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  • In my past life as a soccer coach,

  • once you won a national championship,

  • everyone wants to come play for you.

  • Really not true.

  • Once you paid them $ 25,000 a year in scholarships,

  • everybody wants to come play for you.

  • And parents would always come to me and they'd say:

  • "Okay, my son or my daughter wants to come play at your university,

  • what is it that we have to do?

  • You know, what are you looking for?"

  • And being the Socratic professor that I am,

  • I say, well, what does your son or daughter do?

  • What do they do really well that we'd be interested in?

  • And typically their answers are, well, they've got great vision.

  • They're really good.

  • They can see the entire field.

  • Or, my daughter is the fastest player, there's nobody that can beat her.

  • Or, my son's got a great left-footer.

  • Really great in the air and can hit every ball.

  • I'm like: "Yeah, not bad;

  • but to be quite honest with you,

  • those are the last things I'm looking for.

  • The most important thing?

  • Self-confidence."

  • Without that skill, and I use the word skill intentionally,

  • without that skill, we are useless as a soccer player.

  • Because when you lose sight or belief in yourself,

  • we're done for.

  • I use the definition of self-confidence

  • to be the ability or the belief

  • to believe in yourself, to accomplish any task,

  • no matter the odds, no matter the difficulty,

  • no matter the adversity.

  • The belief that you can accomplish it, self-confidence.

  • Some of you are saying, "Great, I don't have it. I'm so shy.

  • I'll never do that, bla, bla, bla."

  • And you start to drag all the way down here.

  • But, I use the word skill

  • because

  • I believe it can be trained.

  • And I'll show you a couple of ways in which we do.

  • Hopefully I won't run out of time.

  • I don't use any slides

  • because my speech always goes here, or here, or here.

  • So we'll see which way we get to.

  • The easiest way to build self-confidence:

  • there's no magic button.

  • I can't say: "Hey, this plane is going down,

  • who can fly?

  • Put your hand up."

  • "I can, I'm confident!"

  • (Laughter)

  • Repetition, repetition, repetition.

  • Right?

  • What does Malcom Gladwell call it, the 10,000-hour rule?

  • There's no magic button.

  • I recruited a goalie from Colombia, South America one year.

  • Big, tall 6'3" man.

  • You know, he had hands like stone.

  • I thought he was like Flipper.

  • Everytime I threw him the ball, down, onto the ground.

  • I was like, oh my god, we're in trouble.

  • Simple solution: get to the wall,

  • kick a ball against the wall and catch it.

  • kick the ball against the wall and catch it.

  • His goal was 350 a day for eight months.

  • He came back, his hands were calloused,

  • the moisture on his hands were literally gone,

  • he is now playing in Europe.

  • Magic? No.

  • Repetition, repetition, repetition.

  • The problem is, we expect to be self-confident

  • but we can't be unless the skill,

  • or the task we're doing,

  • is not novel, is not new to us.

  • We want to be in a situation

  • where we have so much pressure in that

  • and what I mean, cause pressure builds diamonds,

  • we want to be in a situation where

  • "hey, I've done this a thousand times".

  • I did my speech,

  • and I practiced in front of a mirror: bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, bla.

  • Hey I'm sounding good.

  • And then I went in front of my kids, and my wife.

  • I said, oh gosh, I got a little nervous.

  • Then I'd get in front of Glenn Gould,

  • Oh my goodness, I am a little more nervous!

  • By the time I get to the ACG,

  • where 2,500 people, can't say anymore, right?

  • Twenty-five hundred people,

  • where twenty-five hundred people are there,

  • I won't have a single ounce of nervousness

  • because of my ability to practice.

  • Right?

  • Over, and over, and over, again.

  • The problem with repetition is:

  • how many of us bail after the first bit of failure?

  • How many of us bail after the first bit of adversity?

  • Edison was on that video,

  • and it depends who you ask,

  • there's anywhere from 1,000

  • to 10,000 tries to build that light bulb.

  • 1,000 to 10,000.

  • J.K Rowling should be on that video.

  • Do you know how many publishers she took her Harry Potter book to?

  • I believe the number was 12 or 13...

  • I am pretty confident but after two or three noes

  • I'd be like: "damn it!".

  • After six or seven, I'm like: "maybe not!"

  • Definitely after nine or ten

  • I'd be looking to be a soccer coach

  • or something else besides an author.

  • (Laughter)

  • Right?

  • I mean, twelve times somebody said no.

  • But, practice, practice, practice, and do not accept failure.

  • Maybe it shouldn't be repetition,

  • maybe the answer should be persistence.

  • Because we all repeat something but very few of us really will persist.

  • So that's one way to build self-confidence.

  • Get out there.

  • Do what you want to do and do not accept no.

  • The other one is self-talk.

  • We all have a self-talk tape that plays in our head.

  • Anybody go shopping and put on a pair of pants this week?

  • If you're a woman,

  • the first thing that always comes:

  • "damn I look fat in these pants!."

  • And if you're a man, it's the opposite:

  • "Oh god, I got no muscle, I'm so flabby!"

  • Right? We all have this tape that plays in our head.

  • As a student, if they asked me the question,

  • it was like: "Oh, gee please professor don't pick me, I don't know the answer."

  • I'd look down.

  • Right?

  • If you're in the b...when I, let me tell you something,

  • and the VP of business adminis. here, I shouldn't repeat this,

  • but when they hired me as an Athletics director,

  • I sat in an architect's meeting,

  • and I am as dumb as a post

  • when it comes to anything to do with numbers and angles.

  • And they are like:

  • the fundibular valve

  • of the architectural, uh,

  • what do you think doctor Joseph?

  • Uh, let me look into that for you and get back to you.

  • (Laughter)

  • Right?

  • I was in a, oh god god, please don't ask me, please don't ask me.

  • We all have this negative self-talk that goes in our head.

  • Guess what?

  • There's enough people that are telling us we can't do it.

  • That we're not good enough.

  • Why do we want to tell ourselves that?

  • We know for a fact that thoughts influence actions.

  • We saw it there with the video Sheldon, Dr. Levy showed.

  • We know that our thoughts influence actions,

  • why do we want to say that negative self-talk to ourselves?

  • We need to get our own self-affirmations.

  • Muhammad Ali, what was his self-affirmation?

  • I am the greatest!

  • Who else is going to tell you?

  • There need to be quiet moments in your bedroom,

  • quiet moments when you're brushing your teeth.

  • That we need to reaffirm:

  • "I am the captain of my ship and the master of my fate!"

  • That is my affirmation.

  • I came from a school of one thousand people,

  • I lived in a town of one thousand people for fifteen years;

  • there's no reason that I should be in charge of an Athletics department,

  • building maple leaf gardens.

  • But I am the captain of my ship and the master of my fate.

  • If I don't say it, if I don't believe it,

  • no one else will.

  • How do you build self-confidence?

  • Get away from the people who will tear you down.

  • There's enough of that.

  • Muhammad Ali, I am the greatest! There is no one better than me.

  • There's a difference between hubris, and ego, and false pride.

  • It's just reminding yourself in quiet silent moments,

  • I put it down on a list,

  • it's right beside my mirror,

  • right?

  • about all the things that make me who I am.

  • Because I make enough mistakes,

  • and the newspapers will recognize it,

  • and people around me will recognize it;

  • and they'll tear me down,

  • and pretty soon I'll begin to believe it.

  • There was a time when my confidence was really low.

  • There was a time when I took this job

  • when I came from Iowa,

  • I don't know if I could do it.

  • I had to bring out my self-confidence letter.

  • A letter I wrote to myself when I was feeling good.

  • Ivan, congratulations on getting your PhD before 40.

  • Congra...I am 40, under.

  • (Laughter)

  • Congratulations on winning a national championship.

  • Good job on raising three good kids and marrying the right woman.

  • I wrote a letter to myself,

  • it was my own brag sheet.

  • My own letter about the things I was proud of.

  • Because there are moments,

  • and we'll all experience them in our career, in our lives,

  • in our job hunting, in our relationships;

  • when we are not feeling good about

  • who, and what, and where we are.

  • And I had to bring out that letter and read it time and time again,

  • for a period of about two weeks, to weather me through that storm.

  • It was important.

  • Stop the self-talk, the negative self-talk.

  • If you watch you'll see some athletes that have a little bandage,

  • or a little brand around them.

  • Lance Armstrong is a perfect one.

  • What's his self-affirmation?

  • Livestrong isn't a brand, it was to remind him of who he was.

  • Live strong. Then it became a brand.

  • He would move that from one arm to the next arm,

  • when doubt and fear came into his mind.

  • Live strong, put it on there, let's go.

  • We'll all have it, we place it.

  • Two ways to build self-confidence.

  • I'm worried about my time

  • I'm gonna tell you of one way

  • you can build self-confidence in others.

  • We are coaches and educators,

  • we are teachers, we are people

  • who will create value in the world;

  • and in doing that, we are critical by the nature of what we do.

  • I am a coach, I want you to score a goal.

  • The ball went over high. "Dang it!" The ball went high!

  • "Thank you coach, I know that. Feedback tells me that."

  • So what do we do?

  • I need you to put your elbow here,

  • I need you to put your knee over the ball,

  • I need you to follow through.

  • Boom. Land. Great.

  • Notice, I never made it as a professional.

  • (Laughter)

  • What can we do?

  • We fix mistakes.

  • When I'm fixing that mistake:

  • "Johnny, this is terrible,

  • you need to bend your knee, you need to do this, this."

  • What have I done to Johnny's self-confidence?

  • Bend your knee, then do this, then do this.

  • Next thing you know, Johnny's crushed.

  • Ignore what Johnny does wrong

  • and find Bob or Sally or Freda over here.

  • Great goal Freda, I love how you kept your knee low,

  • you followed through, and you landed like this.

  • Great job!

  • Johnny: "Oh?"

  • Great! Johnny's not demoralized.

  • His confidence isn't shot,

  • and what I've done is, I've built up Freda's.

  • Imagine how we could change the way we parented kids.

  • Instead of:

  • "get that glass off the counter, what's wrong with you?"

  • (Laughter)

  • If we catch the mother, good.

  • Great job! Great job.

  • Thank you Alice for taking your glass to the counter.

  • It sounds simple but we forget about it.

  • Or as educators, or as somebody as a team,

  • if we manage to praise

  • the positive behaviour that we wanted to reinforce.

  • We forget it. It sounds so simple.

  • Catch them when they're good.

  • We forget it. It's simple.

  • Here's what they did.

  • There was a study in Kansas that did this.

  • They did video, and we all do video.

  • And we show the video of them doing the run of the play:

  • "Um, this goal happened because the basket wasn't protected,

  • we didn't rotate here, right?

  • We needed to do this and then cover the slot."

  • And, if that's the baseline,

  • improvement of the Kansas State team went like this.

  • Then, they said they ignored all of that

  • and they just showed them the times they did it right.

  • The times they did it perfect.

  • That presented no goals, spoke to the same points,

  • improvement went like that.

  • It changed and revolutionized the way we as coaches

  • interact with our student athletes.

  • We can apply that to the business world,

  • we can apply that to our student group works,

  • we can apply that to our management teams.

  • Easily: catch them when they are good.

  • Last and certainly not least.

  • My son is really good at this.

  • Self-confident people interpret feedback

  • the way they choose to.

  • I ask my son who is by the far a terrible, terrible athlete,

  • gets it from his dad.

  • (Laughter)

  • The game's...

  • How's the game?

  • Oh great! I scored three goals, I got two assists.

  • I'm like: "I did not see him touch the puck!"

  • But he has his own perception

  • of how he did!

  • (Laughter)

  • I love it!

  • (Laughter)

  • Right? I'm the...I'm that guy!

  • I'm like: I remember when I was taking

  • when I met my wife, it was in the commons.

  • "Paulie, would you like to go to the movies?

  • Ladies? Tingly, tingly, tingle."

  • (Laughter)

  • And she goes: "Ah, no."

  • I asked her again.

  • Cause I think that she just hasn't seen me in the right light.

  • (Laughter)

  • Maybe, that's not the wrong shirt on.

  • Right?

  • Cause I'm interpreting that the way I want to interpret it.

  • Finally I asked her out again.

  • She gave me this one comment, right? Or, she sent it to her friend.

  • Cause that's the way you did it back then.

  • "She wouldn't date you unless

  • there was the last person on Earth,

  • hell was freezing over,

  • there was a small chance we had to save the planet Earth.

  • Some people, it's like, there's no chance.

  • I'm like: "You're saying there's a chance."

  • (Laughter)

  • Right?

  • Because that's how I'm gonna interpret it.

  • If I could give you one thing to take from this,

  • it is: no one will believe in you

  • unless you do.

  • Listen to the words of that video,

  • here's to the crazy ones,

  • the misfits, the rebels,

  • the troublemakers,

  • the round pegs in the square holes.

  • We're supposed to be different, folks.

  • And when people look at us,

  • believe in yourself.

  • Thank you.

  • (Applause)

In my past life as a soccer coach,

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