How To Develop UNSHAKEABLE Confidence On The Court (Podcast Episode 102)

Foreign welcome to the Visionary Podcast. Appreciate you guys today. Apple Podcast, Spotify, Pandora, Google Podcast, whoever you've been listening from, I appreciate you. And of course everybody who's watching right now on YouTube, drop a like subscribe if you are new. If you're Apple Podcast, do me a favor, leave a review for me, let me know what you think. Let me know if you have any questions, any suggestions, any thoughts. Go ahead and leave those in the reviews. I really appreciate those guys. So topic today I want to talk about is one of the most common topics I get asked about. And I've made podcast videos about it before and a lot of them are my most popular videos, my most popular podcast because this topic is just such a big one for people. But this is a topic that I like to touch on often because it matters so much. And as I continue to be around more, learn more, experience more, interact with more players, more coaches, my thoughts on this constantly change and they're constantly updated. And I know that it's, it's a topic that I think can always be revisited and always is helpful for players because it's so. It's, it's basketball. Such a hard sport, really. Anything, any sort of sport, anything competitive is so difficult because we're all humans. And I think that's the part that it's. Yes, we know that, right? But the ups and downs that go along with everything, no matter how good you are at what you do, you're going to have ups, you're going to have downs, and being able to handle that mentally is the most important thing because you can be so talented. If you can't handle the downs that come with everything, that come with just competing and trying to be your best, then you're going to struggle to really be successful. And I think confidence, which is what I want to talk about today, and developing an unshakable confidence is such an important thing for players. So I want to dive into that. I want to give you guys some tangible things, stuff that I've talked about, but I want to really go in depth on and then stuff that is just simple and it's kind of applicable right now for you guys. If something that you want to develop, you want to develop that unshakable confidence, you want to build the habit of being a confident, not just player, but person overall. I think that's kind of how it'll start and where it'll stem from, and that's kind of how I want to get this thing started. Is my guy Tyler Clark Shout Out TC Performance I just saw him post on Instagram about this and he had mentioned that, you know, when it comes to being confident and developing confidence, a big part of that is first of all, not being defined by basketball. And I think this is where I want to start because I think it matters so much. You have to understand that basketball is not the end all, be all for you, right? Basketball is not the only thing that you are. It's not who you are, right? It's something that you do, that you like to do, that you have fun do, hopefully you have fun doing. And I think it's important to keep that in perspective because when basketball, basketball becomes more than that, when it becomes what you are, when it becomes your only value is how you perform on the basketball court, then you're setting yourself up to be pretty miserable. When things don't go well, when you go through a stretch where you don't play well, you don't shoot the ball well, where things just don't go your way. And your entire who you are as a person is defined by just that you're going to be nothing, right? You're going to crumble so easily. And the thing is like, I think it's just kind of a natural rule in life is like the more you care about something or the more you press into something, the more it runs from you, right? So when you just put everything into I'm just basketball, this is all I am, this is who I am. And I think there's a little bit of like a paradox with it because I feel like that success, that happiness, that fulfillment that you want from the game kind of runs away, kind of evades you when you put everything into that, right? I think it's important to not just be basketball, to not just be a basketball player, to be more than just that. So this means having other things that you like to do, right? That can just be whatever your hobbies are, but understanding the fact that like deep down there's, there's more to you than just the game of basketball. And I think this means that you have to really put it in perspective. And that's kind of where I want to stem from this too is being able to really look at it. And I think part of a lot of players, what they struggle with when it comes to confidence is whether it be worst case scenario thinking, negative thinking, being fearful of making mistakes and failure. I think that's a big thing. I think it's really important though, to actually question those thoughts that you might have. So question those negative thoughts, those Fears that you have, what is the worst that happens, right? What is the worst thing that could happen if you play poorly, right? If you're, if you go out there and you're afraid of making a mistake, what's the worst thing that's going to happen? If you go out and you make a mistake, right? You get put in the game and people are relying on you. You go out, you turn the ball over. What's the worst thing that could happen? Your coach pulls you out of the game and you get yelled at. Is that the worst thing that's going to happen? Okay. And then that maybe, that maybe that's what happens. Okay, let's say, let's say it is. First of all, end of the day, this is not a life or death thing, right? You're not gonna, you're still gonna go home and eat, you're gonna go home and sleep in a bed, you're gonna wake up the next day and you know, go about your day. Your life's not over because you make a mistake and you know your coach pulls you out of the game, right? Life's gonna continue to go on. It's gonna be a new day. Let's also consider the fact that you're not the only person who's, who's. Sometimes it feels like you're under a microscope. Like you, your mistakes are amplified and that's how it is because we only view things through like we're very self centered in how we view things, right? The world revolves around us. So you see yourself making a mistake, you're coach getting mad, you think that it's the end for you, when in reality another person's gonna make the same mistake two minutes later and then another person gonna make the same mistake two minutes later and your coach is gonna forget you even made that mistake, right? So typically we have this fear of something horrible happening if they things don't go well or if you, if you mess up or you make a mistake. When in reality it's really usually not that bad, right? The outcome is usually not as horrible as we concocted in our mind. We suffer way more in our minds than we do in real life. That's, that's, that's how it is in anything. But even when it comes to basketball, our fear of what could happen if we mess this up or if we fail here, usually the fear of that that we construct mentally is a lot worse than what the actual reality of it is. So I encourage you when you have those fears, when you, when you feel unconfident when you know, you're afraid of making a mistake, you're afraid of a certain situation, you feel nervous about something, really ask yourself, what's the worst thing that could happen? And challenge it, right? How bad is it? That. How bad is the worst thing that could happen, right? And then let's do the inverse. What's the best thing that could happen? You go in and play well, okay? And your coach keeps you in the game, right? And you get more opportunities and you get more opportunities to show what you're able to do and play the game that you enjoy playing, right? And I think for most of you, that's the goal is to be able to play the game that you enjoy playing, that you work hard at. That, to me, so far outweighs some obscure negative that probably doesn't even exist or that's very amplified in our mind. We can be very concrete about the positive that's going to happen, okay? So I think questioning those thoughts and understanding the fact that, you know, what is the actual worst thing that could happen? And am I overblowing things in my own mind about what this worst case scenario is? Because 9 out of 10 times you probably are. It's probably not nearly as bad as you think it is. And a lot of times, again, we suffer way more mentally, we suffer way more in some fictional world that doesn't exist than we do in reality. So I, I think it's important to first of all be able to question those things if you want to be a confident player and you want to be able to overcome those, those self doubts and those moments where you know, you, you had those fears of things going wrong. Another area that I think is really, really important is playing the long game when it comes to your success. So how. The way I see it as a coach too is very different than how a lot of my players see it. Like, all the players come up to me after practice and be like, oh, I had a horrible practice today. And how I view it is like, okay, our goal today in practice was to make guys struggle. And so the fact that you struggled today is like, that's what we were going for, right? That was our goal today, was to make you guys struggle. Because if you don't struggle, then there's no need to improve, right? Your, your, your brain is only sending that signal that, oh, okay, I need to improve in this area. If there's a reason to. It's like lifting weights, right? If you don't challenge yourself in the weight room, right? If you don't Try and lift heavier weights or lift more reps. Your body doesn't have any reason to build more muscle, right, because it's already can do it. So that's why you have to continue to challenge yourself so that you get stronger and you build more muscle. It's the same thing. When it comes to improving at an area, there has to be a certain level of struggle. And with struggle comes mess ups, comes failures, comes looking bad sometimes. And so how, how I view it is like, hey, that's a good thing. Like, I want that to happen. We need that to happen. If we want to be at our best, we want to continue to elevate, then these situations have to be what we create in our pract. And that's a good thing. And even sometimes in games, it's like that too. It's like, okay, there's struggle, there's struggle going on right now. But we look at it like, hey, okay, long term, does this help? Does this aid in development? And so I think when you shift your mind and you completely focus on just getting better every single day, like, how do I make myself better? How do I continue to chase improvement regardless of what the outcome actually is right now? Because when you're getting better at something, a lot of times the outcome that in that moment might not be great, you're going to have ups and downs again, you're human, you're not going to, you're not going to develop at like a linear rate where every day is going to be 1% better than the next day. Some days are going to be 2% worse than the day before. That's, that's part of being a human and having all these different external factors that play a role in your improvement in your performance. Right? Did you get good sleep the night before? Maybe you didn't, right? Did you eat well the day before or that morning? Maybe you didn't you drink enough water that day? Maybe you didn't. Did you have a test that you were really stressed out about? Maybe you did. And all those things can positively or negatively affect how you perform. So we can't always just take the face value of, oh, I played bad today, and boom, like the world is over. If you're constantly focused on pushing yourself and finding ways to be better long term, you're going to trend the right direction, right? When you go from having a short term view of, oh, today was bad, this drill was bad, and you go and shift that to a long term view, which is, hey, I got better today in this area, I got better at this today I struggled here, but I know that it's going to help me get better every day. You're going to continue to pile those reps up and long term you're going to get so much better as opposed to somebody who's just focused on the right now and how they feel right now and whether they feel good or they feel bad. If your focus is away from how you feel and it's just getting better, that's going to be the payoff for you, is going to be incredible. Right. So it's shifting from that short term view to that long term view. And that way you're not, your confidence doesn't change depending on the day. Right. Because you know, hey, I'm getting better. Like my focus is long term getting better. This today I'm going to get better, this week, I'm going to get better. How good am I going to be, you know, in a week from now, in a couple of weeks from now, in a month from now? And that's your focus. That's where your confidence all of a sudden starts to lie. And you don't, you don't, your confidence doesn't ebb and flow based on how well you play that day. Right. So going from having that short term view to that long term view, I think is a really important thing to have. And then we talk about tangible things. When it comes to building that unshakable confidence, I think the, the first thing that you need to do is evaluate how you train. So you have to put yourself in situations that prepare you for games. Right. A lot of times there's a disconnect between that, where players aren't actually training in ways that prepare them for the demands of a game. Right. The speed of a game, the intensity of a game, the challenges that a game presents. A lot of times those aren't there when they actually are training or working out. And so there's no context. When they get to a game, nothing translates for them. They don't have confidence because they don't practice and that they're not prepared for those situations. Okay, so this might mean that, you know, when you look at how you're training, is all you're doing spot up shooting, right? Are you shooting the same shot at the same spot over and over and over again? How often do you do that in the game? Almost never, right? Just about never. You're typically going to shoot one shot and then the next time you're going to shoot a different shot and then the next time you're Going to shoot a different shot. Oh, and by the way, you just played defense for 30 seconds and between all those, so you have to be able to be successful in that context. So do you practice shooting different shots one after the other? Do you practice shooting a three from the corner and then a pull up from the wing and then a relocation three pointer at the top of the key and then, you know, a transition pull up? Do you work on hitting different sorts of shots and having to your body having to adjust from shot to shot as opposed to just shooting the same thing over and over and over again where your body can go into autopilot and, and then all of a sudden it's not game specific, it's not translatable to the game. You got to think about things that way. If all you ever do is practice stationary ball handling with no defense, how do you expect to go into a game and be able to handle the basketball when there's people trying to take the ball from you, people trying to trap you, pressure you? How you, how does that translate? You, you sitting there pounding the basketball into the floor with no defense around you? How does that, how's that applicable to a game where there's people trying to take the ball from you and you're trying to move in certain directions? You're trying to get the offense started or make a pass or, or, or get the ball at the floor or drive? You have to put yourself in situations in your practices that mimic that, right? At the very least, the movements. All right, maybe you don't have somebody to pressure you, but can you mimic those movements that you need to in a game? Can you imagine a defender guarding you full court and work on being able to change your pace and protect the basketball and change directions and do all the things that are required of you? Can you do that at a high level? And then can you find ways to work out against the defender who's trying to steal the ball from you and work on being able to protect the ball and still be able to get to your spots and be able to change your pace and find different nuanced ways to beat that defender who's pressuring you? And that, that is what translates is stuff like that, right? So you have to go away from the stuff that is maybe the more traditional approach where, hey, you know, this is what we do. We do our stationary ball handling, we do our spot up shooting. And that's supposed to be enough. It's not enough, right? It's not the ideal way to do things. I just saw My guy tell the Claire talk about this. Do. Does stationary ball handling and spot of shooting, do they work right? People say, okay, hey, well why, why change it? Because it works. It does work. Like you'll get better at spot up shooting. If you practice spot up shooting, you'll become a better shooter objectively. Is that the most ideal way to do things? No, it's not. And will you see as much translation to the game where that's not how it looks? No, you won't if that's all that you do. So there's better ways of doing things. So how can you prepare yourself to be confident on situations? Well, you have to actually train those specific situations that you're prepared for. Okay. So evaluate how you're training. Look at the situations where you might not be confident in and ask yourself, are you training to be prepared for that? Right. If not, that's an adjustment you need to make so that you are prepared and so you can be successful and confident in those situations. And then the last thing I want to talk about is watching film. And I think this is another really awesome way to build that confidence and feel more prepared is watching film and recognizing like, okay, what am I seeing here and how can I prepare myself for that? So let's say this can be in a couple of different ways, this can be your own team's film. So watching things over and seeing opportunities, okay, hey, I missed this opportunity to capitalize here. Oh, I could have drove there, I could have made that pass, I could have taken that shot. This was open and I missed that. So watching the film back of yourself, of your team, of your offense, and seeing opportunities that maybe you missed or maybe maybe you made and you say, hey, I can double down on that, I can look for that more often because I saw that it worked. When you really have a firm grasp on that, I think that breeds confidence and then going along with that, I think that when you watch film of teams that you're that are upcoming, that you're going to play and recognize that, okay, hey, this is something that's going to be an opportunity for me. Here's where they're weak. If you know your matchup or who's guarding you, you can see, okay, how do they like to play this, how do they move, what do they like to give up and what opportunities are there for me, I think that's another area that is really, really important when it comes to being confident is feeling prepared by watching film and preparing yourself as much as possible. When you can look and say, hey, no matter what the situation is, I've seen it all, right? I've. I am as prepared as possible. I saw when that team did this, I saw when they did that. And I feel like I have a solution to any problem I might see. That gives you a lot of confidence and it allows you to feel prepared. And preparation is what breeds confidence. When you feel like you're prepared for a situation, that's where confidence comes from. So doing everything in your ability, all the controllables, making sure that you take care of them so that you can feel prepared, I think is a super important thing. And so watching film of both, both of your team that you're on and the stuff that you're doing, but also of teams you're playing, if you have access to that, I think is really, really, it can be really, really useful tool when it comes to building confidence as well. So just to recap that, the first thing is you're not just basketball, right? You're. There's more to you than that. Your, your value is more than just basketball. And you need to believe that yourself, right? You're not just as good as your last performance, right? You're not made or, or, you know, destroyed based on how you play or whether or not you make this shot or that shot. You have to recognize that it's not that deep, right? You can have a horrible game and things probably aren't going to be that bad, right? We look at what's the worst and that's going to happen. If you miss these shots, it's probably not that bad because guess what? Everybody misses shots. You're going to miss. You're going to have a horrible game. Guess what? Someone else is going to have a horrible game. They're going to forget about your game, they're going to think about theirs, right? Everybody thinks that. Everyone's thinking about them all the time. They're not, right? You might have had a horrible game, but your teammate who you might have thought didn't have like, you might not even think they had a bad game, but they're thinking about the mistakes that they made that game and they're beating themselves up over not even thinking about you, right? Or maybe they think about you for a second and they're right bad thing about themselves. And you know how they mess that up or missed that. That's how people are, right? So you have to understand that, like, it's not that deep, right? Generally the worst case scenario doesn't happen. And generally what's the worst thing that can happen when you really dive into that question. It's not usually as bad as you think. And a lot of times we suffer way more mentally, way more in the fantasy world that we make up in our minds. We struggle way more in that than we actually do in reality. So question those things, question those fears you have, question those self doubts you have because a lot of times they're not real and they don't exist. And they definitely don't exist to the level that a lot of times you think that they do. So that's something to consider. And playing the long game, so making sure you understand, like, hey, it's not about how I feel right now. It's not about did I do well today? Did I do poorly today? Am I focused on being better every single day? Am I chasing after getting better and improvement? And if that's, if that's a question you ask yourself every single day, then you can feel good about your performance. If you got better, if you put yourself in a position to get better, you can feel good about where you're going. And that's going to breed confidence because you know you're getting better, right? So playing the long game and not just being so caught up in how you feel right now, but hey, am I getting better? Am I putting myself in a position long term to be where I want to be? That's going to help you to build confidence, evaluating how you train. So is how I train, does the way that I train, do my workouts prepare me for actual games? Am I ready for the situations where I lack confidence? Chances are if you lack confidence in the situation, you probably don't train it well enough. You probably haven't trained with enough actual, like, specificity in order for that to actually translate and for you to feel confident. Again, being prepared. Preparation is how you, that, that's, that's where confidence comes from. Preparation breeds confidence. So if you're not prepared because your, your workouts don't emulate what you're actually doing in a game, then you know you're gonna struggle to feel confident in those situations. And then the last thing is watching film. So whether it's watching film of your own team, watching film of other teams that are, that are, you know, you'll be playing, watching that and, and feeling prepared, feeling you have a solution to any sort of problem, you might see having a firm grasp on what you're doing, what you need to do. Again, another great way to, another great way, another controllable way to build confidence as well. And I think that's something that's overlooked a lot by players, but again a very controllable thing that can just give you that little extra boost and again help you build that confidence. So hopefully that helps you guys out. Let me know in the comments below if you guys any of these resonate with you, or if you have any other tips as well, or obviously if you have any questions about something else. You have suggestions for me. Definitely leave those in the comments. Send me a DM on Instagram my Instagram @visiondrivenbasketball. I appreciate you guys for listening. If you're on Apple podcasts, Spotify, make sure you leave a review YouTube drop a like subscribe if you are new. Like I said, drop a comment. Just let me know how your day is going. If you have anything on your mind, let me know that. Of course. I'll talk to you guys soon. Peace. Sam.