Best Shot

I read this and I thought is was a relevant question. It was written by a guy who I don’t even know the name of.  It was a post in an answer. “My dad and I love basketball. We used to play hoops in the front yard almost every day when I was growing up. He was also my coach for many years. One thing that always stuck with me was him saying “shoot to make it”. I think there’s a lot of moments in basketball and in life where we are just “throwing a shot up” and hoping it goes in. How I interpreted his mantra was to have intention. If you are going to take a shot, take a good one and take it to make it. I always come back to what he said when I’m evaluating decisions I’m making and actions I take. Am I shooting to make it?”
As far as I am concerned it really ties in with something else I read by a Seymour Papert.
“An unknown but certainly significant proportion of the population has almost completely given up on learning. These people seldom, if ever engage in deliberate learning and see themselves as neither competent at it nor likely to enjoy it. The social and personal cost is enormous.
Although negative self-images can be overcome, in the life of an individual they are extremely robust and powerfully self-reinforcing. Deficiency becomes identity: "I can't learn French, I don't have an ear for languages;" "I could never be a businessman, I don't have a head for figures;"...
If people believe firmly enough that they cannot do math, they will usually succeed in preventing themselves from doing whatever they recognize as math. The consequences of such self-sabotage is personal failure, and each failure reinforces the original belief…”
When I read those things, I thought of the saying I have heard, “think you can, think you can’t, either way you will be right.”
I try to avoid self-sabotage at all costs.  I will prepare as best I can, then give it my best shot.  Doing my best is my goal.  I reckon part of doing my best is to shoot to make it.