The Skill of Self Confidence

In my past life as a soccer teacher, once you won a national title, everyone wants to come play for you. Really not true. Once you paid them $ 25,000 a year in grants, everybody wants to come play for you. And parents would always come to me and they'd say: "Okay, my son or my daughter wants to come play at your university, what is it that we have to do? You know, what are you looking for?" And being the Socratic professor that I am, I say, well, what does your son or daughter do? What do they do really well that we'd be interested in? And usually their answers are, well, they've got great eyes. They're really good. They can see the entire field. Or, my daughter is the fastest player, there's nobody that can beat her. Or, my son's got a great left-footer. Really great in the air and can hit every ball. I'm like: "Yeah, not bad; but to be quite honest with you, those are the last things I'm looking for. The most important thing? Self-confidence." Without that skill, and I use the word skill deliberately, without that skill, we are useless as a soccer player. Because when you lose sight or trust in yourself, we're done for. I use the meaning of self-confidence to be the ability or the belief to believe in yourself, to achieve any job, no matter the odds, no matter the challenge, no matter the hardship. The opinion that you can did it, self-confidence. Some of you are saying, "Great, I don't have it.

I'm so shy. I'll never do that, bla, bla, bla." And you start to drag all the way down here. But, I use the word skill because I believe it can be taught. And I'll show you a couple of ways in which we do. Hopefully I won't run out of time. I don't use any slides because my speech always goes here, or here, or here. So we'll see which way we get to. The best way to build self-confidence: there's no magic button. I can't say: "Hey, this plane is going down, who can fly? Put your hand up." "I can, I'm confident!" Repetition, repetition, repetition. Right? What does Malcom Gladwell call it, the 10,000-hour rule? There's no magic button. I hired a goalie from Colombia, South America one year. Big, tall 6'3" man. You know, he had hands like stone. I thought he was like Flipper. Everytime I threw him the ball, down, onto the ground. I was like, oh my god, we're in trouble. Simple solution: get to the wall, kick a ball against the wall and catch it. kick the ball against the wall and catch it. His goal was 350 a day for eight months. He came back, his hands were calloused, the wetness on his hands were actually gone, he is now playing in Europe. Magic? No. Repetition, repetition, repetition. The trouble is, we expect to be self-confident but we can't be unless the skill, or the job we're doing, is not novel, is not new to us. We want to be in a situation where we have so much pressure in that and what I mean, cause pressure builds gems, we want to be in a situation where "hey, I've done this a thousand times"

I did my speech, and I practiced in front of a mirror: bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla. Hey I'm sounding good. And then I went in front of my kids, and my wife. I said, oh gosh, I got a little scared. Then I'd get in front of Glenn Gould, Oh my goodness, I am a little more worried! By the time I get to the ACG, where 2,500 people, can't say anymore, right? Twenty-five hundred people, where twenty-five hundred people are there, I won't have a single ounce of fear because of my ability to practice. Right? Over, and over, and over, again. The trouble with repeat is: how many of us bail after the first bit of failure? How many of us bail after the first bit of adversity? Edison was on that movie, and it depends who you ask, there's anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 tries to build that light bulb. 1,000 to 10,000. J.K Rowling should be on that film. Do you know how many companies she took her Harry Potter book to? I believe the number was 12 or 13... I am pretty sure but after two or three noes I'd be like: "damn it!". After six or seven, I'm like: "maybe not!" Definitely after nine or ten I'd be looking to be a soccer coach or something else besides an author. Right? I mean, twelve times somebody said no. But, practice, practice, practice, and do not accept failing. Maybe it shouldn't be repeat, maybe the answer should be determination. Because we all say something but very few of us really will continue. So that's one way to build self-confidence. Get out there. Do what you want to do and do not accept no.

The other one is self-talk. We all have a self-talk tape that plays in our head. Anybody go shopping and put on a pair of pants this week? If you're a woman, the first thing that always comes: "damn I look fat in these pants!." And if you're a man, it's the opposite: "Oh god, I got no muscle, I'm so flabby!" Right? We all have this tape that plays in our head. As a student, if they asked me the question, it was like: "Oh, gee please professor don't pick me, I don't know the answer." I'd look down. Right? If you're in the b...when I, let me tell you something, and the VP of business adminis. here, I shouldn't say this, but when they hired me as an Athletics director, I sat in an architect's meeting, and I am as dumb as a post when it comes to anything to do with numbers and angles. And they are like: the fundibulator valve of the architectural, uh, what do you think doctor Joseph? Uh, let me look into that for you and get back to you. (Laughter) Right? I was in a, oh god god, please don't ask me, please don't ask me. We all have this bad self-talk that goes in our head. Guess what? There's enough people that are telling us we can't do it. That we're not good enough. Why do we want to tell ourselves that? We know for a fact that thoughts affect deeds. We saw it there with the video Sheldon, Dr. Levy showed. We know that our thoughts impact actions, why do we want to say that bad self-talk to ourselves? We need to get our own self-affirmations. Muhammad Ali, what was his self-affirmation? I am the best! Who else is going to tell you? There need to be quiet moments in your bedroom, quiet times when you're brushing your teeth. That we need to reaffirm: "I am the captain of my ship and the master of my fate!" That is my support.

I came from a school of one thousand people, I lived in a town of one thousand people for fifteen years; there's no reason that I should be in charge of an Athletics department, making maple leaf gardens. But I am the captain of my ship and the master of my fate. If I don't say it, if I don't believe it, no one else will. How do you build self-confidence? Get away from the people who will tear you down. There's enough of that. Muhammad Ali, I am the best! There is no one better than me. There's a difference between arrogance, and ego, and fake pride. It's just telling yourself in quiet silent times, I put it down on a list, it's right beside my mirror, right? about all the things that make me who I am. Because I make enough mistakes, and the press will recognize it, and people around me will recognize it; and they'll tear me down, and pretty soon I'll begin to believe it. There was a time when my confidence was really low. There was a time when I took this job when I came from Iowa, I don't know if I could do it. I had to bring out my self-confidence letter. A letter I wrote to myself when I was feeling good. Ivan, congratulations on getting your PhD before 40. Congra...I am 40, under. Congratulations on winning a national title. Good job on having three good kids and meeting the right woman. I wrote a letter to myself, it was my own brag sheet. My own letter about the things I was proud of.

Because there are times, and we'll all experience them in our work, in our lives, in our job hunting, in our relationships; when we are not feeling good about who, and what, and where we are. And I had to bring out that letter and read it time and time again, for a period of about two weeks, to weather me through that storm. It was important. Stop the self-talk, the bad self-talk. If you watch you'll see some players that have a little patch, or a little brand around them. Lance Armstrong is a great one. What's his self-affirmation? Livestrong isn't a business, it was to remind him of who he was. Live strong. Then it became a brand. He would move that from one arm to the next arm, when doubt and fear came into his thoughts. Live strong, put it on there, let's go. We'll all have it, we put it. Two ways to build self-confidence. I'm worried about my time I'm gonna tell you of one way you can build self-confidence in others. We are coaches and trainers, we are teachers, we are people who will create value in the world; and in doing that, we are critical by the nature of what we do. I am a teacher, I want you to score a goal. The ball went over high. "Dang it!" The ball went high! "Thank you coach, I know that. Feedback tells me that." So what do we do? I need you to put your arm here, I need you to put your knee over the ball, I need you to follow through. Boom. Land.

Great. Notice, I never made it as a professional. What can we do? We fix mistakes. When I'm fixing that mistake: "Johnny, this is terrible, you need to bend your knee, you need to do this, this." What have I done to Johnny's self-confidence? Bend your knee, then do this, then do this. Next thing you know, Johnny's crushed. Ignore what Johnny does wrong and find Bob or Sally or Freda over here. Great goal Freda, I love how you kept your knee low, you followed through, and you landed like this. Great job! Johnny: "Oh?" Great! Johnny's not defeated. His confidence isn't shot, and what I've done is, I've built up Freda's. Imagine how we could change the way we parented kids. Instead of: "get that glass off the counter, what's wrong with you?" If we catch the mother, good. Great job! Great job. Thank you Alice for taking your glass to the bar. It sounds easy but we forget about it. Or as trainers, or as somebody as a team, if we manage to praise the good behaviour that we wanted to promote. We forget it. It sounds so easy. Catch them when they're good. We forget it. It's simple. Here's what they did. There was a study in Kansas that did this. They did video, and we all do video. And we show the tape of them doing the run of the play: "Um, this goal happened because the basket wasn't covered, we didn't spin here, right? We needed to do this and then cover the slot." And, if that's the norm, growth of the Kansas State team went like this. Then, they said they ignored all of that and they just showed them the times they did it right.

The times they did it right. That offered no goals, spoke to the same points, improvement went like that. It changed and improved the way we as trainers engage with our student players. We can apply that to the business world, we can apply that to our student group works, we can apply that to our management teams. Easily: catch them when they are good. Last and certainly not least. My son is really good at this. Self-confident people read comments the way they choose to. I ask my son who is by the far a terrible, terrible athlete, gets it from his dad. The game's... How's the game? Oh great! I scored three goals, I got two helpers. I'm like: "I did not see him touch the puck!" But he has his own view of how he did! I love it! Right? I'm the...I'm that guy! I'm like: "I remember when I was taking when I met my wife, it was in the commons. "Paulie, would you like to go to the movies? Ladies? Tingly, tingly, tingle." And she goes: "Ah, no." I asked her again. Cause I think that she just hasn't seen me in the right light. Maybe, that's not the wrong shirt on. Right? Cause I'm reading that the way I want to understand it.

Finally I asked her out again. She gave me this one comment, right? Or, she sent it to her friend. Cause that's the way you did it back then. "She wouldn't date you unless there was the last person on Earth, hell was freezing over, there was a small chance we had to save the planet Earth. Some people, it's like, there's no chance. I'm like: "You're saying there's a chance." Right? Because that's how I'm gonna take it. If I could give you one thing to take from this, it is: no one will believe in you unless you do. Listen to the words of that movie, here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes. We're supposed to be different, folks. And when people look at us, believe in yourself. Thank you.