Ethan Khoza argues that identity and self-belief matter more than the workout itself. Two players can do the same drills and get different results because of basketball IQ, confidence, resilience, and emotional intelligence. He suggests writing down 2-3 personality traits of players you admire to reshape your own identity and habits.
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If you're a serious player, then you're probably out there working out. You're going to the gym every day, working on your skills, getting your shots up. Maybe you're in the gym and you're lifting, you're getting more athletic, you're doing those things. But as a coach and a trainer, I see it all the time. There are players who will both do the same exact things. They work out the same amount, they do the same sort of workouts. There's not a huge difference in them when it comes to their athleticism or their height. But one player gets way better, and the other player doesn't really get that much better. So I spend so much time just thinking about why that is. What's the difference between the players who seem to always get better, always make those jumps, always play with consistency on the court, and the players who are seemingly doing all the right things, and yet they're not seeing that same success? And what I've realized is that it almost always goes back to who you are. One of the phrases that I hate the most when it comes to people who talk about how to develop confidence are the people who say, fake it till you make it. And they'll say, go out there and play like you have confidence, and eventually you'll succeed, and then you actually will have confidence. Here's the thing. You can lie to everybody else around you. You can lie on social media and talk about how much confidence you have, but you can't lie to yourself about it. When you get on the court, people are going to know, does this player believe in themselves or do they not? And if you aren't, it's going to be very, very apparent. And a lot of times that's the difference between players who are doing the same things. And one sees incredible success and one doesn't. A lot of times it goes back to there is a very big difference in who they are and the belief that that player has in themselves compared to maybe another player who's doing the same thing. There's a quote that says, you don't rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your identity. And that's essentially what this means. You can go out there and you can train the same way as somebody who is achieving all these amazing things. You can go and do all these NBA workouts, and the guys who are doing it are getting paid $40 million a year, and you're going to go out and do those things. But if your identity says, I'm not that good, I Don't have that much ability. I don't believe in myself. That's what's going to show up when you get onto the court. My point in saying all this is that who you are determines everything. So your basketball IQ is obviously a huge one. How well do you understand the game? Do you understand the best situations to attack? Do you know how to recognize opportunities to score, opportunities to create for your teammates? Do you know the best times to look, to be aggressive? Do you understand the flow of the game and how it changes things? How consistent are you doing that? That's obviously a big part of who you are. And then going with that is your confidence in yourself. So your ability to go out and be willing to take risks because you believe that you have the ability to be successful, your ability to play with trust in yourself and to avoid second guessing and then how well you handle setbacks and things not going perfect for you, going with that, your resilience and your leadership ability are massive as well. So can you handle adversity? Can you show up again and again and again when things don't go perfectly? And then emotional intelligence is self awareness. So your ability to stay composed under pressure, your ability to communicate well with your teammates, with your coaches, your ability to handle those negative emotions that might come up during games, knowing your role, knowing what you're good at, what you're not good at, and what you should be focused on improving, all that stuff goes into who you are. Now most players don't train this, and so it's a massive opportunity for you if you're one of the few who's willing to do it because. Because everybody's focused on training their handles and their shooting and their defense and their strength and athleticism. And it's all great. But again, who you are is more important than what you do, so you can get better. All that stuff. If your view of yourself and who you are doesn't change, then that stuff's not going to make nearly as big of an impact as it probably could. And that you probably want it to. I want to give you a really crucial key to doing this. I read a ton of business books, self development books, and two of the books that I've most recently read are the War of Art and the Psychology of Money, which obviously those have nothing to do with basketball. But the funny thing about it is that I've talked about both of those books in these videos over the last two weeks. Like things that I've learned from those books I've talked about in my basketball YouTube videos, because all of this stuff overlaps. What you have to do is you have to look at three to five people in your field. So it could be, you know, we took basketball, for example. Take the three to five best players that you know personally. Or take the three to five, you know, your three to five favorite players or players you look up to the most, and then give yourself. Write down two or three qualities that those players have. Now, I don't want you to write down things about basketball, so don't say, oh, this guy's a great shooter. No, write down personality traits that make this player as good as they are. So it could be their confidence, could be their self belief, it could be their work ethic. But you have to look at it and say, what makes this person.
