Where does confidence come from?

“Imagine how we would be if we were less afraid.”

― Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

We’ve established that I played volleyball for a long time. The majority of that time, I struggled with confidence. I started my longtime battle when I went to Penn State. I changed environments and positions, and was immediately unsure of myself and my ability to deliver what was required of me. I didn’t feel like I was technically trained enough, I didn’t have the same pedigree as others, and quickly lots of fears and doubts entered in. I also grew up in a family of coaches and teachers, whose job description was in part to be critical and point out errors or weaknesses so that their players or students could get better. Being self-critical felt like a strength, and overconfidence or cockiness was a flaw in my mind. At Penn State where the standard and goals were set high, add in my comparisons, self-criticism, and avoidance of cockiness, it is to no surprise that I ended up in a struggle with confidence.

I remember having conversations with the people who loved and cared about me, they could see that I was struggling with believing in myself. They encouraged me to stand tall, to stand up to any harsh criticism, to just believe in myself because I was doing great things on the court. We were highly successful during these times, and I was starting and playing and objectively doing well. If I could just see that I had the right to be more confident, or if I could just believe in myself the way that others did. I saw other players have confidence–or at least they looked more confident than I felt–and I looked up to them, aspired to be them, but had really no idea how to make that happen for myself.

“Isn't it odd. We can only see our outsides, but nearly everything happens on the inside”

― Charlie Mackesy, The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

Four years at Penn State, four Big Ten Championships, three National Championships, becoming an All-American, and I still was struggling with self-doubt. I felt like because I was happy that the team was successful and that we (and I) on paper were doing so well, I didn’t have the right to talk about not feeling confident.

I joined the National Team after college. I was really excited because I wanted to be there, but I was also unsure of how it would go. Was I good enough? Another new environment, higher level and standards, getting to play with people I had looked up to, people that I had watched growing up. Did I have the right to be in the gym with them? I wasn’t sure, I was desperately wanting to be there, and at the same time, I was scared that I wasn’t worthy.

I wasn’t a great learner when I first joined, because I thought doing something different or new might lead to mistakes and mistakes would expose me as the fraud that I felt I was in the gym. I didn’t want to take risks, for fear of a bad outcome. My only area where I felt confident was when we competed. I figured I wasn’t technically sound, and I struggled when that was put on display, but when it came to 6 on 6, straight up competition, I knew I could help my team win. I could pull things out of my teammates, I could understand the strategy of match ups, and I could set the right people in the right moment. That was the space where I felt the most like myself.

Those first three years on the National team, leading into the London Olympic games were challenging. The culture wasn’t at its best, and there was no space to really work through personal struggles. I certainly didn’t feel safe enough to voice my personal concerns or worries with the team as a whole, with some teammates I felt safe enough, and they did their best, similar to when I was a Penn State, to try to help me. ‘I wish you could just be more confident’, ‘Fake it till you make it’ ‘You’re doing great, you have every right to feel confident’. These were things that were said, and all so well intentioned, but even though my rational mind understood what they were saying, and I could see that I had people that believed in me, still, in the toughest moments, I felt like I wasn’t good enough.

“Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It's a vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.” - Michelle Obama

I didn’t make the London team. Some people were surprised by that–I wasn’t. I couldn’t imagine going to pinnacle event in my sport, the highest level of volleyball being played, and not believing in myself so much that it impacted my ability to perform. I wasn’t ready, and even though I understood that logically, it still hurt. After I had time to process, I decided that I never wanted to feel like that again, so I would try again and actively find a way to never feel like that again.

This is the time when Dr. Mike came to work without our team. He presented what I thought was a logical and very well researched approach to psychology. It wasn’t fluffy and it really resonated with me. He presented topics, defined them, and then explained how we could actually go out and train them. You can bet that my ears perked up when the topic was confidence. He asked us, ‘Where does confidence come from?’. Our responses ranged from ‘Belief in yourself’, ‘Past success’, and more things along those lines. We probably got close to the answer, but nobody outright got it. He said it comes from positive self talk, the way that we talk to ourselves, the things we tell ourselves about our ability to go do hard things.

“Remember that positive self-talk is an intrinsic part of a healthy mind.” ― Asa Don Brown

I had heard people talk about positive self-talk before, and I was certainly aware that the quality of my thoughts was pretty terrible, but I didn’t realize how connected to confidence that was. And I for sure wasn’t aware of the mechanisms that would help me notice these thoughts more often and work toward replacing them in a credible way. He gave that to the team, and to me, and I went to work.

I got to play in the Olympic games in Rio four years later. I was a better volleyball player because I started to become a better learner. I came to understand that mistakes are great information to learn from rather than being a measure of my value. I could take risks more often because instead of being scared of doing something where the outcome was unknown, there was an opportunity to do something hard that would help me have credibility around the way I talked to myself in other equally hard moments. I started noticing those negative thoughts creeping in sooner, and I could work towards replacing them with something more productive. The work I put in on training the skill of confidence, really made a huge difference in how I showed up for myself and my teammates, and it made the overall experience at the Olympic games richer.

I still work on confidence today. I have some areas of my life that I can recognize where I have more and other areas where I have less. Now I have the tools to work on the areas where I don’t. Have you ever struggled or are currently struggling with confidence in some aspect of your life? Comment below or reach out to me directly. I’d be happy to share those mechanisms with anyone who is interested in training confidence as a skill that they can get better at!