Be Humbly Confident
As a lot of you know, I recently surpassed the one year anniversary of rupturing my achilles. Those of you who have followed that journey know that I went through a lot of lows over the last year, and that the rehab was a grind. When going through trials like this in my life, I’ve found that I think the deepest, and really look at myself with a different perspective. My brain was constantly going against itself, second guessing every move I made because everything was so hard. The reason I’m able to write this blog is because of those trials, deep thoughts and realizations about myself and my life. I know what got me through it, what worked and what didn’t work. Today, I want to talk about something that I’ve more recently realized was the most important part of getting myself to the finish line of last year. Last spring in my “wrap up” meeting with my coaches, the biggest thing I was encouraged to do was find a way to be confident, and not be so hard on myself. Obviously aside from the physical aspect of getting back into basketball shape, this was the most challenging part of my comeback. I have grown up taking a lot of pride in being humble, but believe it or not this was holding me back. That sounds crazy, but keep reading, and I promise you’ll leave with a whole new knowledge of what it means to be humbly confident.
I shared a quote on the Little Wins Big Victory instagram last week that said “Confidence isn’t walking into a room and thinking you are better than everyone. It’s walking into a room and not having to compare yourself to anyone at all.”(via @the.sattva.life instagram). I read this and my jaw literally hit the floor. It’s so good! It’s exactly what I’d been struggling with but I just couldn’t put it into words. I’ve talked about finding balance in almost every one of my posts so far, and I’m going to bring it up again. I’ve known athletes and had teammates who take their confidence to an extreme and can be very hard to handle. These people seem to have everything down, and are very successful, but sometimes come off as arrogant, or give off an “I’m better than everyone” type of vibe. Then there’s the complete opposite. The athlete who works hard, and does everything right behind the scenes, but really struggles when forced to do it in front of an audience or even their own team. They can’t let go of things that may not have gone well, and stress about the next practice or game 24/7. I lean more towards that second athlete. I am so guilty of comparing myself to everyone, and letting it dictate my mindset. I’m a people pleaser who wants to keep everyone happy, even if it means giving up my own happiness sometimes, and am hesitant to do things to their full potential. The balance is being confident without involving anyone else, and believing in yourself in a humble way. When I realized how much this was affecting me on the court, everything changed for the better.
“Confidence isn’t walking into a room and thinking you are better than everyone. It’s walking into a room and not having to compare yourself to anyone at all.”
About a week ago we had our first preseason practice, and my emotions were running so high. It was the first preseason practice last year that my injury occurred, so I definitely had that in the back of my mind. I was so anxious all morning, I couldn’t sit still, and practice time couldn’t come soon enough. I didn’t even know if what I was feeling was excitement, nerves, or stress. One thing I did know is that I was lacking confidence, and expecting a bad practice. Over summer, I had done all the work to prepare for that moment. I was feeling physically great and had no reason to doubt myself, but there I was sitting in my final class last Monday completely second guessing everything, and not thinking I was good enough. If you know anything about the mental aspect of sports, you know I had already set myself up for a bad practice that day with that mindset. Coaches, mental health professionals and teachers preach all the time how important confidence is when doing anything in life. I never really felt the need to work on it because I never thought I needed more confidence. Confidence to me was saying things like “I’m going to score 30 points tonight,” or “I’m a great basketball player.” Those are really basic examples, but I thought confidence was a basic thing. I wanted to be humble and not draw attention to myself in that way. I associated confidence with being cocky, which is so not the truth. Go back and read that quote again. THAT is confidence. The ability to be proud of yourself and be where your feet are regardless of what everyone else thinks or does. This was the most evident for me last spring when I was just getting back into practice after my injury. I was beating myself up over an off day when I literally hadn’t played basketball in a year and everyone else had been playing for the last 9 months straight. I walked into the gym and compared myself to my teammates instead of being proud of myself for even being able to step foot in the gym.
Fast forward two days after my first practice. I calmed down about basketball, and was feeling good leading up to practice. Ironically, the class I have right before practice is called “sport psychology” and that day we were talking about stress and performance anxiety. I don’t know what caused the change in my brain, but I went into that practice with confidence and a belief in myself. I wanted to have fun, because that’s the point in sports, right? That practice, everything seemed better, I played well, and I felt like my old self. It felt like a breath of fresh air. Simply because I believed in myself and stopped thinking about others. This confidence had nothing to do with any specific goal or practical task. It had everything to do with waking up that day and only focusing on my goals, and believing that I have what it takes to win the day.
Sports rely so much on having a good mindset which involves so many different feelings and thoughts. So often we let our emotions get in the way of our full potential. It IS possible to be confident while keeping a humble attitude. And it IS possible to get through those moments where self-doubt is all that’s in your head. It’s always going to be a work in progress and never perfect, but if you’re confident in what you do, and believe in yourself, that’s already a win.
