real impediment is hurting your play, you have to make use of incentives or self-rewards. Self-rewards will usually be verbal. That is, you will notice when you do something praiseworthy and give yourself a pat on the back. Since humans are verbal creatures, this is a powerful tool. You can certainly give yourself more concrete incentives, though. “Okay, run this out, and then give yourself a cigarette break,” maybe. Or buy yourself a premium beer or a cookie or some such thing. Self-rewards have at least three good effects: They relax us, give us confidence, and reinforce our good performance. If you reward yourself for good behavior, you calm down, feel good, and repeat the kind of behavior that earned you the self-reward. The crucial point I want to make here, though, is that you must notice and pat yourself on the back for the right things. Any complex action, like making a pool shot, consists of many subsidiary actions. To maximize the effects of self-reward, you must analyze each shot into its subsidiary actions, and you must give yourself credit for the ones you do right. You need to notice the good parts of every shot and pat yourself on the back for them. You may miss a shot, for instance, but do an exquisite job of stroking, or applying English, or controlling cue ball speed. You need to notice those things and give yourself credit, even though the shot did not fully succeed. On the other hand, you may pocket the ball but miscalculate the travel of the cue ball. Give yourself credit for your good aim. The principle is simple: Break down a shot into its component parts, and give yourself credit for the parts you do right. Pool players too often become black-and-white, all-or-none, in their self appraisals. We get disheartened if the shot is not perfect or nearly so. That is psychologically unsound; it does not help your game. Giving yourself credit for what you do right is important in practice, so that your sense of your improvement is accurate. Maybe you are still missing that long head-spot to foot-spot shot half the time; but your ability to get the cue ball around three rails on the shot is improving nicely. If you notice that and give yourself credit, you will be encouraged and continue practicing. If not, you will just become discouraged that you are missing the shot so often. Giving yourself credit for what you do right is more difficult in competition, since you have to sit down when you miss. However, it is even more important, precisely for that reason. If you get discouraged, your play declines. Rewarding yourself for what you do right, even when your errors give the table to your opponent, is critical for keeping your sense of your play accurate and keeping yourself motivated. I am not saying that you should ignore your shortcomings. Most of the time, though, your shortcomings are not matters for reward or punishment. If your shortcomings are simply facts about your currentlevel of ability, they do not merit punishment. For punishment only helps when you are playing below your ability due to self-indulgence. Your current ability is simply your current ability. The conclusion is easy to remember: Get stern with yourself when indulgence undermines your play, reward yourself for everything you do well, and simply take note of your limitations and work on them.   All copyrights are owned by Bob Fancher. No duplication is allowed without his permission.