There is always a myriad of behaviors one can witness at swim meets which are caused by the lack of self-confidence. All of which result in performances that are far below the potential of the athletes.
To address this and help my athletes build their self-confidence, I’ve developed stories and guided talks to progressively bring them to understand how self-confidence work and how they can take very concrete actions to increase it, to make it grow.
For many months and even years for some, athletes have worked with the stories of the little angel and of the little devil on their shoulders. These stories introduce gently the athletes to the idea that self-confidence is something that they control.
Below is the talk I have with my swimmers when I feel they’re ready to take full ownership of the development of their own self-confidence. I feel they are ready when they start voicing in their own words, their desire to have or to have more confidence. Usually, this starts happening when they’re teenagers.
I sit them down before practice and first ask them to tell me what self-confidence is. I encourage everyone to share something.
“Awesome! Lots of great ways to look at self-confidence. Before we continue, I want to make a distinction between two kinds of self-confidence. One kind is the kind of the Champions and the other is the kind of the fool.”
I continue by writing on the board behind me:
“The fool seeks approval in the onlookers’ eyes and when he’s got it, he feels self-confident. The Champion believes in the evidence he’s/she’s created and feels humble.”
After reading it out loud and giving them time to think about it I ask:
“What does that mean seeking approval in the onlookers’ eyes?”
One boy raises his hand. “It means if people approve of what we’re doing, we feel confident.” Smiling knowing he had a great answer.
Everyone was silent and paying attention, they were interested.
“Kind of like, if my mom and all my friends think and believe I can do it, I’m sure I can do it?” I asked pretending I’m a swimmer thinking out loud.
Seeing they were considering what I had just said, I continued with:
“So, what happens when people don’t approve?” I asked to get them to see the point I wanted to make.
The same boy answered: “We don’t feel self-confidence!”
“Is this confidence in the self or confidence in what people think of us?” I asked encouraging them to think about it.
They could see how although it may appear at first as self-confidence, it isn’t since it relies on something external to the self.
“How could it be SELF-confidence when it depends on what other people think? Now let’s look together at what real self-confidence is; believing in the evidence we’ve created and feeling humble. First what does evidence mean here?”
Sophia who had been listening attentively from the beginning answered: “The things we do, our actions regardless of what they are. Anytime we do something, it’s evidence, right?”
I confirmed it was a great way to explain it and added: “That’s right, all our actions, whatever they are, create evidence. There are no exceptions to this. Everything we say, everything we do and even everything we think to our self becomes evidence.”
Then I asked Sophia again: “And what does it mean to believe in the evidence we’ve created?”
Other kids had their hands up in the air but I wanted to wait and see what Sophia would say.
“It means because of the things we’ve done, the evidence, we know we can do it. If the evidence is not enough to make us believe we can do it, then we don’t have self-confidence cause we don’t know if we can do it or not.” She said kind of thinking out loud.
“Very good!” I said enthusiastically and impressed with her answer. The swimmers were following.
“So, what about feeling humble? Where does that come from?” I asked them in a soft challenging tone.
Gary on the left was the first to raise his hand. “It’s like if you’re not humble, it’s because you’re too sure of yourself.”
“Like over-confident?” I asked him.
“Yes, that’s it!” He answered happily.
“So even though you believe the evidence you’ve created supports your quest, you remain humble because you remember there is always a possibility it won’t go as planned. You remember that no matter how good your best shot at something is, the outcome of your best shot ALWAYS remains in the hands of fate and destiny.”
The idea that of “all we have is our best shot” and that “the outcome is never fully under our control” is something I’ve introduced and reinforced with the swimmers for many months already.
“The reason why we’re talking about this today is because I believe you have reached the stage where it is time for me to show you how you can take ownership of your self-confidence. Self-confidence is like a muscle you can grow for yourself!” I said to explain the purpose of our talk.
“There are two things you can do to grow your self-confidence. The first one is to create the type of evidence that supports your quest. For example, if you want to swim the 200 free under 2 minutes and in practice you never swim faster than 35 per 50, then you’re creating evidence but your evidence doesn’t support breaking the two minutes. It supports swimming 2:20!”
“Think about it, how hard would it be to believe you can go under 2 minutes if all you do in practice is hold 35’s? If instead you were to consistently swim below 30 in those 50’s, then your evidence would support your quest and it would make it much easier for you to believe you can break the 2 minutes. You see how this works?”
I could see in their eyes they were following.
“How do we feel when our evidence doesn’t support our quest, when we don’t believe the evidence we’ve created is sufficient?” I asked the group.
Ken in the back raised his hand and answered: “I think it’s called anxiety.”
“Absolutely, any time you feel anxious, you need to examine the relationship between your evidence and your quest. You’re likely to find a big gap there. The bigger the gap, the more anxious you feel.”
Robert had his hand up for a while and seemed to be really wanting to share something with the group.
“It’s like the voice of the angel on our shoulder, the more evidence we have that supports our quest, the louder and clearer we can hear the voice of the angel telling us that we can do it.”
He was referring to the story of the little angel. They have been working with this story for a few years already.
“Yes that’s exactly it! The little angel on our shoulder is the voice of our self-confidence. The more supportive of your quest the evidence you made is, the louder, clearer the voice of your angel will be.”
“Can anyone refresh my memory and tell me how the evidence supporting our quest is created?” I asked wanting to help them connect the dots between today’s talk and the story of the little angel.
Melissa had not shared much so far so I asked her what she was thinking.
“I think it’s when you resist the temptation of choosing the easy way, the comfortable way.” She said wondering what I would say after her.
“That’s great! Umm, do you have a personal example you can share?”
After a short pause for her to think, she said: “My target in the 200 free is 36. Just last week in our race pace set, I was having a challenge doing it. My little devil was tricking me into believing I was too tired that day to hit my target. I was holding 38’s and sometimes even 39’s. Between reps, I heard coach telling Jack to fight what his little devil was telling him and to choose the hard way. This helped me realize what was going on for me and somehow I decided to refuse to believe I was too tired to hit my targets. From then on, I was able to swim faster and almost hit my target right on. I decided to choose the hard way and because of that, the evidence I created was much more supportive of my quest than earlier in the set.”
While she was speaking, I could see many swimmers could relate to what she was sharing so clearly and with authenticity.
“Thank you Melissa, that was awesome for you to share with us. I’m sure we can all relate to that.”
Then I continued: “The other way to grow your self-confidence is by managing your quest. If you want to go below 2 minutes and your best time is 2:08, it’s not going to be easy to believe you can do it if in practice you’re consistently holding 31’s. The evidence you’re creating supports going 2:04 but not yet 2:00. By setting your quest to 2:04 instead of 2:00, you’ve increased significantly your odds at achieving what you’ve set out to do, because it is much easier to believe you can go 2:04 than under 2 minutes with the evidence you’ve created. 2:04 is only a step towards 1:59. When you believe, when you’re sure you’ve got what it takes to do something, that’s when you have self-confidence.”
“If you want to improve your self-confidence you can swim better in practice to create the evidence that will support your quest and you can also create little steps in the direction of your big quest to make it more manageable.” I reiterated.
One boy in the front couldn’t help but speak out loud the realization he just had: “Coach, that’s the story of Brutus and Joe Ramen, isn’t it?” All proud of having figured that out.
The story of Brutus and Joe Ramen was also introduced to the swimmers many months prior.
“Yes, Sam, that’s it. Brutus shows his ugly face when our evidence doesn’t support our quest, when we can’t believe our evidence is sufficient. The greater the divide between what our evidence supports and our quest, the meaner, bigger and stronger Brutus becomes until he’s so big there’s nothing anyone could do but be crushed under his weight.”
The swimmers were attentive because they could see that the story, they knew well, of Joe Ramen and Brutus had all along been one to help them grow their self-confidence.
“In the context of what I’ve told you today, what happens when you manage your Brutus?”
“We manage Brutus by breaking down our goal into smaller goals.” Started Jenny.
“When we do that, it makes the gap between what our evidence can support and our bigger quest, smaller, it makes it easier to believe we can do it. And because of that we don’t feel the pressure of Brutus weighing on us, the anxiety. It makes us confident that we can at least do that much!” She continued speaking as she was figuring it out.
“When we are confident that we can at least do this much, it is self-confidence!” I said as one at a time, each swimmer was catching up in their realizations.
“It seems like we reached some new understandings today in regards to self-confidence and what will make the difference, as always, is the actions you will take from here on.”
“Just remember your self-confidence is your response-ability, not that of the onlookers!”
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Having had this conversation with the swimmers, helps me give them, as the opportunities present themselves, concrete, tangible feedback that they can relate to at an experiential level.
Over time, and with frequent feedback, the swimmers will become more proficient in understanding and managing the relationship between their evidence and quest, giving them the ability to direct the growth of their self-confidence.
As I continue to work with them over the years, I slowly steer them towards realizing that the ultimate self-confidence there is, is when all the evidence you need is simply the evidence that you can, anytime, anywhere and under any circumstances, simply give your best shot at whatever you may be doing, whatever the outcome may turn out to be.
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