Confidence is Overrated: Chapter 11 "Flip the Switch"

Confidence is Overrated in Informal Reading by the author Travis Thomas. That's me. Welcome everyone. Chapter 11, Flip the Switch. Quote, if everything around seems dark, look again. You may be the light. Rumi. You must give me a little credit. How many books are you going to read that have the range to reference Wayne Gretzky in one chapter and then Rumi in the next? Who am I going to quote next? Vanilla Ice, perhaps? All right, stop. Collaborate and listen. Boom. All right, there you go. Mission accomplished. Sorry, let me flip the switch. If you've watched any sports, you've heard the expression flip the switch. It can be for an individual player or a whole team. It's the act of raising the level of play, intensity, or focus to meet the demand of the moment. This has been a slow start for the Lakers. It's time for LeBron to flip the switch if they're going to get back in the game. You might hear that on a broadcast. That's not what this chapter is about. If it was, I would say that the act of flipping the switch is about motivation and intention. All of us have experienced the feeling of going through the motions or operating on cruise control. We may be physically present, but we are not present. To flip the switch, we either need an external or internal injection of purpose and motivation. You see it show up when a player or team has nothing to play for or are playing an inferior opponent that doesn't merit their full effort. And of course, this has bitten many players and teams in the butt. My wife and I cringe when our son comes to us and tells us the team he is playing this weekend is really bad. Coach thinks we'll probably mercy them. Why is the coach saying that? There's absolutely no benefit in overinflating the confidence of your players. For one, it is outcome-based. It reinforces the message that the result is the only thing that matters, and the assumption is that the game is already won. It skips over the process of actually playing the game and has the players simply thinking about the result. Secondly, it diminishes the opportunity of what can still be accomplished regardless of the quality of the opponent. Most coaches understand that we can never control the quality of the other team, but our focus should always remain on controlling what we can control. The mark of a superior team is their ability to bring the same intensity, focus, and intention to every game regardless of the opposition. Why? Because it's not about them. It's about our individual and collective growth. It's about playing to our standard and using every game and event to get better. I once heard that Kelly Slater, the GOAT of professional surfing, credited growing up on the beaches of Cocoa Beach, Florida as one of the main reasons for his greatness. I've spent many years at Cocoa Beach. It's great surfing for the East Coast, but it's definitely not West Coast surfing. With the waves being much smaller than better surfing locations, Slater learned to maximize everything he could on smaller waves. As he moved west and began surfing bigger and more mature waves, he was able to amplify his skill set on a bigger canvas. Imagine a painter spending years only being able to paint in black and white and then being given a full painter's palette. That is what Kelly looked like on bigger waves. Staying with the surfer analogy, I've always loved this quote from the monumental book of sports performance The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey. He writes, the surfer waits for the big wave because he values the challenge it presents. He values the obstacles the wave puts between him and his goal of riding the wave to the beach. The bigger the wave, the bigger the challenge. The bigger the wave, the more we learn. The bigger the wave, the greater the opportunity. Like Slater, the surfer doesn't control the size of the wave, but instead he or she tries to maximize everything they can from what it offers. Big or small, the effort and intensity is the same. For players and teams, when we are focused on our growth and playing to our standards, the opponent doesn't matter. Big or small, they are simply the wave we get to surf that day. There is no need to flip the switch. When our focus is outcome-based, our intensity, quality, and effort will rise and fall based on the talent level of the opponent. When our focus is process-based, our intensity, quality, and effort is consistent regardless of the other team. We are not relying on the external opponent to motivate us. Instead, we are motivated by our own growth, And purpose. If you are noticing your performance or your team's performance as consistently inconsistent, there's a good chance the motivation has become too outcome-focused. And if you're the coach, this is a good time to reflect on your messaging. Have you become too outcome-based? It might be time to get off the emotional roller coaster of wins and losses and instead reinforce the purpose and mission of the team. But this is not what this chapter is about. Flip the switch has a different meaning to me. As a leadership and mental skills coach, I often don't hear from a player until things aren't going well. It's a trend we still need to change, but we're still a long way away. Success creates contentment. Failure gets our attention. Success without curiosity will eventually lead to failure. So regardless, I'll eventually hear from most players. And when I do get a player one-on-one, they are typically more open and vulnerable. They want help. No one is great all the time. No one wins all their games. Sports, like life, are up and down. It's our ability to manage the highs and lows that allows the lows to be shorter and the highs to be longer. So when I eventually hear from a player, it is either one of two things or both. One, they are not playing well and they don't know why, or two, they are not getting enough playing time. Whatever it is, neither one feels great. It's my job to help the athlete or performer come up with a plan of how to best move forward, but as you can imagine, they're typically all consumed with their frustration. For instance, I was working with a college player who emotionally lived and died with the result of every game. If they won, he was in a great mood, but if they lost, he would retreat to his room and avoid any outside contact. He would wallow in his sadness, unable to let the result go. During one of our conversations, I cut him off and with a laugh said to him, let me get this straight. When you win and play well, you're in a good mood. When you lose or don't play well, you're impossible to be around? Is that correct? He paused and said, yeah, pretty much. Well, I said, that's going to be a tough way to go through life. This is a player with big aspirations who wants to be a professional. I went on to tell him that he is signing up for a career where so much of his life is outside of his control. He won't decide his coaches, teammates, owners, And all the other dozen things beyond his control. So if his happiness is determined by everything going well, that is going to be a tough way to go through life. Coincidentally, as I'm writing this, I just got off the phone with my daughter who's in tears. She has spent the semester at school in Europe and is trying to fly home. She's in Dublin and just found out her flight is delayed. As a result, She will miss her connection in Chicago and will have to find a hotel for the night. None of the details will be worked out until she gets on the ground in Chicago, and this uncertainty has brought her to tears. My wife just looked at me and said, like you always joke, once you step foot in an airport, you no longer have any control over what happens. Airports, sports, life. Always teaching us lessons. As for the college athlete, I asked him about other players on the team. What about the other guys who rarely play? What about them? How do you think they're doing? How do you think they feel? He was silent. Then he said, probably not great. I said, what have you done to help these guys? He said, not much. As one of the leaders of the team, we discussed the responsibility he has to his teammates. Whether he plays good or bad, how is he taking care of the other players on the team? I challenged him to make a point to connect with his teammates each day and get to know them better. Think about the younger players who would love encouragement from one of the veteran leaders. Think about the guys not playing much and how discouraged they must feel. Mainly, start thinking less about yourself And start focusing on the well-being of others. Flip the switch. What is the switch? When things aren't going great, we tend to go internal. We focus on ourselves, our feelings, our plight. We become self-centered, self-absorbed. Head down, we become navel gazers. Instead, when we force ourselves to go external, we lift our heads and notice everything and everyone around us. We see our teammates. We see all the good, the opportunities, and the blessings. Sitting in a locker room, we can empower and connect with all our teammates around us. Even if you're having a bad game, going external allows us to keep finding ways to support our teammates. A few years back, while I was talking to a professional player who wanted to grow into a bigger leadership role on his team, He called me and asked what he could do to have a greater impact. My advice was this: every day when you come to the building for practice, make it a point to have a positive interaction with everyone you encounter. Make sure you connect with each player, even if just for a second. Make a point to see the staff members, the coaches, everyone. Basically, these are the people you see every day already. So now just make a point to be intentional about connecting with them. There is nothing more powerful than when a teammate, especially someone who is a veteran or a leader, takes time to support or encourage a younger player. It reinforces that psychological safety of, I respect you, I value you, you matter. NBA Hall of Fame point guard, 2-time MVP, and former NBA head coach Steve Nash was known for being the consummate teammate. As pointed out by Allen Stein and the research done around the number of physical touches, i.e., high fives, butt slaps, and microinteractions performed by Nash each game, as Stein describes, Nash was a furnace of human connection. I love that, a furnace of human connection. What a great way to describe someone who is so focused externally on their teammates that they are a furnace of positive energy. That is flipping the switch. During the 2024 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament, Alabama reached the Final Four for the first time in school history. Midway through the season, when the team was hitting some internal speed bumps, head coach Nate Oates reached out to another Alabama coach. Head softball coach Patrick Murphy. Coach Murphy had become known on campus for sharing a special message with different teams and outside groups on the concept of Mudita. Murphy had read about the concept in a book years ago, and it completely shifted his mindset when it came to building his team's culture. Mudita is a Sanskrit and Pali word, and the concept is embraced in Buddhism. It means sympathetic or unselfish joy, or joy in the good fortune of others. As Murphy uses it and shares with others, mudita is vicarious joy, the pleasure that comes in delighting in other people's well-being. The pleasure in delighting in other people's well-being. Mudita. Mudita. Imagine being on a team where each player has vicarious joy celebrating a teammate doing well. When you raise your energy to celebrate someone else, it automatically raises your positive emotions. Even if you're faking it at first, if you do it enough, it'll slowly become genuine. And for the person who receives your vicarious joy, you now amplify their confidence and value. And just like in improvisation, where the mantra is to make your partner look brilliant, when you express Mudita for others, they are more likely to express Mudita for your success. Before you know it, you have a furnace of human connection feeding off of itself, becoming bigger, and transforming the energy and connection of the team. When you flip your switch from an internal to an external focus, you change your reality. One of my favorite fables involves a village in China hundreds of years ago. The temple in the middle of town, which serves as the lifeblood of the community— community— ooh, the lifeblood of the community has lost its spirit. The townfolk no longer attend services. The temple leaders no longer feel inspired. Instead, they're bitter and jaded. They believed it was the townspeople who gave up on the temple. They blamed them for changing. Then they started blaming each other internally. They started pointing fingers and accusing each other of being the reason people stopped coming. Bit by bit, brick by brick, the temple started reflecting the lack of spirit inside. It was falling apart. There was no love. In a last-ditch effort of desperation, one of the temple leaders hiked to the next town to talk to their wise shaman. He pleaded his case and begged for the shaman to come back with— to come back with him and speak to the other leaders. The shaman agreed and followed the young man back to his temple. Inside the temple, all the leaders sat circling the shaman. He was revered and respected for his wisdom and knowledge. For what seemed like forever, he said nothing. He sat, eyes closed, meditating. This went on and on and on until finally he opened his eyes, scanned the room slowly, making eye contact with each person in the room. What would he say? How is he going to fix their temple and restore its place in the community? After minutes of scanning the room, he stood up and addressed the group. And this is what he said. The Savior of this temple is in this room. That was it. He bowed and left. The temple leaders looked around confused. The Savior of the temple is in this room? What does that mean? They looked at each other, not knowing what to say, and the meeting adjourned. For the next few days, not much changed. Each of the temple leaders couldn't figure out what the wise shaman meant. And why wouldn't he just tell them who the Savior was? That would make things so much easier. The more they pondered his words, the more it sank in. What if I'm the Savior? Each temple leader knew it was possible they were the chosen one. If so, how would the Savior act? How would they behave and treat each other, as well as the people in the town? Were they currently behaving the way the Savior would? They all knew the answer was no. So, if they were the Savior, they needed to change their attitude, actions, and behaviors. But what if they are not the Savior? That means one of the other leaders is. If so, how have they been treating the other leaders in the group? Would they dare be so disrespectful to the Savior if it were one of the other leaders? Of course not. So they began treating each other with the respect and trust the Savior would deserve. They could— I could be the Savior, but maybe it's him, or maybe it's her. Slowly, day after day, week after week, and month after month, the temple began to change. The townspeople could feel a difference. The church leaders felt different. They carried themselves with more respect. compassion, patience, and joy, and they treated everyone with the same care. The townspeople started going back to the temple as a result, and before you knew it, the temple was full, bustling, vibrant with life, connection, and inspiration. Once again, the temple was serving as the lifeblood of the community. But who was the Savior? Like I said, he was a very wise shaman. How might that story apply to your team? What about your organization, school, or company? How might you apply that to your family? How would you carry yourself if you were the chosen one, or your teammate, or your spouse, or your boss, or the receptionist? Most importantly, how would you behave differently if it were you? Going external means you become the lighthouse. You are the city set on a hill. You are the beacon of light and hope. Others feel better because of your presence. And the beautiful thing is it requires no talent, just effort and intention. It will be the reason people are drawn to you, because who doesn't want to be warmed by the presence of someone genuinely concerned about their well-being? As a player, do you want to be valued by your teammates? Flip the switch. Do you want your coaches to see all the ways you help the team? Flip the switch. Are you currently going through a tough situation that is making it difficult to not be self-involved with your own problems? Flip the switch. If everything around you seems dark, look again. You may be the light. Rumi. Flip the switch. By the way, my daughter arrived in Chicago and the airline put her up in a hotel room for the night for free. She got home safely the next day. She too now better understands the power of surrendering in the airport. One last side note, the University of Alabama basketball team making their first Final Four In 2024 said it was Mudita that shifted the culture of that team. Flip the switch. Here is your Chapter 11 reflection questions. Number 1, what issue in your life right now is consuming most of your thought? 2, what would it look like to flip the switch and go external? 3. Think of a time someone went out of the way— went out of their way to put your needs before their own needs. What happened? How did it make you feel? That concludes chapter 11. We'll see you soon for chapter 12.