It takes solid equipment to learn, but it took me years to learn, due to simplicity of knee high wind, my mental game. Nerves would choke me. Once I finally figured that out, it was much better.
You have so much experience it would be nice to jot that down in notes/book form for the rest of us to be able to learn from!
It takes so much time to learn and once you "learn" it only means you are capable of understanding your mistakes... you continue to make mistakes.
Dry firing all positions was one of the things that finally helped us a LOT... ALL positions. (service rifle was the only thing we ever shot) Dry firing taught me repeatable methods so I was like a machine and it gave me the ability to learn that shooting a 200 at 600 with the service rifle should be a norm, and not a surprise...
Your note of expect to win vs hoping for it brings me to a quick story.. once I expected to win, I was middle of my 600 yard string out at Waco in the state championships... shooting SR but against all comers as it was not the SR champs... and I was clean( a clean had never been fired on that range at that point) and my scorekeepers cell phone rang... I stopped and told him to get it. Yep I was stupid, but I KNEW I had this one, I just kept correcting on the knobs as it changed while he babbled about keep shooting, finlally answered the call and said he'd call back...next shot was an X, and I stayed clean the whole string anyway. Beating Paul La Berge and David Tubb that day who finished 2nd and 3rd, with 197s and their bolt guns...
Mentally the above was not hurt by the fact that the day before was palma, and I still shooting my service rifle AR won the 800 and 900 yard lines outright, and just fell on my face for elevation at 1000... and finished 3rd overall there in the palma.... that bit of mental positive note sure helped....
