The 3 Step Process To Unshakable Confidence (In Real Games)

Most people have probably given you the wrong advice when it comes to building confidence as a basketball player. And I'm talking about true, unshakable confidence. A type that shows up every single time you play. No matter who you're playing against, no matter how you're feeling that day, no matter how you're performing early on to start a game, the confidence that you always have, because that type of confidence is every player's dream. And it definitely was for me when I would ask people, hey, how do I become more confident? How do I build confidence that shows up every single time that I play? What I was told is that if you just work harder than everybody else, if you in the work, then you're automatically going to play with a super high level of confidence. So that's exactly what I did. I went out and I spent a ton of time in the gym, more time than anybody else that I knew. But then I would get into real games and that confidence that I was promised just wasn't there. And this made no sense to me. And it wasn't until years after I stopped playing that I realized what truly goes into confidence. So I learned at an early age that just because you put in a ton of work, maybe more work than everybody else around you, that doesn't mean that you're just going to automatically have confidence when you play. Now this is sometimes true for players who have a lot of natural ability. And chances are the people who have told you that this is how confidence is developed are probably those people who already have natural ability. And so all that it takes for them is a little bit of work and they have a ton of belief in themselves. But for the majority of players out there who are like me, who didn't have that natural advantage over everybody else, there is a much better way to earn confidence. This way is foolproof. And it's going to guarantee that every time you step on the court, you play with the ultimate self belief that you have what it takes. No more second guessing, no more hesitating, just going out and performing at the highest level you can every single time you step on the floor. Here's the thing, the majority of players don't actually even know what confidence really is. It's very simple when we define it. All that confidence is is the belief that you have what it takes to be successful in a certain situation. So if you don't have confidence, it's because you don't have that belief that you're capable of being successful in whatever situation you may be in. Let Me give you an example that might make this be a little bit more clear. Imagine there's a gas station that' like 30 seconds from your house and you drive there every single day. You're going to be very confident in your ability to drive there the next time because you've done it so many times. But if somebody came up to you and said, hey, we need you to fly a helicopter from your house to this gas station, you're going to be way less confident because you're not going to be sure that you have what it takes to be successful doing that. It all has to do with self belief. And this is why the idea and the advice that I was given that you've probably heard of fake it till you make it. Just go out there and pretend you have confidence and eventually you will. That doesn't exist. Either you have confidence or you don't. And if you fake having confidence, eventually you're going to crack, you're going to break. People are going to see right through it. So in order to build actual confidence in games, you have to figure out what those situations are that you don't feel like you have, what it takes to be successful in them. And we have to work backwards from that. A lot of players train confidence in a vacuum, meaning they train it outside of the game. So a lot of players try things like self talk, or they try and think their way into being confident. And while those things can absolutely help when you supplement everything with it, we have to tackle the root cause. And there really is one framework that you need to follow if you want to build true confidence. Confidence that can't be shaken and that shows up every time you play. Now, this framework has three steps. And if you follow these three steps, you're going to become a way more confident player. The first step is to identify situations where you lack confidence. So for example, let's say that you lack confidence when it comes to shooting the ball. You're very passive. You're always moving the basketball, even when you have opportunities to shoot. Despite the fact that you probably work on your shooting all the time. When you get to games for whatever reason, that confidence to take that shot just goes out the window and you feel like you can't be successful in that situation. Step one is identifying that right there. And you probably have multiple situations, but for right now, I'll just go through one. The second step is that you have to intentionally place yourself in those situations as often as possible. Now, this can be difficult to do in real games and you might not Be able to, what you need to do is go play as much as you can, play more pickup, five on five, three on three, one on one, even. And you need to put yourself in a position to be in that exact situation as often as possible. So if we're talking about the example of being afraid to shoot the basketball when you're open, well, go play pickup. And your only goal is to shoot the ball more. So you might be really good at driving and you might be able to drive and score whenever you want, but you're going to make a decision to say, hey, I'm not going to drive during this game. I'm going to shoot the ball if I have any sort of chance of being open, even though I might miss it. I'm not as comfortable doing it just because I want to start building the confidence of taking that shot and then seeing myself make it. That leads us into the third step. And this is the most important part of this and that's detaching yourself from the outcome. You have to not only be okay with the fact that you're going to fail, you're going to look bad. Sometimes you have to actually expect that that stuff is going to happen. It's a part of the process is a necessary step. So back to our example about developing confidence as a shooter. When you put yourself in those situations to shoot the ball more, you're going to miss more, you're going to feel uncomfortable. You might, your team might lose a pickup game because you could have gone and scored more points doing something you're more comfortable doing, but because you are working on something else, maybe your team doesn't win a game. And again, that's why I'm saying you want to do these in those games that don't really mean anything, like pickup games, three on three, whatever. But you have to go do that, be okay with the outcome being good or bad. And then you have to be able to go and do it again. You have to completely detach your emotions from whatever the outcome is going to be. Now the reason that you need to do this is because of something called self organization. And all that this means is that your brain's ability to be able to figure out the solution to a given problem. The most confident players are elite when it comes to self organization. In this case, you're working on being confident shooting the basketball in games, in game situations. So when you put yourself in those situations to, to work on it, you're going to miss a lot of shots and you're going to take a shot and be like, oh, that probably wasn't a good shot to take. Eventually you're going to figure out though, okay, if I make this little change here, I'm more likely to make it when I shoot this shot. I'm more likely to make it when I approach my shot. This way. It goes in more. You're going to learn what works for you, what doesn't work for you, and it's going to help you to get better at that situation as you go forward. And as you get better at it, as you get better at solving that problem, you become what we would refer to as an expert. The reason that you lack confidence in that situation is because you're a novice or a beginner. But when you're an expert and you have experience doing it, you gain a ton of confidence from it. The problem that a lot of players face is they don't become experts because they never allow their brain the opportunity to self organize because they avoid the situation that they're not confident in. This is the only way to develop true confidence in yourself. I'll give you another quick example. Maybe you don't have confidence driving with your left hand. So when you play one on one, three on three, five on five, whatever sort of pickup you're playing, you, you make it your goal to say, hey, I'm going to drive with my left hand as much as possible. When you do that, you detach yourself from the outcome. You say, I don't care if I'm successful today, if I'm not successful today, all that I'm going to do is do it. And then I'm going to try and figure out what works best for me. You're going to figure out those little things that help you, those little things that hurt you, and eventually you're going to start being successful more and more and more. So your confidence or your belief that you have what it takes to be successful in that situation is going to grow because you put yourself in a position to self organize and figure out the best solution. And, and by doing that, you're going to gain a true level of confidence that is always going to be there. So my challenge to you is this. Write down three situations that you lack confidence in in games, and then write down for the next step what you can do to place yourself in that situation more often. Once you have that, go and do it. And then like I said, the most important thing is when you're doing these things, don't worry about the outcome, especially early on, don't worry about if you play well. If you don't play well, if you're successful or not, you actually need those failure reps. Your brain learns so much more from reps where you're not successful. You learn more from that than you do from any drill, any workout, any trainer that you might train with. Those failure reps are the most important part of this process because it teaches you what you actually need to adjust in order to be better the next time. So as a way to almost reframe this view confidence not as gaining confidence, but as earning confidence. If you want to be a confident player, you've got to earn it. And the best part about that is that when you earn that confidence, nobody can take it from you. It shows up every single time you play because you've given yourself the necessary steps to actually earn it. You own it, it's yours. And that's simply because you've given your brain the mental reps. You've given your brain the failure reps necessary to understand how to solve a problem when you're in that situation. So earning confidence is actually a pretty simple process. And the best part is, is that we're in the heart of the off season right now. So you have opportunities to go and work on these things. And again, nothing matters. You're not playing in games that matter. You're not playing in games where, you know, people are in the stands watching. There's a scoreboard, there's referees, People are keeping track of wins and losses. So you've got to go and not worry about how you look right now. And if you're willing to do that, if you're willing to look bad for a little bit, eventually you're going to start to look good and you're going to have a super high level of confidence that again, nobody can take from you. Now, this is just one of the frameworks that we talk about inside of the ultimate mental edge, which is a full confidence program inside of basketball. Basketball at Q Academy. It's the complete system to becoming an elite level basketball player when it comes to building your confidence. And it's exactly what I wish I would have had when I was a player and I was getting all this advice that never helped me. Inside of Basketball IQ Academy, you'll get access to that full program as well as our full basketball IQ program. That's going to help you to become a better decision maker. It's going to help you to read the game at a higher level, understand how to score more points, create more for your teammates, and then on top of that, you also get access to a full year round skills training program and a full year round weightlifting, strength and athleticism program. It's everything you need to become a high level basketball player. And again, it's something that I wish I would have had and it would have made such a big difference for me as a player. If you're interested in checking that out, it's a top link down below. Hopefully this framework gave you a good idea of how to build true confidence on the court so that you can become a player who goes out and plays your game every single time. Appreciate you for watching. Talk soon. Peace.