The Fearless Warrior Podcast

067: Mindset Myths Busted: Confidence is NOT a feeling

• Amanda Schaefer

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Today's episode is the first installment in our "Myths Busted" series. Today we tackle the myth that "confidence is a feeling". In this episode I discuss why treating confidence as a mere emotion can lead to self-doubt and learn how to nurture genuine confidence through preparation and action. We explore how athletes can build a resilient mindset that isn't swayed by the highs and lows of feeling emotions.

Episode Highlights:

  • Where Confidence comes from 
  • Why "fake it until you make it" doesn't work
  • What confidence is
  • The link between confidence and trust

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the fearless warrior podcast, a place for athletes, coaches and parents who know the value of a strong mindset. I'm your host, coach AB, a mental performance coach on a mission, former softball coach, wife and mom of three. Each episode, we will dive deep into all things mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success. So if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, mindset tools and how to rewire the brain for success, so if your goal is to gain the mental edge and learn the secrets of mental performance, you're in the right place. Let's tune in to today's episode. We are starting a new series on the podcast called Mindset Myths Busted. We have been wanting to do this for so long and the gist of it is this there is a lot of crap out there, there's a lot of false information and instead of trying to Google things and wade through the fluff and figure out what's real versus what's not, we thought we would do a series for you to look out for those red flags in mental performance. And so we're going to kick things off with all of the myths that we hear from coaches, from parents, from players, and we're going to address them and talk about it. So the first one myth, number one busted confidence is not a feeling. We think that confidence is something that we're going to feel. We delay this feeling of confidence. And this is the number one question I get asked by parents and athletes how can I feel more confident? And the short answer you won't.

Speaker 1:

Ken Reviza, one of the wisest grandfathers of mental performance, once said are you that bad of an athlete that you have to feel great to perform well? We overemphasize needing to feel great to perform well. We overemphasize needing to feel great to play well. And it's a myth. Has your athlete ever said when I finally hit my first home run, then I will feel confident? If I just make varsity, then I can be confident. I'm not good enough until I can make this team or that team. And when we delay our confidence until we've reached or achieved or checked that box, we're delaying the feeling. And confidence has a tendency to manifest into feelings like happiness, excitement, proud, elated, but actually it's a belief in one's abilities, not a primary emotion. Confidence comes from action, confidence comes from preparation. The action of confidence will always come before the feelings of confidence.

Speaker 1:

Think about it this way when your daughter learned something new like how to slide. She was likely scared and intimidated by sliding until she got dirty and tried it out. Our travel coach used to put down big sheets of cardboard and sprinkle flour for us to learn how to slide. And we had to learn the skill of sliding by repetition and rep after rep after rep. We felt more prepared to slide in games, which in turn gave us the confidence we needed to do it with less thinking and more trusting our bodies. And so if someone would have come up to us at practice and said fake it until you make it thinking and more trusting our bodies. And so if someone would have come up to us at practice and said, fake it until you make it, just be confident in a skill like sliding, but we had no evidence to support that belief, we would feel the opposite.

Speaker 1:

What's wrong with me? Why don't I feel confident in the skill? And that's the biggest mistake I heartbreakingly see parents and coaches make is they try to rah-rah and pep talk confidence into their athletes as if it's just a feeling that's magically going to appear by them mentioning it. If we just try to muster up confidence and feel confident, it's creating a belief and it's actually going to help your athlete create the opposite result. They're going to start doubting what's wrong with me. Why can't I just be confident, like my mom and dad are just telling me to be? And this is the biggest mistake treating confidence like a feeling. And here's why this is a mistake. Feelings come and go. Feelings are experienced consciously, while emotions manifest either consciously or subconsciously, which is a fancy way of saying that sometimes we can't even explain our emotions. So confidence is an action, it's a choice, it's a decision, it's a commitment.

Speaker 1:

So let's dive further into this. I want to do some definitions. So the definition of confident, when you Google it full of conviction, certain or showing assurance and self-reliance. So then, if you look at the definition of what confident would be as a verb, confide is the verb version to have confidence, trust. So then we look at the definition of trust. The definition of trust is assured reliance on character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something, one in which confidence is placed. But we're still missing one final piece in these definitions who? Who are we placing our confidence in Ourselves? And so what is the definition of self-confidence? Confidence in oneself and one's power and abilities.

Speaker 1:

So, really, self-confidence is trusting yourself, not your results, not your stats, your home runs, your radar speed, your pop time, the team you make or even what people say about you, good or bad. How do you act with confidence? You have to trust yourself to try. You have to trust yourself to fail. You have to trust yourself to try again. And that is the only way that you can fail is if you stop trying. Trying is the action, trusting is the feeling you get about yourself.

Speaker 1:

There will be days where you don't feel confident. It's impossible to be confident every single day, and that's another myth is that we're expecting our athletes to be confident 100%, 100% of the days, and a good analogy that I would like to portray think about a time as athletes, where you didn't feel confident but you played a really great game. Or maybe you had a really good warm-up but you played a really bad game. Or you had a really bad warm-up but you played a really good game. Or think about a tournament where you had to fight your way through the loser's bracket, game after game after game, and it was probably 99 degrees. You were hot, exhausted, mentally drained, but somehow you ended up making it to the championship game.

Speaker 1:

It's in those moments where, logically, it doesn't make sense. But in that moment you made a decision. You chose to act with confidence because you wanted something really important to you. You have to choose confidence even when you don't feel confident. Remember to have confidence is to trust. Do I trust myself to try Again? Today's message is this the actions of confidence come before the feelings of confidence. You can play well even if you don't feel confident, and if you wait to feel confident, you will always be riding the roller coaster of feelings. Feelings come and go. Actions, however, are a choice. Act as if means, if you're acting in alignment, as if the results have already come true. How would you show up knowing that your success was inevitable? We'll get you that much closer to your success.

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Contributor

Amanda Schaefer

Host