Confidence: Do You Need It?

In this episode we take a deep dive into confidence. What is it, do you actually need it, and how should we think about it. This episode really challenged a lot of my ideas about confidence, and I am excited for you to get a chance to listen and reflect on how you think about confidence.

Transcript

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All right. Welcome this to this week's edition of the backseat driver podcast. Side note, we have to, we have to share this cause it's ridiculous. We are starting off this episode and we just did the first five minutes of it, but both realized at the same time that we did not hit the record button. So this is the second edition. This is the 2. 0 version. Well, we were recording the video track, but unfortunately not the audio track. So that wouldn't be. The most entertaining episode to listen to on, on Spotify or Apple. So we thought it prudent to go back and actually record what we had said. So if you're wondering why Matthew's laughing as we open up, we couldn't, couldn't contain it. So do you want to shout out, we'll get into the topic that we're going to talk about in just a second, but you want to shout out our first, first business shout out on the podcast. This is not a sponsor since we don't have enough listeners to really warrant a sponsor yet, but there's a local business we wanted to shout out. So profit coffee over on Sproul Avenue is a new local coffee shop. Well, they were in a van, but they just got a brick and mortar storefront. And Shelby and I have been going there about twice a week and we really liked the owners, Bryson and Savannah. They're awesome. And we just really liked the vibe. We really liked supporting local coffee shops, especially since we live over near that area. And we always are looking for kind of local businesses to frequent and support. So that's been awesome. They have some wonderful. Pastries as well. They have donuts. It's all vegan, which is really cool. So they use oat milk and almond milk. They had apple cider donuts for the last couple of months. They're switching flavors right now to more of a Christmassy flavor, but they just switched their drinks over to their Christmas and winter drinks. So they have a gingerbread latte. That's pretty bomb. So I've been getting that. And yeah, if you're in the area, go check them out, tell him we sent you, you'll get nothing in return for that, but at least they'll know that we shout them out and maybe the next time I go in, they'll be like. Hey, this one's on the house. So yeah, our goal is to get free coffees. Yeah. Check them out. They're over next to Holy city, brewing cod father, that area of Spruill Avenue. So check it out. All right. Onwards. Yeah. So today we're going to dive into a topic that the reason we chose it. It is, it's definitely something that I get a lot of questions about, probably one of my most frequently asked questions and kind of just assumptions that people make is important for performance, for all these different areas that we talk about is this, is the concept of confidence. And so I obviously have a lot of thoughts on it, but I wanted to actually start off with you in. When that word is said to you. You know, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? Wow. That was a long pause. I think the first thing that comes to my mind, honestly, is the difference between uh, endurance type sports and skill based sports. I think there's a really big difference for me in the way I think of confidence in those arenas, because skill based sport, there's, you're playing against someone else, and I think there's such an importance. In confidence, or at least the perceived importance in confidence versus in running, you, you kind of, to some degree, it doesn't really matter. You just kind of go out there and push yourself as hard as you can. And whether or not you necessarily believe at the beginning or confident you can do it, if you're doing it, I think the confidence almost grows as you're doing it. So it's weird. I've been in both worlds. So my, my ideas about confidence are almost different in the two worlds, which I'm sure you'll disagree with. And this will be part of the discussion, but that was honestly, the first thought that came to my mind is that difference in how I perceive confidence, having come from a skill based sport, like soccer, and now transition more into an endurance type sport, like running, but I know you work with both types of athletes, so I'm sure you have some insight on that. And we'll probably disagree with that because as I'm saying it, I kind of disagree with it a little bit, but. Well, so a couple of thoughts come to mind as, as you're talking about it. One, I'm kind of intrigued by the way you're thinking about it. It was almost depending on the context and your mind initially went to sport. And if I could expand on it for you in, in kind of just how you conceptualize confidence, maybe even take sport out of it, just in life. Different situations and things like that, what comes up. Yeah. First thought is belief in the ability to accomplish a given task. Okay. So that would be your definition of it. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to say that I've sat here and thought about it for an hour, but that's kind of, if I had to define it on the spot, it would probably be my. Well, most people haven't and that's okay, but I think everyone kind of has a natural definition of confidence, whether we know it or not. Saying it is, I thought that was a pretty good, it sounded good. That's part of being a doctor. You have to be able to make everything sound good. Even if you don't know the answer, you said it with confidence. That's right. so confidence to me is complex. There's a lot of nuance to it. And here's the thing that kind of, I guess drives me crazy. It's probably too strong of a word. But I came across a guy kind of on social media. Oh no, we're going here, we're going here already. Well, I, I, I'm actually not going to, just to introduce kind of where this thought process is going. His whole thing, and he kind of claims he's in mental performance, whatever that means, we won't talk about his lack of credentials and name him, but basically the, the gist is if you've done a psychology degree at any level of education, you can you can claim to be a mental performance consultant on social media these days. And this is several, we'll probably do a separate episode one day on how to deal with. The shysters or the people that just say they're things or experts in fields that they're very clearly not. But anyway, I was kind of looking through this cause it was sent to me by someone and out of curiosity, scrolling through and his biggest thing was the best athletes have the most confidence. And so what I'm going to work on with you is improve your confidence. And you know, when I was in middle school and high school, that was always preached to me, like confidence is everything, confidence, everything. And so obviously you believe it. And no one really challenged that statement my entire life. It was like you, and so you just believe it. But the problem is, is confidence is one of the most finicky things we have, especially when you're talking about sport, right? I'm like, okay, when you're, if I'm working with a golfer, when are you feeling confident when I'm playing well? Okay. If you're not playing well, are you feeling confident? No. Okay. Well then, right. If you have to have confidence, you're kind of screwed. Yeah. So what this guy and many coaches and many people will tell you is you need confidence to play well. Okay. Well then that's just the cycle of, Oh, I'm not feeling confident. So therefore I can't play well. I definitely set you up for failure whenever you're exactly, it's like a self fulfilling prophecy almost. And, um, so the question I like to start off with people. Is try to think of a performance in anything. It could be a speech or a driving test, you know, whatever it is, where you weren't feeling particularly confident about and that you succeeded or performed well in. Well, I can give you one. Yeah. I mean, when we record the anxiety episode, that was probably the episode I was least confident about in the episode. We've probably gotten the most positive feedback about, so that's one just even on, on this podcast so far. And then there were other episodes. That we record, I was like, Oh, that was killer. My confidence was super high about the topic. And those are the ones that probably have the least number of downloads. Right. And to go off of that, I would say, I almost would argue the reverse is true. In some instances of there's many, there's many contexts where I've gone in to maybe with a new team, for example, and I. You know, my confidence isn't sky high because I don't know anyone and I'm like, how is this going to be received? And there's just a lot of question marks. And obviously more uncertainty creates a lack of confidence, but guess what I do in preparation for those sessions. I prepare more, right? I prepare harder. I make sure it's good. It's right. It's how I want it to come across versus the ones where I almost get a little bit too comfortable. Maybe I've been with the team or an organization for awhile or, you know, like those types of things, you can, you feel confident in your ability to do a good session. And it's like, you're actually, Not as prepared as you would have been if you weren't feeling confident, right? So in some ways, a lack of confidence can be beneficial in some respects. So you, you think that sometimes lack of confidence leads to better preparation? Yes. But wouldn't you argue that? The end product of that is more confidence. So correct. Yes. So, and this is the, this is where it's so fat. I love this stuff. So if you think about it, a great question of if I don't have a ton of confidence going in, but then I perform well, doesn't that build confidence? And I would say, yeah, of course, good performances lead to. I think that's pretty well accepted and understood, but my question would be, okay, now you're feeling more confident about your next performance, but what led to your first good performance? Was it confidence? No, it was preparation and, you know, being present and doing, you know, all of these other things. Right. So you're saying there was uncertainty in that first performance. You know, you had prepared, but there's still uncertainty because the performance has not been executed yet. Right. And now I'm saying, oh, well now I'm feeling confident, but the confidence wasn't there when you were successful. Right. And now it is. And we actually see And this is kind of the, where I think the misconception comes in of like going back to this guy's statement of, oh, the best athletes have the most confidence. Yes, I agree, but they've also had the most successes. So was it the confidence that led them to get to a really high place or was it that they had discipline preparation all these other things and because they succeeded in succeeding succeeded from those that now they feel confident going forward And so, you know, I don't think there's a very perfectly clear and concrete answer to that There's probably some obviously some nuance and wiggle room but I do try to challenge people's Kind of like General beliefs about confidence, because I think there's some myths out there. Yeah. I think the first point you made is, is really important, which is if you have to have confidence to perform well, then you really are setting yourself up for failure. So I think that is a very important point. I've gone through a lot of different levels of soccer growing up, and I've definitely had various levels of confidence and various levels of self belief and self unbelief. Mm hmm. Because I've moved up, you know, when I was playing in high school and was also doing Olympic developmental program and trying out for some of these more elite teams, I remember the first year or two that I would go to those tryouts. I was like, I don't even belong on the same field as these people, even though skill wise, I probably did. Even the first year or two. So for me, I've definitely experienced this both ways because I feel like year two and three, I came back and yes, I had prepared more, but I also had the mindset shift of, I actually believed I belonged on the same field as them. So I do think there is an element in skill based sports and you've been good enough at skill based sports, especially basketball, where you've experienced this. Thank you. You have to believe in the skill you have enough to try to execute the skill. Right. A lot of times, or think you're good enough. You know, a lot of the best soccer players I ever played with, they would walk on the field and they thought they were the best player on the field. And that was a huge part of why they're, because they didn't care if they made a mistake. You know, they didn't care if they messed up once or twice because they knew they were going to keep coming back and they would beat that person. They would set up a goal. They would be the one that made the difference. Or at least that was their mindset whether or not actually, but that was how they thought. Right. And that's how I started to think towards the end of my career too. And that made, I had a huge shift between my junior and senior year of high school where I went from, you know, pretty average play. And some of this was growth and all that, but I went from a pretty average player to all state, all low country, you know, invited to some of those all star games. Like that was a huge, a lot of that for me, what, you know, This is really hard to tease out. There was a lot of change in preparation, but I'd always worked hard. Sure. I worked hard. I got stronger But a lot of it was when I stepped on that field my senior year. I genuinely believed I was the best player So I'd be in Interested to hear what you think about. Yeah, it's a great point. So Two two thoughts are coming to mind. The first is I let you think confidence as a on a continuum right for sure. So But a hundred is not the best and zero is not necessarily the worst. But of course you don't want to have no confidence, right? That like, I'm not arguing for that. I'm trying to just push back on the idea that confidence is everything. So. And that's because of the first point of like, you're not always going to be feel confident, right? Right. So one, yes, you can perform without a ton of confidence. If you could say, I would prefer, and Jim Feerick has a great quote on this. Jim Feerick, if you don't know who he is, he was a PGA tour professional for many, many years, highly successful, won a major championship, top 10 PGA tour earnings list. So we had a swing of all time, really good player. Look up his golf swing. If you're into that kind of thing. But he's a great quote in saying I played my best golf when I was hitting the ball pretty well, not great and not bad, but pretty well. Because when he was hitting it too good, his confidence would get too high. And we make decisions that he normally wouldn't make because he felt so good about it. Right. And obviously the opposite is true. If he wasn't hitting it well, then he couldn't execute at a high level. And so it was kind of that in between where he was at his best. Yeah. There's that Goldilocks zone. I, I was just thinking after I had given you that answer, that there is definitely a danger in getting too confident. If you aren't able to execute. The skill, you know, if you think you can do something, but you actually can't that is probably equally as bad The thing is I was just playing with players that were you know, going to national team pools and things like that So they genuinely could execute those things. They were good enough But that I guess what you're saying and what I'm saying is their confidence match their actual ability versus the Confidence starting to exceed the ability like you're describing with Jim. Yeah, and so I don't, I don't think confidence is detrimental until it starts to impact different aspects of your mindset and preparation. That's where I see the flaw of it. Right, right. For sure. And because people who feel super confident, they forget what got them that confidence, which is what we just talked about. Right. The discipline preparation, the reps, the focus Yada, yada, yada, whatever it was. And then they're like, Oh, I succeeded. So now I'm confident. So I don't need to worry about it. That's it. Yeah, that over reliance on confidence as, as the fun, one of the fundamental pieces of good performance, right. You're kind of untangling that a little bit and saying you don't necessarily believe it's one of the fundamental pillars of good performance. It doesn't have to be. No, in the way of like being super confident is one of the fundamental per sure. And You know, one of the probably most iconic examples of this was the 2016 Superbowl between the Patriots and the Falcons. There's a unbelievable quote by Mohammed Saneu. He was like at halftime, when they were, whenever they went up 28 to three in that, you know, a picture that everyone has seen on social media of the scoreboard. Is he was quoted after the game being like, You know, what were you guys thinking at that point in the game? He's like, I was thinking what everyone else was thinking is feeling pretty good that we're going to win. Right. And, but that, what that led to was complacency and getting away from the things that got them to 28 to three lead and the whole team. And that that's actually very human nature is because I always like to say the number one rule about our brain is that it's, or number one job of our brain is that it's to survive. But the second rule I like to talk about is our brain's lazy. And so when we get a big lead or we kind of build up this insurance in our mind of, Oh, I'm good. Like I'm doing well, I'm feeling really good about that. Our brain's tendency is to go to get lazy and not do the things that got us to that position or to that level of confidence in the first place. Yeah, the, the confidence thing is, is really tricky because. There is an aspect of, you have to have some, I think, but also, like you're saying, it can quickly take you away from the best performance and the best, uh, principles of performing well, both in a game scenario, but also long term. So I think that, that Patriots Falcons example really points to that, which is also that, Kind of going back to that when I was just making, but confidence can be really deceiving in a way, you know, you get up in a game, you think, Hey, we're playing really well, we're doing all the right things. So we're just going to keep kind of doing this and it could have been due to a number of different factors and then things start to go wrong. And I guess what happens, your confidence leaves, right? And that's kind of why I don't value it super like a ton is because I'm much more interested, like you said about the pillar. There are, to me, I'm much more interested in other things. I'm much more interested in where your attention is. I'm much more interested in your ability to stay present. To stay task oriented, like those types of things to deal with. The thoughts that come into your mind, well, let's do this. Cause I think people are probably, we've introduced the topic, thrown some gasoline, lit the fire a little bit. People are probably like when the world I either they're, they're either thinking I've never even thought about this, or I really disagree with this thinking back on their own, so maybe it'd be helpful to walk through what this discussion looks like in one of your sessions and what you like, cause you started to mention some of the things. What does it look like for you to draw their attention to other things that you see as more valuable or more important to keep, uh, a more sustainable or more successful mindset? Yeah. So the first thing I want to do is define what it means. Have you ever heard what the word confidence literally means? Like the root word? No, I just like my definition. Okay. So. If you think about it, con, C O N, means with in Latin, and then fidance stands for trust. So the word confidence literally means with trust, which makes sense because things you feel confident about you trust yourself to be able to do. So I like to define what it actually is. It's not a feeling. It's a trust in what? Okay. And then so, cause I think people view confidence as this feeling it, and that's the part that comes and goes. And that's the part I'm not interested in. Right? I don't mind you being confident. In kind of stable, long term things. And I almost separate out these two concepts of you have this short term feeling. Don't care. You, you make three, three pointers in a row. You're going to feel confident. You missed five in a row. You're going to not feel confident. That happens to every single person. No matter, you know, like that's, and it's going to go up and down with your performance, but there's a second kind of type of confidence where it's much more stable. It's much more longterm, much more process oriented and be confident in that, be confident in things like your preparation. Be confident that you can stick to your routine under pressure. Be confident that you've trained your attention to be able to focus on what you want to be focused on in the moment when you need it under pressure, all those things. It's funny. That's what you should be confident in. It's funny you use the word process oriented because as you're giving that definition, all I could think is. This is essentially trusting the process or confidence in the process, not confidence in the outcome. Yes, and I think that's when you see these really confident people and athletes. That's the where it's coming from. They're not like, oh, I feel good today. They know that their process is so high level and that it's reliable. And that they're not going to overreact to, you know, the ups, the small ups and downs that happens in life. They trust that so much that yes, they have confidence. I think of someone like Steph Curry, for an example, and they're really good shooters, right? People always say shooters shoot. I think shooters are able to keep shooting even in slumps because it's not like all of a sudden they forgot how to shoot the ball or their forms completely changed, or they forgot how to get open. You know, all of those things are processes that they have. So when three or four don't go in, yeah, the outcome maybe hasn't been the same, but their process has been the same throughout. And they know that that process of how they catch, how they release, how they, you know, get to the spots they need to get to. Is exactly the same every time, whether or not it goes in is not going to change that trust in their ability to do that task. And I think that's kind of a example of that. It's a, I'm glad you brought him up because I actually like to use this example with people of, I think it was like two years ago when he was playing in the finals. It was a big, it was like game five of the NBA finals. And he went, I think, 0 for 11 from three. He didn't make a single three and he shot double digits. And I'm like, do you think that he was feeling super confident when he was over 10 on the 11th, three, probably not, but like you said, is I, I know he firmly trusts in his process and he's not going to shy away from that. He's obviously has a pretty large sample size that it's pretty good. And so that's what he can trust in. There's a lot of confidence and trust in that, but in the moment in that. And so. It's kind of, and I, to go back to what I was talking about, the process of everything I mentioned in that little monologue was action oriented, be confident in your actions, in the trainable skills, not just in this feeling, right? It's almost like, like if someone's gambling on something and they're like, oh, I have a good feeling that this team's going to win, right? That's what I'm talking about when I'm like, I am not interested in that and calling that confidence. Well, also too, I think of. Sometimes in, in games, when I was playing or still, when we go play pickup, you get into these, these states where you're playing really well. Some people will call it a flow state a little bit. You get in these states where you're, you're, you do three or four good things in a row. You're feeling really good. So you go try to do a couple more of those things and maybe you miss out or you make a mistake, lose the ball, the other team scores. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, I can't try that anymore. And that's very much what that, the fickleness of what you're describing, where it's, it's very feelings based of, Oh, am I going to take this guy on right now, or am I just going to pass the ball? And that's completely based on the last possession and what you did. Versus saying, I've mastered this move. If it's the right situation, I'm going to go for it. And if it's not the right situation, I'm going to make the smart play and not be dictated by what happened the last three times you had the ball. Yeah. One of the things that makes me most nervous as a coach or consultant, whatever you want to call it, is when I'm around athletes that are feeling too good. And I'm serious, I hate when teams or players are feeling too good. I don't mind them feeling, you know, pretty good. Because again, that's within the continuum of like, hey, I have had some success, I've built on it, but I'm also like, still paying attention to the things. That got me this when they start to get it's almost like they just think things are going to manifest Because i'm feeling good and that's where i'm like just basically that's why upsets the current sports in my opinion is because One team just feels so good about it. And the other team is completely focused And completely motivated and so you have this dichotomy which brings one team's level down and the other team or or player depending on what it is level up and then now all of a sudden it's an even game and So that's kind of where It's kind of fun. I almost try to pull people's Like not pull their confidence down but get them focused on what they actually need to be doing. This is so counterintuitive this whole discussion my mind is being blown as we're talking because we didn't do a ton of Discussion beforehand. So I actually had almost no idea what you were going to say during this episode. And so I feel like people listening to this in this moment are just, I feel like if I was listening to this first for the first time, I'd be pausing the episode right now and just trying to wrap my head around some of these ideas that you've brought up some of these principles and things you do with your clients, because I don't know, it's just so counter cultural against the grain of what people always tell you. But I think there is a lot of truth in it. And I think if people pause the episode and actually think of their own scenarios, they can see how that actually is true. But no one's Set it in succinct enough ways for them to actually process it and think about it and apply it. Right. And it's a tricky confirmation bias too, because like you said, you succeeded something, then you feel confident afterwards. And so then you, you have like, Oh, confidence is here and success is here. So it must've been the confidence. And I think that's hard to differentiate because you can't, it's really hard to go back. And remember what you felt like before you succeeded, you know? And so that's the really difficult part about it. Yeah. So, so you mentioned earlier that you take your clients from this feeling to more action oriented, process oriented things. And then you touched on a couple, can you kind of lay those out and maybe dive a little bit more into those into like the actions? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, it's going to look different for every athlete and I think probably the, the broad term that I've used and we'll focus preparation. Okay. What that looks like for every athlete is obviously completely different, but there's a physical preparation. There's, there's a mental preparation, obviously. Are you going through all the scenarios? Are you visualizing The things that you need to be preparing for and visualizing. Are you respecting your opponent or the other team? That's a huge one. If you feel great, you usually don't give enough credit to the opponent. I think, and this isn't necessarily an action, but kind of a side note on that is that Rafael Nadal was practicing at the French Open. I think last year and Jim courier the commentator for tennis channel said something so Amazing. He's like I was watching Rafael Nadal practice and he's won this tournament 14 times And he's like it seemed like the person who was least aware of Rafael Nadal's greatness was Rafael Nadal He's like he was training like he was a qualifier, you know And that to me is like that's why those types of people have such sustained greatness is because they don't rely like he Isn't like oh i'm of course he has every right to be the most confident person in any sport Especially at the french open in history No one's been more dominant in any event in sports history than ralph and odell at the french open and his preparation did not change It probably almost amped up and that's kind of what i'm talking about with like actions, right? Yeah, that's Such a good example and I think going back to your example of the upset thing and respecting your opponent. And I think this applies to really all of life and really any sport, but not. And you, you didn't necessarily say this, but I think you implied it, but not relying on past preparation either. Right. You know, past preparation that got you to a certain point gave you a certain confidence does not now prepare you for things you need to do in the present or future preparations. And you have to stay present. You have to continue to be. Action oriented and appropriately prepare for the demands of the thing that are coming up in that moment and going forward. And I think that is something that you see with these players that get confidence, the feeling in the short term, this happens in baseball all the time. I feel like people that have a short term success, especially at the plate or pitching and things go south. And then the next year they're out of the big leagues. Because I, I don't think they've been appropriately taught how to sustain success with continued preparation to get the trust in the process so that no matter what happens. Outcome wise, they can continue to do that to be successful long term. Yeah. And you're talking about kind of the lower end of it. I'll even say, what do people say? The hardest thing to do in sports is repeat as champions. Why? Cause you feel good. Is that if that was so helpful, then you would want to be the one that, you know what I mean? Like, because you should be absolutely the most confident. Yes. You've clearly, no one's more confident in the team that just won the time. Right. You've, you've proven both on the field. You know, in, in your own mind that you're the best. And so you come back the next season, theoretically, the most confident if your team, you know, if you could, obviously there's a lot of factors, but theoretically all things unchanged, you would come back the most confident. But a lot of times those teams struggle. And I think that speaks to that staying in the moment, active preparation. So, so you kind of shift, you don't necessarily, what I'm hearing from you in this conversation is not necessarily that you don't think confidence is important, but how you frame confidence, the definition of confidence. And what that leads to is really, really important. Yeah. And really the biggest thing I probably have to do, and probably why I'm, it's sounding a little bit one sided toward like, Hey, confidence isn't that important is because people are so ingrained with this idea that how important it is and I need it. And how do I build it? And I need to feel good. I need to feel good. I need to feel good. And I'm like, no, you do not. Right. You, you clearly come across this a lot because. You keep hammering this point. So this, this clearly is something that comes up all the time. Well, because think about it. And you work with tennis players. So I can imagine this is just rampant. But think about it. When you, when you don't feel good, it's uncomfortable. And so you're like, I want to feel good. Of course you do. But that's not also the most helpful place to be in. Um, yeah. So. I, I feel like I'm really pushing you, but I. I feel like if I was listening and being like, what am I going to take away from this episode? I want to keep you, I keep cutting, maybe you keep cutting yourself off with examples, but you talked about preparation. So visualization. You know, doing the practice, are there any other skills that you work on with people? So here's, if you're like, maybe someone's listening to this and like, I have no confidence in this particular context and I need to build it. And I would say, yes, going back to the continuum. Yes. If you are on the bottom end of the spectrum, you need to have some level of trust in your abilities. And so I'll start there. What would I do with someone in that situation? Well, one of the most powerful things that a lot of researchers come out lately with is either watching video of yourself succeed in the past. So if that's available to you, that's been really cool. There's a I may have brought this up in a previous episode, Mike McDaniel and Tua Taguay Loa did that. Saw a couple of research articles recently of other coaches doing that with players and it being highly successful. So there's a lot of evidence that suggests watching yourself succeed helps you kind of remember like, hey, I'm actually pretty good. Okay. The other way to do that would be to. Think about or visualize your best performances and reflect on them. Spend time um, being with those and what led to those good performances. So again, this is pulling someone out of the, out of the depths of a lack of confidence. So that is necessary at times. And so that's where I go with that is looking at your successes and what led to them. And then all, and then going back to the same thing, I don't think it actually changes a whole lot after that, which is what are the actions. That you feel like are going to give you the best chance to succeed. And you know, whoever it is, we'll be like this, this, and this, you know, if I focus really well, if I stick to my routine, if I, you know, have a clear strategy and game plan and execute it the best I can and just stay present. Okay. If that you feel like that's the best going to give you the best chance to succeed, let's focus on that. It doesn't matter if you're not feeling super confident in this moment, because you can still do those things, whether you're feeling confident or not. Right. You can look at those things that you've done and be like. I trust in this skill because I've done these things. So whether or not, when I walk on the court or walk on the field, I'm feeling that in that moment, I can pull these actions to mind to at least trust when I'm about to go do or attempt to go do. Yeah. So, so on, on that end, that's, that's some of the ways. All right, I'm going to switch because I think there are some runners that listen to this and I'm a runner and, and I feel like I'm almost dealing with this in my own mind as I start to try to run. A lot faster. So, and I know you work with the cross country team. So I'm curious, is there anything specific or anything? And if no, you can just say no, cause I'm just kind of throwing this at you. Last minute, but are there any things with those more endurance based sports that you think have been really helpful for people? Cause it's kind of a totally different context. I mean, a lot of the same principles. But you are, you're a lot more competing against yourself in a clock. So it's a little bit different context for confidence. Anything you've seen that those runners have really struggled with or things that really helped them? No, that's a good question. And to your point, there is nuance to every context. So I don't want to, with, you know, overarching principles probably over everything. Of course, I'm just catering to our, our families. So, I mean, I think with running, you look at one, do I have the perceived ability to complete the course, you know, in a time that I want to, right. That that's fundamentally what the question is that you're, whether conscious or subconscious. Um, and I think where I would probably go with this is if you're struggling with that question, which would be a lot, you'd probably be feeling the lack of, that's probably where it's coming from. Just like, I don't know if I have whatever it is, the skills, the tools, the endurance yet to achieve what I want to, or complete this, then I would look at it more from a place of like curiosity and openness of like, okay, let's just find out and be honest with yourself about where you're at. And I, I think probably what would happen in that would. Take some of the pressure off of, I need to do this versus like, let's see where I'm at and then after that, if I'm not where I maybe want to be, let's think about ways to improve upon it. sO I don't know if that's like directly related to, I think that would kind of maybe indirectly affect. The, the stress that one was feeling, something I see a lot on the social media of runners, AKA Strava is, is that people will be building up for a half marathon or a marathon or an ultra, and they will have two or three bad workouts in a row. And you can see, I mean, he's one guy in particular, but you'll see these people title their workout and then they'll put comments a lot of times. If they're really intuitive, kind of how they were feeling. What their mind was doing, how they're feeling about how they're going to perform. And I always think that gives you so much insight into kind of this topic, because you go have one bad workout. All right, you just toss it out the window and you start stacking two or three. It can be really easy to, to totally lose that feeling of confidence that you probably had as you were building up. And it can be hard and running because you don't necessarily get the chance to go all out except at the race. So you're not, a lot of times you're, you're doing these workouts that kind of indicate your fitness, but not necessarily in totality. So I think that can really become a struggle when you miss a couple of those workouts where maybe four weeks. And in my mind, I'm saying, well, if you did something similar four weeks ago and now you're struggling, okay, maybe look at those other factors that we've talked about, sleep, nutrition, recovery. But at the same time, I had this happen a couple of weeks ago, I missed two or three harder runs in a row, or I was just feeling off, cut one short. I was like, I was like, am I going to be able to build up enough for the next 20 weeks to run this fast at Boston for a whole freaking marathon? Right. So it starts to, yeah. It starts to kind of play on your mind a little bit. Yeah, it's, and I think it'll be a fun journey at kind of after having this conversation and then seeing where that goes leading up to Boston and into it. For you as kind of like a live example, but also one thing I was thinking about as you were talking is the ability to, I don't know, this is kind of a fancy term, but like internal locus of control versus external locus, basically. Okay. I have three bad workouts in a row. What am I mentally appraising that to is that cause where I think people who have confidence issues would be like. I'm not good enough, right? They, they bring the, the fault onto themselves of like, it must be me. But what you see actually with a lot of higher level people is they, it sounds like they're almost excuse makers. Cause they'll be like, Oh, I didn't like sleep well enough, or I didn't, they'll just make something up or like, you know, in like, I don't think that's always the right thing to do, but in certain contexts, it can keep your kind of belief up because you're like, Oh, I didn't run well. It's not cause I suck. It's just cause the conditions weren't great today. Or I, you know, I've had a tough week mentally and. Whatever it is, and that can kind of help maintain some of that through difficult stretches, right? Cause it was funny. I ran a 10 K tempo probably three or four weeks ago and cut down basically from six minute pace, all the way down to five 30 pace. And at the end, I remember feeling like, okay, that was hard, but I felt really good this past Saturday, I go and do a little further, but I could just, I could not get below five 50 pace and granted it was a hundred percent humidity. And so as you're saying the excuse thing, I kind of walked away from that. I was like, it didn't run as fast, but at the same time, the conditions were absolutely, I was basically running through water vapor. It was so foggy because it was so humid. So I was kind of like, I'm proud of that. You know, I, I stuck it out mentally. And so, but I think it would be easy for people to look at the pace and be like, well, I didn't hit the same splits. It must be getting less fit or not getting more fit, even though it's been four weeks. Kind of freak out confidence is gone. And the thing in running is the perceived exertion matters so much. So it doesn't matter if you can hit it. If it starts to feel hard or your brain starts to put the panic button, the survival mode on too early, it makes it a lot harder to push to where you need to go in these races. So confidence to me and running a lot of times is having the ability. To appropriately, like we've talked about in other episodes, you got to be able to stop that panic button and keep it, it in the appropriate place. And I think as you lose confidence in running that panic button starts to move. Yeah. It speeds it up, speeds it up. Exactly. Well, it's good questions. You know, and I'll, I'll wrap up my end of things with this. I, I too understand, like it's. We kind of talked about the, the, where I go with this and kind of some of my perspectives are very earth shattering for some people some, a lot of times in a productive way, but some people really have a hard time, um, unlatching from these, these beliefs. And so what I like to tell people is people don't come to me usually, unless they're having issues in the first place. So it's like. There's generally a willingness to, to change an approach to something. So if you're there, if you're listening to this and you're like, I completely disagree with everything you said, but you're having success doing what you're doing, then I would say, you know, that's fine. I would only suggest if you're not, maybe then maybe looking into some alternate perspectives on some of the beliefs you're holding onto. So. And I think that's really the goal of this podcast from the beginning. So I think this has been a great episode to kind of, kind of do that, kind of untangle some of the web of some of the things that we hear and, and coaches often just repeat, the tropes or the common phrases or the, the things that they've heard for a hundred years without ever actually thinking about what they're saying. And so most of us have probably heard these things from our youth baseball coach or our high school. Soccer coach or our high school basketball, these things have been said, but there's really no nuance to it. And there's no, even from their perspective, perspective, a lot of times no understanding of what they're saying. So I find these conversations very helpful for just kind of pulling back the curtain a little bit and saying, what, what's actually going on back there. And is there something that could actually help us perform better in all areas of life? So I appreciate your perspective on that. I feel like I'm always learning a lot from these conversations and that's half the reason I'm, I'm on this podcast. Yeah, this was a fun one to do for sure. And definitely got a deep dive into one of the popular topics in my field. So it was fun for me. Well, if you enjoyed this episode or previous episodes, please leave us a rating, a review on Spotify or Apple. We appreciate you guys listening and we will see you guys next week. Bye. Hope you enjoyed.