new year, new goals - and why shooters have to learn to love the process
Entry #2:
January is a reset for most people. A quiet exhale after the holidays. Space to reflect. Time to dream bigger.
But for us as shooters, January doesn’t feel quiet at all. It shows up in the middle of the season — when our legs are heavy, the schedule is full, and every rep seems to carry more weight. The noise gets louder, expectations tighten, and suddenly everything is under a magnifying glass: our shot, our confidence, our numbers. So we start looking ahead. Percentages. Minutes. Stats. Offers. We tell ourselves that if we can just hit a certain number, everything else will fall into place.
Goals matter. They always have.
But living this teaches us something quickly: outcomes are the one thing we can’t fully control.
The best shooters still set goals — we just don’t let them own us. We use them as direction, not identity. Because if goal-setting alone made great shooters, every gym would be full of elite players by February.
As shooters, we’re wired to measure. Makes. Misses. Percentages. Points. Numbers feel productive, tangible, and safe. They give us something to hold onto. But when outcomes become the focus, we drift out of the moment and into our heads. The misses feel heavier, our confidence becomes fragile, and the game becomes more difficult.
Most of us know that feeling.
What we eventually learn — usually the hard way — is that outcomes fluctuate. There are days when our shot feels automatic, and others when it feels unfamiliar. That feeling never fully goes away. However, the one thing that can stay steady is our process. Our daily habits are the one thing we can control every day:
how we warm up
how we respond to misses
how we train when no one’s watching
Confidence doesn’t come from results. These habits are where confidence is built. It’s important to remember that the best shooters in the world still miss about half their shots. Shooting fifty percent is elite. When we lose sight of that perspective, we often end up chasing perfection, and letting one miss convince us we’ve lost our game entirely. The truth is, to be a great shooter, we have to become just as comfortable missing shots as we are making them. That way, we’ve seen the show before and we know how to respond to the situation.
I’ve felt the pressure of the shot at the highest levels. I’ve lived the swings — good days, bad days, stretches where the ball feels foreign. That’s part of the deal. The outcomes will always vary, but our process must carry our confidence. Our process is the only thing that shows up day after day, and when we shift our attention there, the pressure eases, and the load lightens. The game opens back up, and our shot starts to feel like ours again.
Goals aren’t the problem. They just don’t tell the whole story — especially outcome-based ones. Outcome goals give us direction, but process goals gives us stability within our lives and our dreams. And stability is what we lean on when the lights are bright, the legs are tired, and the shot isn’t falling.
When everything is anchored to outcomes, our confidence rises and falls with the result:
“Shoot 40% from three.”
“Make varsity.”
“Get recruited.”
But the best shooters anchor somewhere deeper.
We anchor to:
getting in the gym six times a week
starting every workout with form shots
responding to every miss the same way
These are the anchors that hold when the game gets loud and outcomes don’t turn out quite like we had hoped. When when we trust our process, the results stop owning us — and our shot stays ours.
This January, how about trying a new take on goals and resolutions. Instead of chasing outcomes alone, what if we picked one goal and then imagined a few daily actions to support it?
For example:
Outcome: Become a more consistent shooter
Process ideas:
15 minutes of form shooting to begin each session
Early shooting before school 3 times a week
Ending every session with 10 made free throws
Thinking in terms of small, repeatable actions can shift the focus away from perfection and toward presence — just showing up, day after day, and trusting the process.
Our year won’t change because we want it to. It will change because of how we show up when shots don’t fall, confidence dips, and progress feels slow. When we learn to love the process, everything changes. That’s where real shooters are made.
The rest will take care of itself.
Just keep shooting.