Ethan Khoza teaches basketball players to fight fear by asking what's the worst that could happen, then comparing it to the best outcome. Mistakes aren't catastrophic. Life goes on, coaches move on, teammates move on. Playing the game you love usually beats the fear in your head.
Chapters
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. So what is the worst that happens? 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 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 is going to make the same mistake two minutes later and then another person gonna make the same mistake two minutes later and your coach is going to forget you even made that mistake, right? So typically we have this fear of something horrible happening if things don't go well or if you, if you messed 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, to show what you're able to do and play the game that you enjoy playing, right? And I think for most of you, like that's the goal is to be able to play the game that you enjoy playing, that you work hard at, right? That, 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 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 the, those self doubts and those moments where you had those fears of things going wrong.
