Confident Yet?

Some people have an arrogantly high confidence about themselves, and others have a painfully low confidence to themselves. Personally, I have a confidence that wavers and changes. Some days, some weeks, my confidence is at a high, but other days my confidence diminishes. My confidence comes from myself and from how others view me. It’s one thing to boost yourself up and it’s another to have someone else boosting you up, increasing your level of confidence. With saying that, the opposite is true as well. When people bring us down, that tends to cause us to doubt ourselves, decreasing our confidence level. Though we say we shouldn’t care about what others think about us most do, or at least I do.

Through basketball, my confidence level has been ridiculed, dissected and has become intangible to me at times. In both sports and academics, to lose your confidence and to not know why or where it went is one of the worst feelings in the world. To be asked, “What happened to you, you use to be such a confident player,” will drive any athlete insane. To perform at a level of play that is below what you know you are capable of is painful for others to watch and painful to experience as a student athlete on and off the court. All we have now days is out confidence, so to lose it is scary to say the least. All the studying, all the tutorials mean nothing if you are not secure enough to sit down and truly believe that you can ace the test. So when we have a high confidence level how do we keep it; more importantly when we lose our confidence where do we go? For me it is as simple as believing the words that I say to myself. When my confidence is low I usually tell myself, “I can do this,” or “You’ve prepared yourself for this.” The trick is not to just say the words, but to actually believe the words that I tell myself! How do we know it works? For me when I truly believe the words I tell myself with every last fiber in my body, that’s when it will work. When I see my game or academics turn around for success that is my sign that I’m back! For any athlete or good student a loss of confident, just means we have to refocus and work harder. It means that we have to remember why and how we got to where we are today and remember that when push comes to shove we are good enough to succeed.