Creating Sustainable Confidence
In an earlier post, we learned that no one gives you confidence; it’s something that must be earned. Digging deeper, what are ways to help yourself, teammates, players, and others build that confidence?
No one gives you confidence
Unfortunately, confidence isn’t something that can be purchased on a shelf. It’s not a tangible item that someone can give out. Sure, there are ways others can help people on their confidence journey, but at the end of the day, it is on each person to develop and maintain their confidence.
The best way I’ve found to do this is by “Rowing The Boat” through good times and bad. “Row The Boat” is the mantra from PJ Fleck who led the Western Michigan University football team to success on and off the field, taking them from 1-11 in his first season to a 13-1 team that was ranked 15th in the country.
Fleck has gone onto Minnesota and has pushed that program into some of the best results seen in decades. He is a process driven person.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways most people go about acquiring confidence; through results and through processes.
Results Confidence
Most people ride the confidence wave up and down based on what ends up happening to them. Let’s use a youth hockey player as our case study. If Johnny’s team wins or he scores a goal, he feels happy and confident. Similarly, his team loses a game or comes up empty on the scoresheet and he feels upset and has self-doubts.
Results Driven people are those that care simply about the end result. Our suggestion would be to detach ourselves from the end results as much as possible.
While we like to believe we have a direct hand in a given result, there are often many other factors involved, the least of which is luck/randomness.
Sticking with the youth hockey example, oftentimes coaches and players alike ignore holes in order to get explicit results (usually wins) as quickly and as often as possible. The skipped developmental step(s) may not immediately present themselves, but they will eventually.
Process Confidence
Process Driven people are those that are thoughtful and intentional about the “how”.
There is a process to improving, developing, and getting more consistent results. In order to be truly process-driven, there must be a realization that you can only control the present controllables. Control the present and the outcome will take care of themselves.
As Sam Hinkie made famous… “Trust the process.”
We’re not saying this will be easy. As youth hockey coaches, it can be tempting to prioritize results over process. But in the end, we’ve accepted that some short-term shortcomings are worth the long-term gains.
Sustainable Confidence
As a coach, I worry when I see players riding the confidence waves. One of the first orders of business is to talk to the player(s) to help shape their mentality to focus on that which is productive to their growth on and off the ice.
To create sustainable confidence, we have to express that it comes from no one but ourselves and to focus on the things we are able to control (the process). Put simply, ‘controlling the controllables’ and row the boat.
Further Reading
Having goals is overrated. Having a theme is a better way to effect change
Rethinking how we measure our games. Going beyond points.
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