Earn Your Confidence
As a coach, there is nothing worse than seeing a player in their own head and lacking confidence.
Recently, in a meeting with my team, I asked the group what gave them confidence. Most answers went something like this:
Scoring a goal
Tallying points (goals + assists)
Winning games
Two astute players gave deeper answers:
When I feel like I’m getting better
Knowing I tried my hardest
What is confidence?
“Feeling of self-assurance arising from one's appreciation of one's own abilities or qualities.” - The Oxford Dictionary
To simplify this even further, confidence is trusting yourself.
Points and goal-scoring involve two parties, yourself and the opposition. Within that framework, there is inherently the variable of luck.
Why leave your confidence up to luck and someone else?
Who gives you confidence?
In 2015, then-Maple Leafs Head Coach Mike Babcock was asked if there was something he could do to give confidence to a player. Here is the starting back and forth (though we recommend watching the whole clip):
Mike Babcock: “who gives you confidence?”
Reporter: “Not me”
MB: “No, who gives your confidence?”
R: “My own performance”
MB: “You earn your confidence, right? That’s what you do.”
True confidence is earned. No one - not even a Gold Medal-winning coach - can give you that. There is one simple word that we can boil the exchange down to… Preparation.
Where does confidence come from?
The greatest basketball coach of all-time, John Wooden, had two glorious quotes on the subject of confidence.
“Confidence comes from being prepared” - John Wooden
Preparation is the backbone to building confidence. Without preparation, there is no sustained self-confidence.
"Self-belief: the knowledge that your preparation is complete, that you have done all things possible to ready yourself and your organization for the competition whatever form it comes in." - John Wooden
Doing the work and preparing isn’t always easy or fun. Yet, within that work and preparation, there is a huge amount of potential confidence to be had. Think about learning something and then actually executing it in practice a few times. You gained a little confidence when learning about it, but it wasn’t until you got your hands dirty that you felt genuine steadfast confidence.
Games are just the exams
Thinking back to school. If you studied and prepared, you went into an exam feeling confident, thinking (read: knowing) that you were going to do well.
Practice & daily work = Learning & Studying
Games = Tests & Exams
If a player puts in the daily work to learn and study as best as they can, they go into games feeling their best. No matter the outcome, players can create (and sustain) confidence knowing they did everything in their power to put themselves in a position to have success.
Further Reading
Did you enjoy this newsletter?
Help us spread the ideas within and share it with the people you care about