Listen To This If You Lack Confidence In Basketball

So one of my best friends growing up just got a brand new pickup truck. Really, really nice truck. And so I asked him about it. I was like, man, how do you. How are you liking the new truck? Like, how's it treating you so far? And he was like, you know, man, it's good. But I keep on having people ask me to help them move stuff. And it's just like, ever since I got this new truck, everybody's asked me to help move stuff. And it got me thinking about a question that a player just asked me about a couple days ago. But before I get into that question, I want to share a quick story with you. So imagine you just got a new pickup truck, and you just. You love trucks. It's your first ever vehicle. That's yours, right? So obviously you're gonna be very excited about it. Now let's imagine like your friend group. All of them drive, like, very fast sedans, right? So one drives like a Honda Accord Sport, one drives a Mazda 6, and one drives a Dodge Charger. And there's this local racetrack that one of your friends, uncles owns. And so you guys will go down there all the time and just race, just mess around on the racetrack, whatever. Now you got this new truck, and you go down there with your three friends who all have these really fast sedans, you guys will race. And the problem is you just get smoked every single time. Your truck just doesn't accelerate the way that their cars do. And so you lose every single time. Like, you never are really competitive when it goes down there. So every time you go to the racetrack, even outside of the racetrack, your friends are talking trash to you about how slow your truck is. And they all have a great time whenever you guys go. But you don't, because you always lose, right? You never can compete. And you start to think to yourself, like, man, maybe, maybe I made a mistake getting this truck. Like, maybe I should have gone with the sedan. Maybe I should have done something else. And it's frustrating to the point where it almost makes you not want to hang out with those friends anymore. Because the thing that you guys love to do, you feel like you can't really compete. And it makes you, again, almost second guess your decision to go with that truck. But one day you guys decide that as a friend group, you're going to go on a camping trip. So you guys get together, you plan out everything, and luckily, you now have a truck. So you guys can fit all of your supplies in the bed of that truck and everybody can ride in the cabin. Together, you only take one vehicle now, and it works out really, really well. You guys go. You have a great. A great camping trip. A couple days after you get back, your friend wants to buy a new couch. Obviously, he can't fit it in his Dodge Charger, so he calls you up and he says, hey, can you help me go pick up this couch, bring it back to my place? And so you do. You help him out, bring the couch back to his place, and everything's good. Couple months later, let's fast forward. You guys get big snowstorm, huge snowstorm. And after the storm is over, you know, obviously your driveway is completely covered with, like, a foot of snow. So you attach the plow to the front of your truck, and you're able to clear out your entire driveway, big, long driveway, within, you know, a few minutes. You look at your friend who lives across the street from you. They're out there manually just shoveling the driveway with a shovel, and clearly, what's gonna take them forever. So, you know, you call them up and say, hey, man, I'm coming across the street, and I'll clear your driveway with my truck right there. So go across the street, clear the driveway. In a couple of minutes, you get back to your house and go inside, and you finish clearing your driveway and your friend's driveway within, like, 10 minutes. You look outside, see a bunch of people out shoveling their driveways. And now you think to yourself, like, man, I definitely made the right choice going with that truck. Now, the moral of this story is that you're probably not gonna be great at everything. And when you focus on something that you're not great at, you're probably going to lose confidence in yourself because you're not succeeding at the level that you want to be. Right? It's only natural that that's how it is. And even though you might not be great at everything, there probably is something that you're great at or that you're best at. And when you actually focus on playing to your strengths, that's where confidence comes from. That's where success comes from. And so it's so important that you understand what your strengths are and how to focus on them. Now, this story leads me to an email that I got a couple days ago and asking about confidence. And it says, hey, I wanted to ask you for advice for proving my confidence on the court, because anytime I'm playing with players that I think are better, I automatically become the worst basketball player ever. But when I'm playing with someone who I think I'm better than I play. Like LeBron in the 2016 finals. So what methods do you use to work on your confidence? A lot of players struggle with this when they play against players they know they're better than. Confidence is super high. And when that's not the case, confidence comes and goes. Right? And so this question of confidence is what I want to talk about here. I'm going to tell you exactly how to fix this. Sometimes when you lack that confidence, it forces you to not only play worse, but it forces you to play way worse than you actually should play, right? Way below what your actual ability level is. So we're going to talk about how to fix this. Obviously, it's harder to play against better players. We know that. Right. That's not really the question. Why is that the case though? Like, why is it harder? And the first part is the pressure of it. When you're the best player on your team, you're expected to be aggressive. You have to be because you're the best player. So you are going to give your team the best chance to win. If you're the one who's taking the shots, who is handling the basketball, doing this, doing that, you're high usage. You have to be if you want to win. If you sit there and you don't be aggressive, then your team is probably not going to have as good of a chance to win. So in some ways, you're almost forced to be aggressive. And it doesn't really matter if you miss a shot or you turn the ball over, because who else is going to do it better, right? Who's going to give you a better chance of winning? You have to take those shots right there. If you are in a gym where you're not the best player, or even on your own team, if you're not the best player, maybe you're one of the lesser players there. Even now, all of a sudden, that script is flipped. If you take a shot, that's a shot that a better player didn't get to take on your team, you turn the ball over. That's an opportunity that a better player might have not gotten to take right there. And so now all of a sudden, there's much more weight, more pressure on the shots you do shoot, on the times you do have the ball. You don't want to be the reason for your team not winning because you know you took a shot and you missed it, right? So all of a sudden you. We start to approach what we do differently than we would if there is no pressure on us because we're the, we're the best player right there. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you. I'm not going to sit here and tell you to pretend that that isn't the reality of things. That's just kind of how, how it works. I am going to tell you what you can do to improve your confidence and therefore your performance though, in these situations. So going back to our story about your new truck, when that truck tried to be like everybody else, when you tried to just approach it like it was the same as all your other friends, that was when you had those thoughts of second guessing your decision. When you were like, ah, maybe I shouldn't have gone with a truck. You know, maybe maybe I messed up. And all of a sudden this is where you lacked the confidence in your decision to have that truck. But that was only because you were using it for something that it's not built for, that it's not built to be great at. And so you're comparing it to these other cars that are much more suited for that thing. But then all of a sudden you guys take your trip out to the woods to go camping. And your truck is a huge part of that because you're able to carry everything in it and you're able to fit everybody in the cabin. There's the first thing. And then you know, your friend needs help moving that couch. They can't use their car, their car is not built to do that. But yours, your truck is. So you're able to help them with that. That snowstorm hits, your friend with the Honda Accord across the street has to go outside and shovel their big driveway all by hands. You're able to put a plow on your truck and go over and help them and do away quicker. And now we start to see when you actually play to the strengths of that truck. Maybe it was actually the best choice you could have made right there. Because there's a lot of things that you can do when it's used in the right context. So going back to the question, this same thing applies when it comes to the game of basketball. When you stick to your strengths, confidence is going to come from that. Whenever I play these days, which isn't super often, but whenever I do play, it's usually in one of two situations. So first of all, it could be with some of my, like, childhood friends, some other college kids from around where, you know, it's not like a lot of them played in high school, but it's not super, you know, serious or competitive. Like, I'm. I'm one of the best players on that court always. So in those situations, I'm taking a lot of shots, I'm handling the ball a lot. I'm okay with taking a couple questionable shots here and there. I'm okay with turning the ball over here and there because I'm one of the better players. So I have to be aggressive. There's no weight, there's no pressure on me, except if I don't try and do those things right. That's one situation. The other situation that I'll play in sometimes is when a lot of the college guys that the college players are back over the summers, and now all of a sudden in those situations, I'm not even close to the best player there's. I'm usually one of. One of the lesser players there. And so now the way that I approach things is completely different now. I am sticking to what I do well. So I am there to be a catch and shoot three guy or I'm going to move the ball quickly. If I don't have my shot, I'm moving the basketball, working to get to another action right there. So now I'm sticking to what it is that I do well, what it is that I feel confident doing. And so now I'm just focused on making catch and shoot threes, moving the ball quickly if I don't have that. And then defensively, I'm just focusing on winning my matchup. So can I be a four spacer, hit those catching shoot threes, and can I play good defense? Because I'm going to have teammates that are going to be better at handling the ball and be better at using balls. They're going to be better at creating. It'll be better at breaking their guy down one on one. So I'm going to stick to what I know I can do that's going to help us win. That allows me to be confident because I'm not trying to do everything. I'm not trying to be LeBron James. I'm trying to be very focused down on what I know I can contribute. That's going to help us win. Right there for you. If you're playing with players who are better than you, ask yourself what you do well, what is my strength? What role can you fill and what can you do that's going to help your team win? What can you do that's going to help contribute to winning? And then focus on doing that to the best of your abilities. By sticking to your strengths, you're naturally going to play with more confidence because you're doing the things that you already do well. So if you're a great shooter, focus on doing that. If you are a great rebounder, focus on doing that. If you are a great driver, do that. If you're great at moving off of the basketball, do that. And if you don't feel like you do any of those things super well, then what you need to do is identify a couple things that you feel like you're naturally inclined to that you feel like you do better than other things, right? Your strengths, and you need to become great at them. Focus on becoming great at those couple things so that now you're going to have confidence doing that and then you can focus, put your, your effort into those things and that's where that confidence is going to come from. Speaking of moving off of the basketball, tomorrow, April 23rd, I'm dropping a free basketball IQ masterclass. This is in over an hour long when it comes to just basketball IQ and stuff like that. So we're going to go over how to create for yourself, for your teammates using triggers and dominoes to become a great offensive player who's able to score more, create more, play with more confidence off ball movement out of different actions and how to apply that to your game. Three ways to be unstoppable off of the catch. Three finishes you need to be able to have you want to finish at a high level. The two mindsets that are going to absolutely change the game for you that you've got to have. And more than that, right. I think that with just the information we're going to get from this master class, you can add points per game to your average, you can create more for your teammates and you're just going to play, play with more confidence. Right. So completely free. That's also linked down in the description below. And just to be clear on that, you can watch it whenever so you don't have to watch it on the day it comes out. Whenever you get a chance to sit down and go through it. That's that. That's perfect that you'll be able to do it that way as well if you're interested. Like I said, that's down below. And if you're watching this video after that day, it's already out. So you can click down below, get the link to that that'll be sent all right over to you if you're interested in that. So hopefully this video helped you understand how to improve your confidence, how to play with more confidence, how to do the things that allow you to stick to your strengths right there. If you have a pickup truck, use it to do pickup truck things, right? Hopefully that helps you guys out. Leave a comment if it does. You have any questions for me, I appreciate you watching. Talk soon. Peace.