I started coaching basketball with elementary age kids in a church league. Later I became the girls coach at a charter school working with middle school girls. I needed to step up my game so I went to the best resource I had, my old college roommate Bill. He had coached at the high school and college level. He was a great help in a variety of ways from practice tips to game strategies. I also started asking questions of his friend Brian, another coach, who I met on a trip we made to Fenway Park.
They both gave me terrific advice. However, Brian also told me something that has transferred to my non-basketball life. He said coaches always get criticism, so be ready for it. Use all the resources you can to get better. Then he dropped this pearl of wisdom, “Learn from others, but trust yourself.”
Being a five on the enneagram, the investigator, learning from others has been easy, but trusting myself was elusive. I spent a good deal of my life looking for the answer in a lot of different places. This is what I’ve come up with.
Honesty is key in developing trust. If I’m going to trust myself, I also have to be honest with myself. In Do the Best You Can I talked about focusing on the positive and not dwelling on the negative about myself. That’s ok if I balance it with being objective. Trusting myself starts by looking at all parts of me. If I pretend the faults aren’t there then trust never has a chance. If I have the courage to look at all of me, that plants the seed of trusting myself.
The next important thing for self-trust is to be consistent. In my Trust post I talked about learning dependability from my dad. He was the same person every day. When he told me something I could count on it. If I am reliable in the face of changing circumstances that helps the seed of trust grow inside me.
Preparation is the fertilizer that can help trust thrive. I would tell my players we can’t be sure we will win a game, but we can be sure we are well prepared by focusing at practice. Then win are loose we are less likely to second guess ourselves. Success is not always something I can control. I can control if I am prepared. For me the sting of disappointment is less if I know I’ve done all I can, especially in my preparation.
The final ingredient to trusting myself came from my statement to my players. I said in The Coin of the Realm the first statement to my players every year was “Your value as a person has absolutely positively nothing to do with how well you play basketball. You are infinitely more important than that.” If that is true for them it also applies to me and the things I do. I discovered that my value has nothing to do with how well I coach. It comes from inside me.
In the same post I also mentioned an article by George Schultz regarding trust. He said when trust is in the room good things happen. When it isn’t they don’t. The rest are just details. I’ve know most of my life that is true when it comes to trust between people. It’s true about trusting myself too. I know that being honest, consistent and prepared promotes self-trust. I also know where my real value comes from. That allows good things can happen. The rest are just details.
May you have enough today, one moment at a time.
THIS HELPED ME 