Confidence is a Choice

January 18, 2018

You don't have to feel confident to play well. The most dominant athlete's accept how they feel and deal. They take confident action in high pressure situations even when it feels uncomfortable.

Building supreme confidence requires you to be aware of and move your way through the three confidence levels..

Shaky:

Based on results, outcomes, feelings, avoiding fear, and focusing on external rewards. With shaky confidence you crave outside satisfaction from others and are living and dying off results.

In hoops it might be playing a percentage and numbers game, such as going 0-5 and shutting it down because you don’t want to possibly go 0-10. Or going shooting 3-3 and passing up shots because you are shooting that nice 100%.

Shaky confidence is acting how you feel, the problem is your feelings are like a roller coaster, your feelings go up and down.

Stable:

How you feel is just how you feel and it always changes. Your feelings aren’t facts. You don’t always have a choice how you feel but you have a choice about what you do.

Stable confidence is about operating on facts, not feelings. Factually when we know we are ok and are not in danger on the court, we can do the right action even if it feels uncomfortable. You are a human being choosing to play basketball and your identity is not tied to the results.

With stable confidence you dictate your actions, you accept how you feel and deal. You stay in the moment, and allow yourself to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You go all in with what you can control and accept whatever the result may be, knowing the outcome is completely out of your control.

Supreme:

At supreme confidence you have acted your way into the feeling over and over again. The feelings you used to be afraid of, you now you love. You go towards your challenges and go all in without worry about the outcome, you play free.

The more you take the right actions over and over you will arrive at supreme confidence. There is extreme have faith and trust in your ability and operate out of facts and not feelings. No matter how you feel you can deal and do your thing on the court.

The great feeling usually comes after the game when you know you went all in and trusted your ability, knowing you can’t control results and you are a human being choosing to play game. So you now have the freedom to play great and give yourself the space to fail, while also giving yourself the chance to reach greatness.

You take the right action and then have total trust in your skills with great attitude even when my results aren’t going your way.

Confidence Process

Courageous. Compassionate. Competitive.

You have to be courageous to go all in with trusting your skills every moment, knowing you are a human being choosing to play basketball.

You have to be compassionate with yourself and others to deal when results and outcomes aren’t going your way.

You have to be competitive to keep showing up and playing present with a great attitude and effort. Do this and you will never stop yourself, ever.

If you want more in depth coaching on confidence, check out the replay of the Mental Game Masterclass. We offer a new topic every Sunday at the UPBasketball Training facility!