MJ Mondays Confidence Comes From Time and Work

Before the first NBA 3-Point Shooting Contest in 1986, Larry Bird walk in the locker room and said "Man, who's coming in second?" That is confidence! That is belief in yourself and your abilities.

The days that I am most confident are the days where I know what is coming and when I am prepared for it. I feel the same about sports. When I have put in the work and I feel good about what I have done in practice, I feel more comfortable and confident in the game.

In an interview, Michael Jordan was asked if fear of failure was a motivator. He said, "I never feared about my skills because I put in the work. Work ethic eliminates fear. If you put forth the work, then what are you fearing? You know what you are capable of and what you are not."

What that quote tells me is confidence and success come from work. Sports psychologist Dr. Patrick Cohn defines self-confidence as how firmly athletes believe in their ability to execute a physical skill or perform a task. He says that confidence is how strongly you believe in your ability to make or execute a play, and confidence comes from past performances, training, and preparation. As your ability and skill grow your confidence grows.

I once coached a kid that had goals of becoming the district MVP and earning a Division 1 basketball scholarship. We talked about what parts of her game she was most confident in, and we talked about what parts of her game that she was not confident in. The parts of her game that she was confident in were the parts that she had early success in and continued to work on. She was a very good corner three-point shooter, and that was also the shot she worked on the most outside of practice. Her go-to move was a right-to-left crossover into a step-back jump shot, and that is also something that she spent a lot of time working on before and after practice. 

We realized that she was good at the things she spent a lot of time working on. Those skills were good for her and good for our team, so we decided that she needed to continue to work on them and master them. But we also identified a couple of other things to add to her game. When she beat her defender, she either passed it out or settled for her pull-ups and step-backs. We decided that she could beat her defender AND the help-side defender because the help-side defender was usually a bigger, slower defender who couldn't move her feet very well. We also identified that her euro-step in traffic could be more effective if she slowed down and changed her release.

We created a plan based on our conversations. Before every practice, she worked on dribble moves where she beat the first defender then beat the second defender, and finished. After every practice, she worked on how to be more effective on her euro-steps in traffic. It didn't take long to see significant jumps in her ability to finish, and it didn't take long to see jumps in her confidence.

She did not win the district MVP, but she did earn a college scholarship at a good D1 school. When you shoot for the moon, even if you miss you are among the stars.

We can grow our confidence by getting better. We can get better by putting in time and work. When you put in time and work, you can feel and see yourself getting better, you know what you can do, and you can gain confidence from that. Identify what you do well, identify what you don't do well, identify what you are confident about, and identify what you are not confident about, and create an improvement plan. 

Then, do the work!