Great achievers in any field have long recognized the extreme importance of confidence.
Confidence is the belief you have in your own ability. The size of your confidence determines the size of your success. The more confident you are, the more success you will tend to have.
You will never perform higher than your confidence level and lackluster confidence leads to lackluster results.
With this in mind, it’s crucial that we don’t let an upcoming opponent or obstacle rob us of our confidence. Too often, when we know we’re about to face a particularly difficult challenge, we start to feel our confidence fade. We start to let self-doubt overwhelm our self-confidence.
This is a classic case of letting someone or something outside of you dictate your confidence. And it’s a recipe for failure.
Joe Montana, one of the greatest quarterbacks to ever play the game, recognized the importance of confidence at a young age. He also recognized that your level of confidence is completely up to you. Confidence is a choice…
When it comes to performance, in sports or business, if we don’t have confidence that we’re going to complete a pass or make that big sale, the chances of our doing so are not good. We will have defeated ourselves before we even get into the game.
Any of us can have our confidence shaken by a series of mistakes or defeats, but no one can take it away from us.
Confidence is completely ours to give to ourselves, and ours to take away when we feel low. If we’ve lost it, we simply must find it again.
At a press conference the week before Super Bowl XXXVIII, one of the wide receivers was asked about the individual defensive backs he would be facing and how he intended to handle them. He shrugged and said he wasn’t able to discuss them because he didn’t know their names, nor did he care to. The reporters couldn’t believe the receiver did not know his opponents.
They asked me for a comment. I don’t know what they thought I would say, but my answer seemed to surprise them.
“I think that’s great. You don’t change what you do best to compete against someone. You can’t allow someone to dictate how good you’re going to be. Let the other guy worry about changing his game.”
That is playing with true confidence in yourself.
Bill Walsh did something similar with the 49ers. He would script out the first 25 offensive plays before a game. This allowed us to be better prepared mentally, and it also instilled an attitude that we were going to go out and, in spite of the other team’s best efforts, dictate how we would play.
— Joe Montana, from his book The Winning Spirit
Joe Montana points out that we don’t have much control over the opponent or obstacle we’re about to face. However, we do have control over our own confidence level.
The size of your confidence is up to you, regardless of the size of the challenge that lies ahead.
When you feel your confidence dwindling, you must immediately remind yourself that you—and only you—get to determine how confident you are.
You can decide to prepare more, to work harder, to envision success, and to feed yourself positive self-talk. Those are the fundamentals that build confidence and you can choose to implement those fundamentals and raise your confidence level any time you want.
Never let someone else rob you of your confidence. Remind yourself always that your effort and your attitude are completely determined by you.
