Sooner or later every patient will ask me: “How do I become confident in myself?” It may be an athlete who realizes they are anxious and are giving up leads. Perhaps its a business person stuck in a low-paying job but lacks the confidence to quit and find a better one. Maybe a young patient is starting to date and doesn’t have the confidence to ask that pretty girl to the prom.
Often when they ask this question, it suggests to me that the patient actually hopes I have a magic wand and if I wave it in front of them, “Voila!” confidence will magically appear. Unfortunately, confidence, courage, and self-belief does not work that way.
In the world of sports, lack of confidence produces choking and in real life a lack of confidence produces avoidance and procrastination, which can last a lifetime if you don’t do something about it. But exactly how do you find confidence?
Let me tell you a story which reveals the truth about confidence and self-belief.
One of my patients is a world class golfer with one of the best short games on earth. I have watched him sink 5-foot putts on the 18th hole to win golf tournaments. He has unflinching confidence in his short game and most television commentators explain this by saying he has “natural ability.” But the reality is that he practices his putting for about four hours a day, every day. His confidence has been earned and not given to him.
This works the same way in the world of business. The successful entrepreneur has earned his or her confidence and it did not come naturally or easily.
The maker of the McDonald’s dynasty was Ray Kroc, who for years was a lowly unsuccessful salesman, hawking malted-making machines to hamburger joints. But when he discovered the original McDonald’s out in California, it was love at first sight and with unrelenting tenacity, patience and hard work he took it over and created a global dynasty.
There is a saying in South Korea that the only difference between a winner and a loser is that the loser gave up too soon and the winner did not.
Bill Parcels, the former coach of the Dallas Cowboys, had the ability to turn organizations around and used the following true story to teach his players about the difference between a coward and a hero.
He opens every training camp by using the story of two boxers. The largely unskilled Vito Antuofermo was facing the hard-hitting and more talented Cyclone Hart. However, Antuofermo defeated Hart in the fifth round. After the fight both fighters went back to their makeshift locker rooms with only a thin curtain between them.
Hart was quiet and he overheard Antuofermo say: “He hit me so hard with his left hook to my body that I thought of quitting in the second round. I felt the same way in the fourth round, but then he stopped hitting me.”
With this Hart started crying and could not stop because he realized that he could have won the fight if he had just kept hitting Antuofermo. This story is a parable about deciding not to quit. As the Korean saying goes, the only difference between the loser and the winner is that the loser quit too soon.
Another good example of how to get confidence is the story of the wildly successful life of Jerry Seinfeld, the genius behind “The Jerry Seinfeld Show” and “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.”
I will grant you that Seinfeld has a gift with language, but the truth is that his confident and cool onstage presence is earned by working endlessly on the material and refining it night after night.
He said he will work on one joke for many months before it’s right. And when asked about how he creates his jokes, he said that during every conversation he has he is looking for the joke in it. In other words, he never stops working and so when he goes on stage, he is confident, calm and controlled.
Whenever I mentor my interns, they will often ask me how do they become successful and break into the field of sports psychology and I always tell them the same story. I say to them: “Look out this window and look at this parking lot. At 7 a.m. the parking lot is empty and I am the first to arrive. At 8 p.m. the parking lot is again empty and I am the last car to leave. That’s the secret to success.”
This column I began with the question of how to find confidence but ended with the answer found in perseverance, resilience, hard work and a never-say-die attitude.
This goes for anything in life. If you want to achieve confidence in sports, it will take will power, hard work and perseverance. If you want to take the prettiest girl in the school to the prom and then go on to marry her, it will take will power, hard work and perseverance. If you want to get a better job, it will take will power, hard work and perseverance.
In other words to find confidence and self-belief there is no magic wand, no magic pill and and no magic bottle that can be purchased.
As John Houseman once said in that famous Smith Barney commercial: “Smith Barney. They make money the old-fashioned way, they earn it.” You, too, can find confidence and the sweet taste of success in whatever field you choose. All you have to do is earn it.
