Confidence

            Recently I’ve been getting plenty of chances to play basketball. I love the sport and really enjoy playing it, but my skills (or lack thereof) sometimes leave me frustrated. Not that I’m terrible, but I haven’t played a ton of competitive basketball in my life. This past week I’ve learned how important confidence is on the court.

Earlier this week, I was playing in a game with one of my friends who first saw me play during my mission. For whatever reason, he came off of the mission with the impression that I was a really good outside shooter. Consequently, he gave me the ball a lot and was always encouraging me to shoot it. Inspired by his confidence, I was confident, and I shot a lot. Incredibly, the shots went in! I played very well and had a blast the entire time.

Contrasting that experience is the chance I had to play with another group of my friends. One of these friends was an All-state basketball player, and I didn’t even make the high school JV squad, so his opinion of my game perhaps wasn’t too high. We were playing on the same team, and there were a few times when he yelled at me after I made a bad play. Consequently, I started getting fearful, and instead of being confident in my skills, I doubted my own ability to make even the most basic shots. And this spiraled into a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I did indeed end up missing a ton of really wide-open and easy shots. My play could only be described as "terrible".

What this experience taught me is that confidence impacts performance. And I don’t think that principle is limited to basketball, or even sports in general. As we are confident in ourselves, we take more risks and we experiment. We will put our full effort into important decisions and actions. On the other hand, when we are fearful, we tend to pull back and withdraw when key opportunities arise. As the saying goes, “both he who says ‘I can’ and he who says ‘I can’t’ both end up right.” Thus it is important to always try to stay confident, and help others do the same. After seeing firsthand the value of confidence, I’m determined to try to do a better job to help those around me stay confident. Both of my friends had a big impact on my performance, and I’m determined to be that friend who compliments others and puts his trust in others, so that they can achieve their full potential.