With the exception of sales, there's probably no other activity on the planet where confidence is more important than athletics. In boxing there's a dictum about 80% of it being mental. In the last 30 years or so sports psychology has become a major element in sporting circles, still another indication that winning or being a winner transcends just talent.
Corporations large and small frequently today bring in outside speakers and advisors to give talks or hold seminars to ramp up performance. Many of these events center on the concept of confidence. Yet confidence can be an ephemeral characteristic, often times somewhat like a butterfly, difficult to catch without a net.
So here's a question. What are you doing to expand the size of your net, make it more efficient?
CONFIDENCE
Have confidence that if you have done a little thing well, you can do a big thing well, too.
Joseph Storey
Sports psychologists tell us that confidence has to do with self-efficacy or just how good we feel about performing an upcoming task. This is a fancy way of saying what's really important is how confident we are about our abilities to perform each time out.
Today is the critical term here, not how we felt about our abilities yesterday or last week or last month. Last week's or last month's game is history. You can't go back and change yesterday's performance and tomorrow's isn't here yet.
Here is a similar formula for dealing with past performance in sports or in life. Take a good look at your past, even as recent as yesterday, be thankful for it, see what you were suppose to learn from it, learn it and move on.
Never forget we are the sum total of our experiences, positive and negative. More often than not we learn more from the negative experiences. Until someone comes up with a filter of some kind to filter out those downers, something that might not be a good thing even if it existed, get use to it.
In Falling Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success, John C. Maxwell describes an attribute of winners he calls teachability.
Teachability is an attitude, a mind set that says,"No matter how much I know (or think I know), I can learn something from this situation." That kind of thinking can help turn adversity into advantage. It can make you a winner even during the most difficult circumstances.
Don't make the mistake of confusing confidence with cockiness. They're not the same. One is reserved, quiet, the other loud, boisterous. Perhaps writer Channing Pollock put it best: "Calm confidence is as far from conceit as earning a decent living is from greed."
Only you are in charge of your confidence. Only you can increase or decrease it. Sure it helps to be told you're doing well. Praise is important. We all seek it. We all need it to some degree. But worrying too much about what others think is a quick detour to mediocrity if not complete failure. Whenever you find your confidence waning, remember this: "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
We have to agree to things. They need an offer, an invitation. Most have to have our blessing to hang around. So keep careful score on what you're inviting into your world and pay particular attention to just how firmly you're holding onto it. We make mistakes. Very few are permanent. Only fools and knaves get surprised when the road gets a little bumpy.
Confidence is about playing to win not to avoid losing. How many times have your heard about an athlete or team playing not to lose rather than going for the jugular? If you haven't heard that, hang around you will.
Like most things confidence takes practice. Fiddle around a bit with it and see what happens. Deal with your terror by putting yourself out there. Sometimes it will go well, other times it won't. But that shouldn't surprise you. What should surprise you is anyone who thinks or believes confidence just shows up or just happens. It doesn't. To get it you must practice it. The same goes for keeping it.
A FIVE LETTERED WORD
Focusing is like having a laser beam compared to an overhead light.
Sanya Roman
"The main thing in life is to keep the main thing the main thing."
The above appears on a sign on the wall outside a Newport Beach, California restaurant famous for its seafood.
In case you don't recognize it, this is just another example of the importance of focus. The interesting thing about that restaurant is they don't sell hamburgers, hot dogs or chicken fried steak. Everything on the menu is sea food.
They don't offer fancy wine or liquor, just soda and beer. And the decor is a basic jumble of flea-market mixed chairs and tables. From plastic forks and knives to paper plates it doesn't get much more block-and-tackle simple: good food, good prices, good service. And on most weekends the line outside this 40-year-old-plus humble little establishment couldn't get much larger if they were giving away gold inside.
It's such a simple, innocent-looking five letter word, FOCUS. Sometimes it's as easy as twisting a knob or turning a dial. Other times it's intense, like holding a magnifying glass up to a leaf on a warm, sunny spring day. Before long that leaf is smoking.
So here's a simple question for you? What are you holding your magnifying glass up to, success or failure? Either way, before long, you can expect one or the other to be smoking.
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