How To Build Mental Toughness and REAL Confidence

Do you struggle with your confidence when you make mistakes, when you don't play well? Do you feel like you lack mental toughness in those difficult moments or in those challenging or high pressure situations? Or maybe you feel like you don't really play up to your full potential in real games? This is a problem that so many players face, and unfortunately it holds many players back from ever really performing well or seeing their hard work pay off in games. Many players get stuck in a cycle of not performing well, which leads to lower confidence, which leads to even more bad performances, which leads to even lower confidence. And it's an awful cycle to be stuck suck in. So in this video, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can overcome these problems. Develop a high level of confidence in an unshakable level of mental toughness. And if you struggle with any of this, the tips in this video will absolutely change your career. Let's get into it. So the first hallmark of mentally tough players, of confident players, and this is really the groundwork that you have to do in order to earn the right to be confident. People talk about the word confidence. Everybody wants it. Everybody wants to be mentally tough. Those are things that are not just given. You have to earn those things and you earn confidence. You have confidence by having the belief that you have what it takes to be successful in a situation. So if you don't truly deep down believe that you have what it takes to be successful in a situation, you're not going to be confident in that situation. And you can fake it all that you want. At the end of the day, you're going to get exposed at some point. So how do we earn that confidence? And the first thing is you need to embrace challenges. This needs to be an entire mindset shift that you make. And the great players who are super mentally tough, who play with a lot of confidence, unwavering confidence, these guys embrace challenges and it's a big reason why they are what they are when it comes to these things. So mentally tough players understand the fact that if they want to actually accomplish anything in this sport, but in anything in life, they want to accomplish anything. It's going to be challenging. Obviously, though, if you don't really care about accomplishing anything great in the game of basketball, then it doesn't need to be difficult. Like, it can be really easy, right? But if you actually want to get somewhere, if you have a lofty goal for yourself, it's probably going to be challenging to get there. Let's say you're in high school and Your goal is to make it to the college level. There's a few hundred thousand players in your high school class. This is just if you live in America, like across your class, there's anywhere from 2, 3, 4, 500,000 kids who play basketball in your class across the country and at the college level, there might be a total of a couple thousand roster spots that will open up every year. So obviously you do the math right there. That's a lot of players for not a lot of spots. So if you want to get one of the spots, it's going to be challenging to get there. Right. But obviously that's what we work for. We work for those goals and they're meaningful because they're challenging. You need to start to equate reaching your goals with facing challenges. If you're not facing challenges ever, you're not moving towards your goals and you're probably just wasting your time. To put it another way, you cannot reach your goals if you are not being challenged all the time on an incredibly frequent basis. So when you struggle in a workout or in a practice, that's a sign of you doing the right things, of you moving the direction you're moving towards, because you're in an environment where you're being challenged and it's forcing you to be better. The difference is a player who lacks mental toughness is, is going to try to avoid those situations whenever possible. For example, they're going to avoid playing at a gym where they know that there's players better than them and instead they're going to go to the gym where they know they're going to be the best player. They would rather, they would rather be the best in that gym than go and be challenged in a different gym. Right? That's what a mentally weak player is going to do do. That's going to give them a false sense of success, that they're doing well. But ultimately it's not going to move them closer to their long term goals because there's not a level of challenge. And a mentally tough player, on the other hand, is willing to repeatedly, over and over and over and over again, subject themselves to challenging situations. So they'll go play at a gym where they aren't the best player. Right. Maybe they're the worst player in that gym and they might go there and they might lose every single day. They might show to an open gym and they might lose every single drill, but they're going to continue to go back and try again and try again and try again and be challenged because they are in pursuit of that goal, which is to become a better player. And the only way to do that is through challenge. The only way to become better and to reach your goals is through those challenges. So they might have coaches who get on them all the time, right? Who are constantly critiquing them or coaching them, and they don't allow that to affect their confidence. I think it's a big thing when you look at great players is every great player gets coached hard, right? The best players, they're willing to get coached hard. And the difference between them and a player who might ebb and flow when it comes to their confidence levels is that great players don't allow what a coach says to them to affect their confidence. Right? Your coach might rip into you, right? But a great player is going to listen to what's being said instead of how it's being delivered. They're going to listen to, okay, what can I take from this is going to help me? And they're not going to lose confidence over something like that. Right. If you want to be great and play at a high level basketball, you're going to have a coach who's going to rip into you at some point. Every. It's inevitable. But the way that you deal with it is going to determine whether or not you are going to be successful or you won't. So you've got to be able to deal with the fact that coaches are going to be hard on you at times. You've got to be able to not allow that to affect your confidence. Right? So a mentally tough player is going to have coaches who may get on them. They're not going to let that affect their confidence. But they're also going to continue to show up. Right. Even despite the fact that, you know, they might have somebody critiquing them. They're going to continue to show up and, and take what the coaches are saying and try to, to use it. And a mentally weak player is going to say, oh, well, I guess my coach just doesn't like me. And they're not going to show up. They're going to avoid those situations because it's uncomfortable. Nobody likes being called out by a coach. Nobody likes being coached hard. Right. Nobody enjoys it. It's not. It's uncomfortable. But great players are going to seek that out because they know that it's going to make them better. It's going to push them towards that goal. And a mentally weak player is going to avoid those situations because it's not comfortable. And in the moment, they don't like it. A mentally tough player probably won't actually even enjoy some of those situations, right? They're probably not going to enjoy getting coached hard. They're probably not going to enjoy going to, you know, a pickup run in a gym and losing every game or losing their matchup every time. That might not be enjoyable to them, but they understand there's a greater purpose in what they're doing, and eventually it's going to lead them to the goals that they have for themselves, right? And a mentally tough player is going to continue to put themselves in these situations regardless of how they feel about it, because, number one, they will eventually adapt to the stress and be able to handle it, right? Humans are incredibly resilient, right? And you see it all around the world based on where you live in the world. Humans are built different, right? If you live in a cold place, you know, just from a straight up biological perspective, you're going to be a little bit different than a person who, you know, grows up in a place where there's no snow ever, right? There's just, there's differences that, you know, humans adapt to over time, and it allows us to thrive in the environments that we're in. And so it's the same thing with this. It's if you continue to subject yourself to difficult situations, to challenges, eventually you find ways to adapt, right? It's sink or swim, and you're going to find a way to swim. But you only get there by continuing to put yourself there. Eventually, those situations that seemed really difficult and seem scary become normal for you. And you know that, right? There is an increase in mental toughness. And what usually is going to come along with that is an increase in confidence because you're going to find ways to start to be successful in those difficult situations, which is going to lead to you believing, hey, I have what it takes to get the job done in this situation right here, which is going to increase that confidence, increase that mental toughness because you have more confidence, and everything is going to continue to kind of build upon itself right there. And because you can now handle more stress, you're used to it, you're. You're going to be more successful. And the second reason why, you know, great players who have a high level of mental toughness are going to continue to put themselves into challenging situations is because they understand the only way to become the best player possible is to put themselves in those situations not once or twice, but over and over and over and over again. And once that becomes easy, they find another challenging situation to hunt after and continue to put themselves in that over and over and over until that becomes easy. And then they keep on doing that and there's never an end to it, right? They're always trying to find another way to push themselves, right? So if you start off and you go play at a gym and you're the worst player there, and eventually you get to a point where you're one of the best players there, and at that point you got to start looking for a new gym to be in where you aren't the best player anymore. And now you've got to work yourself back up. You got to be back in that uncomfortable situation right there. The third reason why this is, you know, the third reason why great mentally tough players place themselves in these situations is because they know that this is going to put them ahead of just about everybody else. Because humans are addicted to comfort. Humans seek comfort as often as possible, right? That's why the majority of people don't have what they want. The majority of people want to be millionaires with, you know, six pack abs and, you know, all the things that, you know, you can have in this world. Very few people have all those things because it's very challenging to get them, right. And, and in the majority situations, a lot of humans are just going to seek after what is comfortable, right? Because in order to get those things, things that are challenging to get, you have to be placed in uncomfortable situations, stressful situations, right? And are you willing to repeatedly be in that those situations to get what you want? A lot of people aren't. And in basketball, it's the same exact way to get to that point. A lot of players are not willing to put themselves in those situations, right? So if you are, you're going to put yourself ahead of a lot of players out there because it's just not something that a lot of players have. When you're willing to do it over and over and over and over again despite the fact that you might not succeed early on, right? It might take a while before you see success. This is also going to build resiliency, which is just a huge trait to have. So in situations in games where things aren't going well, you start off a game and your team is down 15 to nothing. A lot of players mentally cave in those moments and players who have a level of resiliency because they're used to being in tough situations and overcoming, right? Continuing to, to work and fight despite the fact that the odds may be stacked against them. Those are the players who build resiliency and ultimately have the mental toughness to be able to come back and, and still, you know, be successful and win in those situations when the odds are stacked against them. And this is how you build that trait. It's by placing yourself in these situations. So how can you do this, right? I'm talking, telling you about all the benefits of doing this. How can you actually place yourself in these challenging situations so that you build that mental toughness, you build that confidence so that ultimately you become the best player you can possibly be? The first thing is you need to find the best players that you possibly can and play against them as often as you possibly can. So can you find a way to go into a gym of players who are a lot, you know, a lot of them better than you? And can you find a way to go guard the best player, right, even if you might get beat and you might look bad and you might, you know, you might get crossed up, you might, you know, they might hit a bunch of shots in your face, can you find a way to go guard that player and try and figure out, hey, how can I be a little bit better guarding them this time? Okay, last possession, they, they scored on me. What can I do to be a little bit better this possession? Okay, last week when I played them, they cooked me. How can I be a little bit better today against them? And can you do that over and over and over again? Can you continue to challenge yourself? I think that's a super important thing. It's also just going to build your ability to compete. And I think when it comes to being a super confident player, understanding that you're a competitor and having placed yourself in situations where you've had to compete at a high level is innately going to give you confidence when those competitive moments arise. Right? At high levels of basketball, it's super competitive. And typically the most competitive players are the ones who are the most successful. So we can build that by you being willing to go into a situation where no success is guaranteed because there's players better than you and you're going to go guard somebody better than you who you might not be good enough to guard right now, but you're a competitor, so you're going to do it anyway and try your best to figure it out and get better. And that's your mindset. Number two is you need to embrace being coached right? First of all, understand the fact that if you have somebody who is constantly coaching you, giving you feedback like that is one of the biggest blessings to have right when you think about a coach, right? Specifically for a team, if they're the coach of your team, they only stand to benefit from you being better, right? If you're a coach, I can say this as I coach a team, like, I want to win games. So the only way I win is if my players go out there and play well enough to win games. So I need to do my best to make my players good enough, help them become good enough so that they can go out and have the highest chance of being successful. So all my. My best interest is your best interest, Right? Your best interest is my best interest. So you have to understand that if you have a coach who's coaching you and giving you feedback, they're doing that because they like, they want to win, right? And. And what? And for them to win, you have to be the best you can be. So again, view that as a blessing. Nobody likes being coached or, or, you know, coached hard or corrected or, or challenged by a coach. But can you view that as just a way to make you better? Again, a lot of players get hung up on the way coaches say things, right? A coach will yell at them or say something forcefully to them, and they get so shook about, oh, my coach just yelled at me that they missed the entire point, which is, hey, your coach is saying something, right? And they may say it in a way that you don't like, but are you able to forget about the, any sort of emotion involved in it and just listen to what's being said to you? Okay? They're telling you to close out on defense a different way. Okay? Hey, you need to look to make the extra pass right there. Can you take that and apply that to your game? And if you can, then that's going to make you better, right? So view anything that a coach says to you, anything that they, that they do, any, any correction that they may make or challenge that they may give, you view that as an opportunity to again, be better. And if you could do that again, you're going to put yourself ahead of a lot of players who just don't want any part of this, right? And I think that this is a huge thing for players to understand. The third area that I think is really important for building this mental toughness is finding other areas that you can use to build this skill, right? So even outside of basketball, what can you do to build just the, the skill of discipline, right? So waking up early, right? Is that something that you can do to build that mental toughness, that discipline, sticking to a workout schedule? So if you Say, hey, I'm working out at this time every day. I'm working out this many times a day. I got to go get my workout, I got to get one workout in a day. I got to go to the court in the weight room on these days. Can you stick to that schedule? How about eating healthy or, you know, avoiding bad food, you know, and, and again, just thinking about things from that perspective, building discipline there, taking cold showers, anything that is a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit challenging, but beneficial for you is again going to help you build, first of all, the skill of hunting out challenges. It's going to put you ahead of so many people because again, everybody seeks comfort, they don't want to be uncomfortable. If you become okay with that and you seek it out, you're going to be able to improve at a rate way faster than the majority of people out there. The fourth thing that you have to understand when it comes to this is that suffering is inevitable. And this is just a fact of life. You're either going to suffer in the short term or you're going to suffer in the long term. There's no, there's no avoiding both. And what I mean by that is that you can pick whether or not it's going to happen now or it's going to happen later. So yes, it sucks to get beat in an open gym and look bad and not win the drills or not win the games or whatever the case may be, right? That, that sucks. But maybe that makes you better. So come season time, you're prepared and you play well, right? If you were to avoid those situations, you don't go seek out better players to play and you just stay in your comfort zone. You're going to get to the season and you're going to face better players and you're not going to be prepared to be successful and you're going to suffer then because of that. Staying disciplined and getting your on court workouts and your weight room workouts in is difficult, right? It's not easy to do and you know, there's no way around that. But it also is difficult to get to the season and not get playing time because you're not good enough to be in the floor. That also sucks, right? So you pick, like, do I stick to my workouts even though that's difficult, or do I avoid those and, you know, not really take it too seriously? And then I'm going to get to the season, I'm going to suffer with a lack of playing time or lack of success because of that, right? There. So you have to always view things like that. If I avoid this suffering right now, in the short term, I'm going to pay for it long term with probably way worse suffering, right? The, the, the, the pain of having to go through a workout is nowhere near as bad as of the pain of, you know, not playing up to your level of expectation or not getting a chance on the court because you're not good enough, right? That, that's a lot worse than going through a workout, right? So just understand that getting called out or critiqued or challenged by your coach sucks, but when you accept it and you use it to make yourself better, you set yourself up to succeed long term, when you avoid it or you shrug it off or you say, oh, he's just a hater, or whatever, if that's how you view it, you're going to get into a situation where you're not going to have made that correction. And what's probably going to end up happening to you is that you're either not going to play as much because you can't be trusted, or you're just not going to be as successful in those situations, you know, as much as you could have been had you taken that. Again, listen to what they said instead of how they said it to you. Suffering is going to happen. That's a guaranteed thing in life. But you pick whether it's right now or if it's going to be down the line, right? And again, players who are mentally tough are the players who pick that suffering now. Okay, I'm going to do the things that are going to make me better right now, because long term, that's going to lead to a lot of rewards for me. Okay? So understand that concept. I think a big thing when it comes to mental toughness and confidence is how to deal with mistakes or how to deal with not playing well, specifically in the middle of a game. So, you know, so many players derail themselves because they can't handle making mistakes. Here's the thing that you guys got to understand. Here's the thing that you got to understand. Basketball is a game of mistakes. That, that's, that's literally what it is. The defense gets a stop because the offense misses a shot. That's a mistake. The, the goal is to put the ball in the basket. So if you don't, if you miss the shot, it's because something went wrong, right? As the offense, you score because the defense makes a mistake. They didn't close out hard enough. They closed out too hard and got beat or they didn't communicate in help and someone was open. Like, basketball only exists because there's mistakes in it, right? So those are going to happen. How you respond to them is going to determine whether or not you can be a great player or you can be average, below average player. Because average players are going to ebb and flow based on how things are going. When things are going well, they're going to play well. When things are going poorly, they're going to play horribly. And it's going to be really hard to work themselves out of that once they're in it. So I'm going to link a video above that's going to go even more in depth into this, what I'm about to say. But here's something you need to do if you want to get to a point where you don't allow mistakes to derail you and hurt your mental toughness. When things aren't going well or when circumstances are challenging, when you get frustrated and you lose confidence because of a mistake, it's because you're living in the past. You're focused on what has happened, and that that's not a place you want to be. When you get anxious and you get, you know, afraid to make a mistake. You're living in the future, right? We also don't want to be there. The only thing that you control is the present moment. So we need to find a way to put ourselves in the present moment as often as we possibly can. And when we do this, that's going to allow us to actually make an impact. All you control is the present. So by getting your mind there as close to 100% of the time as possible is going to give you the most opportunity to make an impact and be successful. Okay, so how can we do this? Right. There's three very simple ways to get yourself into the present moment, especially when things are going poorly for you. The first thing is just mindfulness and meditation. This is just a habit that you can build. So again, going back to, you know, building discipline, right? Taking five minutes a day and just meditating and going somewhere quiet, sitting down, closing your eyes and just focusing on your breath, right? You can almost picture, like, what your breath looks like as it's going in and out and just thinking about your breath and. Right? And whenever you a thought comes up, right, because you're gonna be sitting there, thoughts are gonna pop into your mind. Allowing yourself to observe that thought and acknowledge that it exists, and then allowing it to just kind of float away, you know, and then you're back to just focusing your breath. Then inevitably, when another thought kind of pops up, okay, we acknowledge it, it exists, and we let it float away. We don't. We don't, you know, go and condemn those thoughts as, oh, that's bad. I don't want to think like, no, it exists, right? But I don't have to let it linger. I don't have to let it derail me here. I can continue to get back to what I'm doing, which is focusing the present moment by focusing on my breath. And as you do this more and more, you're gonna become better at being able to get yourself back into, okay, what do we need to be focused on right now? You're not gonna allow those negative thoughts in games to derail you as easily because you're able to kind of center yourself and bring yourself back to, okay, just focus on the present moment right here. Right? So you can build that habit again. Five minutes a day. Just taking that time and going through that can be a complete life changer for you in more areas than just basketball, but basketball for sure. And then the second thing is to learn how to control your breathing. And breathing is so powerful because it literally can change the way that your mind and your body feels. And we can do this kind of around our meditation, but also in the context of a game, right? One of the simplest ways to do this is just by a simple breathing pattern. So, like, for example, a great one to use is in for four seconds, hold for two, and then exhale for six seconds, right? And what's that. What that's going to do is it's going to slow you down, okay? It's gonna. It's gonna activate that parasympathetic nervous system state where now you're in that relaxed mode. So if you find yourself being super anxious before games or before situations, or if you're in a moment of a game where you're starting to feel a little anxious or a little frustrated, just taking that time and in for, for four seconds, hold for two, out slowly for six seconds is going to allow you to just relax, feel less tense and more prepared to just handle the moment right there. Okay? So breathing, I think, is a super, super, super important thing for. For players to understand. And the. The last thing that is going to help you to get yourself back into the present moment when you make those mistakes is just giving yourself like a little a mantra or like a couple words or just even just one word to say to yourself to remind yourself to get back into the present moment. My Favorite one is just next play, right? So if you find yourself being frustrated because you just missed a shot or you missed a couple shots and you catch that in a game, being able to tell yourself, hey, next play. That's my focus. Next play, next play, next play. And just being able to, to do that again, as you do this more often in combination with the, you know, meditation and breathing, like you're going to find that you're able to snap yourself out of that past, centered, focused, and back into the, into the, into the present much more easily. And likewise out of the future and back into the present moment much more easily when you build that, that habit of having that saying. So again, my favorite one personally is just next play, right? Can I get myself focused on what is happening right now in this play? Because I don't control what just happened, I don't control what's going to happen in four plays right now. But this play I can actually make an impact on. And again, the more often that we are able to be at a hunt, like as close as we can be to like a hundred percent focus on the present throughout the context of a game, that just gives you all the time to be able to actually make an impact. So overall, you're going to play better on a more consistent basis because you're going to have more opportunities because your mind is focused on where it needs to be, which is the present moment. Okay? So understand that when it comes to overcoming, you know, mistakes or fear of failure or frustration, getting yourself back into the present is the best thing you can do for yourself. And again, be a complete game changer for you if you struggle with this. So again, I know there was a lot in this if you made it this far. I appreciate that. Let me know in the comments if any of this register with you. If any of this stuff works for you, let me know. I always love to hear about that. Make sure you guys click the top link in my description below to get my free elite perimeter score program. So if you guys want something that's going to help you take your skills, shooting, ball handling, finishing, overall, scoring to the next level, click that top link in my description completely free. And again, I appreciate you for watching. Drop a like subscribe if you're new. I'll talk to you soon. Peace.