The Penalty Box: Confidence

I was watching sporting events this weekend, as I often do, and a common word kept coming up during the broadcasts. 

The word was “confidence”. 

The dictionary definition of “confidence” is a feeling of trust, a firm belief in your own abilities, or a certainty that someone or something is reliable.

You don’t have to be an expert on sports to understand how confidence plays into the success or failure of any participant or team.

It’s at the core of it. 

Now, we should pause here and point out confidence plays into every person in every state in every country in the world. 

We think of it a lot when related to business, politics and leadership. 

In sports, a player who is confident is more likely to perform well. 

Here’s how this plays out. 

A player works hard in the offseason. They understand what the team will expect of them in the coming season and they train their body and brain to meet that challenge. 

The coaches see the results of that hard work and their confidence in that player executing that role well. 

That leads to more playing time. 

Their teammates see the same thing, and their confidence grows in that player, too. 

Feeling that positivity coming from the people around them makes them feel good and makes them work even harder in practice.

That makes the whole team work harder in practice. 

That makes the whole team better prepared for games. 

A team that is better prepared for games plays better in those games. 

The original player is now ready to do more and be more. They are ready to be asked for a larger role, and they not only make simple plays but also are making bigger plays—plays that have the potential to be game-changing and season-defining plays. 

When you have enough of those kinds of players on your roster, you have the ingredients for a special season. 

The key to all of it goes all the way back where we started. 

How does a player take that first step toward building supreme confidence?

Let me start by saying that there must be a level of that built into the person from the start. The foundation of it comes from within. 

Maybe they’re born to confident parents who displayed that everyday themselves. 

Maybe it’s passed along in the gene pool. 

Either way, the truth about confidence is that the more you have at a younger age, the more it can be fostered as you get older. 

Next, a player needs to be around other players who are at the same level or are at a higher level of confidence than their own. 

This will ensure they are challenged. 

Too many parents either fall into the category of being “helicopter parents” or “lawnmower parents”. 

“Helicopter parents” hover over their children, in sports and in other aspects of their lives. They are overactive in their children’s lives and they hinder their development. Their kids are constantly looking over their shoulders, waiting for their parents to intervene when apparent conflicts arise. 

“Lawnmower parents” go ahead of their children and clear out any obstacles their children might face. Their goal is to make their kids’ path to success as easy as possible, so they eliminate anything and anyone that gets in the way. 

And, on the surface, the success those kids get from that sort of upbringing does give kids confidence. But that confidence is short-lived. It won’t last and it actually will be detrimental to them as they get to adulthood. 

Kids need to be challenged, and parents are wise to put them in situations that challenge them. 

Kids should lose sometimes. Kids should fail sometimes. It’s good for them! 

Not all the time, but they need to appreciate what it takes to succeed and what it’s like when you don’t. 

I know it seems weird, but failing occasionally will help build their confidence later. 

The last part of this process is repetition. 

No matter the sport, good habits lead to good results. 

Now, this process applies outside of sports, too. You could remove the word “player” and plug in “musician”, “tradesman”, “real estate agent” or any sector of life and it works. 

As adults, we should be actively seeking out young people to help build confidence in.