[Bill V.]

Am I good enough?
The biggest gift I can give back to Howard is the now burnt into my heart and soul. There is something that has been planted deep in me. His dream to build winners is working. Positive feelings over taking negative ones. This feeling is in me. I'm certain it will live in me for the rest of my life.
I will not let bad days effect me as I once did
The few weeks that followed the news of Howard's passing have led me to reflect on what I have learned.
Doc’s teachings in the follow up and our private conversations are the tools I can use to pry out the little nagging rough moments that stick up. We all have bad days. We give and take. I no longer read too much on the subject of horse racing. I prefer to read novels and short stories but occasionally I still read some things. This often causes me to slip back into self doubt. I am not blaming what I read. I am just a little too inclined to build up another persons view point. I have found out after many sessions of deep moments of self diagnosis that this is a problem for me. My thoughts are the my feelings of self doubt could be described as being too sharp at the critical point. I use a school yard see saw as a focal point, A see saw with two children sitting on it. They are very similar. They could be identical twins. The key beings they are equal weight. This equality is the balance of a strong look at life. In my mind I call the children child A and child B..
When things are going well the children are in a resting mode. They are sitting on the see saw.
Since they are equal weight. The see saw is level. They are sitting eye to eye horizontally balanced. They don't pull or push each other up or down. The problem I have learned to deal with is that in life I have placed these children on a see saw that was poorly designed. It has a sharp pivot point. It comes to a sharp point. Any little set back, anything that could cause me to
slip back to self doubt could be like taking a heavy stone and placing it on the see saw
In front of one of the children. My past, poorly designed see saw with its sharp pivot point would drop that child down too much. Now my balance was off. Sadly the stone that caused this imbalance often is a very small problem that only I caused it to become too heavy.

What I feel I have learned, and what I do to keep myself focused is this. I have redesigned
that see saw with a pivot point that is slightly rounded off. The see saw with the sharp point that I lived with for many years cost me many troubled times. This was my downfall. It was pushing and pulling at my confidence and good feelings. I was too susceptible to negatives. A healthy balance was too easily effected. With the newly designed, in my mind see saw. Problems sill tilt the seesaw off balance but the rounded pivot point cause the balance to be more easy to correct
It is not that sharp All. It instead is what Doc refers to in some early programs, And and or both
way to attack a race or in my case a problem, The winners feeling in me has allowed me to
not take setbacks so badly. Problems now are pushing slightly down to one side
But they are easily swayed back to balance.
The pleasant feelings of self confidence and a good healthy mind and body,
Together with the peach of mind that comes from the methodology. The guidelines to success
In life and at the races. This is allowing me to pursue my ultimate goal, To win enough money at the races to allow me to retire and enjoy the benefit of all the hard work. Work that I have dedicating myself to. I shall follow the guidelines and methods taught to me in the Sartin methodology
The trick is to stay balanced. Even our day to day dealings with co workers and clients or people in line at the coffee shop can cause self doubt. Things people say or the way they are taken
can easily effect the needed charged mind negatively. My problem is these negatives directly cause me not to do as well as I can. Very often my firdt response is to say either out load or to myself . I’m no good. This is a cry to somebody within earshot to somehow magically say
Yes you are little Billy. It’s a cry for pity. I really don’t want pity Nobody can help me. I don’t really
Need the help anyway I have the skill. The tool I need is the methodology Doc gave me a gift to sand down that pivot point . I still every now and then battle bad feeling of not being good enough. This is why for me The Sartin Methodology is so much more than horse racing success