You don’t see many female shooters out there. And you wouldn’t associate “low vision” with a sport that requires precision accuracy at a distance. There’s a lot of things I do that you wouldn’t expect me to bother with, and I don’t pretend to be good at anything physical. But  I can be good enough to enjoy what I do and good enough to be proud of myself.

So why would a petite Asian chick who just happens to be legally blind get into guns??? Well, get ready for a pretty goofy story.

This may sound really lame, but things changed when I started watching Top Shot a couple weeks ago. I realized that most of the targets they were using were things that I had the potential to hit. These were things that I could do. But of course, I could never be competitive, no matter how many hours I put into it, right? As I continued watching this show, I realized something. It didn’t matter how good you were in competitions. It didn’t matter how hard or easy the challenges were. The thing that made people fail wasn’t their skills, the “fundamentals”. No, they failed because they choked under pressure.

Wow.

This was a really amazing discovery for me. For most of the things they did, I’m confident I could get to within 90% of a professional’s skill if I spent a lot of time on it. But that gap in ability between an amateur and a professional is ENTIRELY wiped out by the difference in how people operate under pressure. I’m never going to have the eyes of a pro, but the response to pressure… that is something I can control.

If you put somebody in an environment that they have been training in for years without any variations or surprises, the person who’s trained that exact way is going to have an advantage, undeniably. You could be really good at that one thing or the things within your comfort zone, but does that really make you that good a marksman? Does that make you a good shooter?

I don’t need to be a world champion in a specific situation under specific rules. I just want to prove to myself that I can be a decent shot despite my weaknesses. All I have to do is overcome my self-doubt, and get in a lot of practice.

There are so many things that I thought “I can never get this right, it’s impossible.” And of course that’s exactly what happened. I learned physical actions much more slowly than everyone else. That only fed the misconception about myself, and I would spiral straight into my self-fulfilling prophecy. I can’t do it. I won’t bother to try. I’m not trying so of course I don’t see results, which confirms what I had already believed.

It was only in my 20’s when I realized that I was making assumptions about what I can and cannot do, without any evidence to back it up. Ever since I got into jujitsu, I’ve changed my attitude. Now, I need to prove to myself that I can’t do something. I don’t take my weaknesses for granted anymore.

My imperfections are unique to me. I will compensate for them through hard work and the judicious use of modern technology. No one else is going to be in quite the same situation as me, but perhaps my journey will help someone else overcome their own unique limitations.