Mentally this is quite a challenge. The challenge comes from being surrounded by people who are only able to judge results of the object ball finding the pocket or not.

The pronouncement of good or bad based on the immediate result of a shot attempt is well intentioned but misguided. This then causes us to focus effort to judge rather than execute.

Understand that any stroke will make any particular shot some of the time, so just because the object ball finds the pocket is not proof or validation that you delivered a high quality stroke and leads to false conclusions of excellence.

Conversely, despite utilizing a reasonably good quality stroke delivery, many shots are so difficult (lower percentage) that you will still own many missed attempts.

Pool is a game of consistency and without a repeating stroke delivery, consistency fluctuates wildly. Your individual shot success rate moves upward upon the application of a uniform stroke quality.

The change of your mindset from evaluating the results of the object ball to the analysis of the stroke delivery process is the beginning of moving from mediocrity towards excellence. Be afraid to use a poor quality stroke.

“We are not special and do not think of ourselves as so, we are just committed. We simply strive to do the most basic tasks extraordinarily well.” -Elite Professional Players