If you play well in practice but lack confidence in games, watch this.

If you struggle with having confidence in real games, maybe in practice or in workouts, you feel really good, you're super confident, maybe you play really well, but as soon as you get to real games, all of a sudden your performance is completely gone. Today I'm going to talk about two steps you can take to completely fix that and start playing well in real games, just like you do in practicing your workouts. So I just got a comment from a player who's struggling with this exact thing. Mike says my biggest problem as a player is definitely my confidence in real games, in practicing in lower pressure game situations. I have super tight strength, shifty handles, and strong finishes. And I can oftentimes score at will even against taller defenders. But when I get in an actual game, I completely lack the confidence to do those things. I end up passing way too early and I hardly ever score at the rim of step in transition. If I can bridge the gap between scoring in, for example, one on one against my friends in real games, I would be unstoppable. My goal is to be on school's varsity team in about two months. What should I do from now until then to start playing with 100% confidence in actual games in terms of my ball handling and finishing and scoring close to the basket? So. So this is a great question and something that a lot of players struggle with and I hear about all the time. Here's my answer. And it might sound a little bit backwards, but in a situation like this, you need to learn how to care less. See, the reason that you're in this spot is because you put a lot into basketball. You probably spend a lot of time working out, trying to train your skills. You probably put a lot of your identity and a lot of who you are in, how you are on the court, how you play. So because of that, every time that you're in a what you would consider a meaningful situation, like a real game, that pressure prevents you from going out and actually playing the way that you know that you can. How much you care about basketball and how much you care about the results and the outcomes that you're getting can stop you from going out and taking enough risk to be successful. Because that's truly what being successful is in basketball is you take a risk and it works out for you. And the players who are the best consistently take risk. I'm going to shoot this shot. It's a risk because if I miss it, well, that's four other people on my team who didn't get to shoot that ball. My coach might Be mad. The crowd might look at me a different way. I might feel bad about myself, but I'm going to take that risk anyway. The players who are the best are the ones who are best able to deal with that risk and continue to play despite all the pressure. You have to learn how to detach yourself from the outcome, whether it's good or bad, and learn to only focus on, only care about, only prioritize what you can control, which is going out and trying to make something positive happen every time you're on the court. The amount of risk that you're willing to take is directly what leads to the amount of success you can have on the court. So in Mike's case, right here, if your goal is to make your varsity team in a couple of months and substitute that with weight, whatever situation you may be in personally, if your goal is to achieve something, the only way that you ensure you will not do it is by not being willing to take enough risks for good things to happen in order for you to actually achieve that goal. Now, I approach this with the most amount of empathy you can have, because this is how I was as a player. I felt that all the time. I didn't want to ruin something by taking a risk and it not working for me. It applies to every area of life. And so you have to be able to go from playing it safe to only caring about taking risks. I challenge you to do this. Instead of caring about the points you score, instead of caring about threes you make or your shooting percentage after every game, just base your success on that game based on how many risks you took. Now, some of them may be little ones. You take an open layup. That's a pretty small risk. Still a risk, though. Or you might take a three, which is a little bit of a bigger risk. You might try and make a move, you might try and drive to the basket. And whether or not you go and score again and one or you get stripped and lose the ball, you need to count that as a positive because you put yourself in a position for something good to happen to you. Now, that's obviously a scary thing to do in the moment, right? Because again, you don't want to look bad. You don't want your coach to be upset. You don't want your teammates to be upset. But I promise you, you would much rather be able to look back and be glad that you at least know what you can do and you know how good you actually are. Then you will be to sit there frustrated, saying, man, I didn't I know I didn't do enough again today. I know that I passed up at that opportunity, that that's the worst place for you to be. And you'll feel so much better even if you go and take those risks and you fail every single time. Which, by the way, you, you won't fail every time. So I want to give you two concrete steps you can take to start to build that ability to take risks more often so that you see more success in real games and not just in practice. Before we get into it, I have a free basketball IQ masterclass down below where we not only talk about the details of basketball iq, they're going to make you a way better scorer, way better facilitator, but we also talk about more of the mindsets that you need in order to be a a high level player who plays with confidence, who plays with consistency, who goes out and does exactly what you're capable of every single time that you step on the court. And the stuff you're going to learn that it's going to help you to be a better player the next time that you play. So go check that out. Top link in description down below completely free. The first thing you need to do is create risk reps in practice. So whether it's in practice, whether it's in a workout, whether you're just playing pickup, you need to set aside a few reps where you are going to intentionally take a risk. So this might be doing something that you're not super confident doing in real games. It could be something that maybe you're just overall not super confident doing, or it could be something that's just a little bit more risky than what you would normally do in a practice or in a workout. So for example, you might say, well, in this pickup game, I've got to drive into contact at least three times. You might say, I need to attack a bigger defender at least four times. And then count your success in that workout, in that practice, in that pickup run, only based on whether or not you achieve that goal of getting those risk reps. What's going to happen is that you're probably going to fail a few times. You're going to take that risk and as it's going to not work out for you, but you're going to get way more confident taking that risk in more of a low stress environment. So that when you get into those higher stress environments like a real game, you're going to be more comfortable doing that. What you're also going to start to see is that you're probably going to succeed a little bit. Maybe even early on, you'll struggle a little bit, but as you do it more, you're going to become more comfortable, you're going to become more confident doing it. Next thing you're going to realize is that you're actually maybe good at it. And eventually, when you fail enough times and you succeed, you're going to realize that the risk really isn't that crazy and that even if you do fail, you're going to get another chance to do it later on. So, for example, maybe in practice you're playing a game to 11, or in pickup, you're playing a game to 11 and you say to yourself, in this game, I'm going to drive to the basket at least five times, regardless of what happens. Maybe the first time you drive, you shoot up a layup, and it's not even close. It's super contested. But then you realize, okay, well, when I do that, the defender stepped in, so now I have my teammate open for a kick out. Now the next time you do it, you're going to make that play. And now you've learned how to actually execute in those situations. If you go into all these practices, workouts, pickup games, with a goal of a certain number of risk reps, that's going to directly translate into you having more confidence to take risks in real games. The second thing you can do to be willing to take more risks in games and finally play with that level of confidence is anchor yourself, really tie yourself to a process goal and not an outcome goal. So instead of obsessing over, I've got to score or I've got to be perfect, I can't turn the ball over, I can't miss this shot, I can't take a bad shot. You want to focus on stuff. Like, every time I catch the ball, I need to make a decision to shoot driver pass within half a second of catching it, or I'm going to go out looking for closeouts to attack, and I'm going to hunt those opportunities. Or throughout this game, I'm going to make sure that I get at least four paint touches. By shifting your attention to the process of things and taking it away from the outcome, you. You put yourself in a much better position to actually have a positive outcome. That's going to take a lot of pressure off of you, it's going to raise your confidence, and you're going to play a lot better. Here's the thing, you're not where you want to be yet because you're not playing with confidence in games and doing the same things, approaching it with the same mindset is going to keep you stuck. The difference between where you are right now and where you want to be, which is playing with confidence and consistency in games, scoring the way that you know you can score, playmaking the way that you know you can playmake, the separating factor right now is your ability to take risk. And so you need to focus way more on being willing to take risk over and over and over again, more so than you even care about what the outcome of your games are right now. And like I said, that may be a struggle early on in terms of, you know, you might struggle a little bit, you might turn the ball over, you might miss some shots, you might make some bad decisions, but you're going to learn a lot from those things. And eventually as you do that enough, you're going to become way more confident because you're going to know, first of all, I can take a risk and it's not going to be the end of the world. I'm not going to die. Second of all, I'm going to know when to take those risks, when does it make sense. And then third of all, you're going to know how to actually be successful in those situations because you've force yourself to do them more. This mindset shift is huge when it comes to developing who you are as a basketball player and actually playing well in real games. If you want a couple more mindset shifts, check out my free basketball IQ masterclass down below. Not only do we talk about two more mindset shifts, they're going to be huge for you, but it's an hour long breakdown of exactly what you need to know in order to be a high IQ basketball player so you can score more points, create more for yourself, for your teammates, and play with an unshakable level of confidence. The stuff that you're going to learn and that you can apply the next time that you play and going to help you to start scoring more right now. So like I said, completely free. Check that out down below. Let me know if this helps. If you have any questions for me, drop them down below as well. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.