"Confidence comes from proven success." - Bill Parcells
Confidence balances arrogance and doubt. What are your confidence exercises?
1. Deserve success. Establish winning habits. Reading, study, adequate rest, better nutrition, practicing gratitude are winning approaches. Living grievance is not.
2. Earn small victories. Focus. Take care of the details. Ben Franklin said, "a penny saved is a penny earned." Warren Buffett played in a celebrity golf tournament and was asked if he wanted to wager $10 to win $10,000 for a hole-in-one. He declined, "if I am not disciplined in the small things, I won't be disciplined in the big things."
3. Design our day. "Luck is the residue of design." The Stoics say it another way, "control what we can control."
4. "The magic is in the work," including the mental work. Results follow our inputs and probability. In Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke explains that poker is about 76% skill and 24% luck. World champion hang gliders and free climbers tend to have convergent outcomes. Some work has inescapable risk. Set aside thinking time every day.
5. "Every day is player development day." Confidence follows our ability to do the right things day after day. The best players commit to gaining sustainable competitive advantage. Baseball great Dizzy Dean said, "if you can do it, you ain't boasting."
6. Confirm victory. After scrimmages, the "winner" must confirm victory with a free throw. Confirmation "raises the stakes."
7. Final Five. "It's not who starts, it's who finishes." In the developmental setting, insert a player to remind her of your trust during crunch time. It's a reward and releases the neurotransmitter dopamine.
Use science to our advantage.
8. Peer awards. In my later years of coaching, I only had one award, the Best Teammate award. It wasn't an MVP award or the Most Popular Award. Players voted by secret ballot on first and second place for the player whom they considered the Best Teammate. They always got it right.
9. Progress reports. Periodic progress reports help reinforce the strengths that players show. "Plays unselfishly" or "relentless effort" show players that we see what they do.
10. Praise the praiseworthy. Our deserved support is powerful. I might tell a player, "just be you." More powerful is, "I believe in you."
Lagniappe (something extra).