Confidence and Belief

"God has given me the ability.  The rest is up to me.  Believe.  Believe.  Believe." - An entry in Billy Mills' training diary just prior to his upset win in the 10,000 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics 

                We talk a lot in my English class about the “self.”  The “self” is our definition of who we are.  It is a mental concept that we create and modify all of the time.  To succeed in life, I think that we all need to have a strong sense of self, a firm understanding of who we are and what values we believe in.  In high school, kids are constantly struggling to define themselves.  Some choose to get in trouble and define themselves by partying, smoking, or drinking.  Others define themselves by their grades, their activities, or their athletic achievements.  The important thing to realize is that the self is a shifting concept that is always open to modification and improvement. 

                One of the best things about running is that it offers some unique challenges to our self-concepts.  Like other endurance sports such as swimming and biking, running pits the individual against himself.  In soccer, football, or basketball, the individual athlete is constantly interacting in close proximity with others, running plays or sharing the ball.  In running, the individual has to be aware of the team, but his duty to the whole is a bit different.  Each member of a cross country team has to trust that the other guys he is running with are winning their particular challenge of self.  There comes a moment in every race when pain and fatigue are deepening.  The athlete knows that the next several minutes will be full of pain.  The lungs will be expanding furiously, the heart will be pumping rapidly, and the muscles in the legs and arms will be pumping out tons of lactic acid, producing that all too familiar burn.  The athlete has two choices at the Moment of Truth: slow down to a slower speed or try to maintain speed and cope with the “symptoms” of running.  This challenge to the self is difficult because at all points in time it is self-inflicted.  There is no rival causing you pain.  You are doing this to yourself.  Each individual athlete must win a battle against himself in order to help the team.

                As a coach, I look for guys who have the character and toughness to win these battles against themselves.  Great teams are composed of individuals who choose to win this battle of self for each other.  One of the key ingredients in winning this battle is belief.  Belief is your own knowledge that you can handle the difficult moments of a workout or a race.  Belief enables us to accomplish amazing feats and overcome the obstacles we impose on ourselves.  One crucial part of belief is confidence.  Runners gain confidence through steady training.  You learn in practices what you are capable of doing in meets.  Our runners go into races knowing that they are prepared, and they display their confidence by running aggressively in the early and middle stages of a race.  They know that they can attack a race early and still have the endurance to finish hard.  I see a lot of athletes express their confidence by talking about how well they are going to do in a race.  This is usually a false confidence.  Great runners know that their running does the talking for them.  My dad’s motto throughout all of his years of coaching was “Run with your feet and not with your mouth.”  He always taught his athletes to compete with humble confidence.  He knew that those who talked the most were those who usually accomplished the least.

                Confidence is part of belief, but the two are not the same thing.  Belief is a larger concept that involves a strong dose of faith.  By definition faith is not the most logical of concepts.  When you accept something on faith, you know it to be true even though you may not have the hard evidence to prove it.  Cross country runners must place a lot of faith in both themselves and their teammates.  As a runner, you must have faith that you can be aggressive in the early stages of a race.  You must have faith that you can cover a move in the middle of a race even when you are tired.  You must have faith that you can make a move to win a race despite being fatigued.  We often do not know if we can handle the physical stresses of racing, but we must learn to have faith in ourselves.  Each runner must take leaps of faith in races in order to build his belief in himself.  Each runner must also believe that his teammates are willing to make the same leaps of faith.

Belief comes from the moments when your faith in your self and others is rewarded.  Belief only comes after we have endured some challenges to our faith in each other and have gained confidence in our ability to perform as a unit on the course.  When a team starts to believe in itself, it acquires a powerful momentum.  Workout paces get faster, and individual performances in competition get faster.  A team with belief excels because the athletes know that their duty is to the whole rather than themselves.  No one wants to be the weak link.  No one wants to undermine the trust that the team has built together.  Strong belief enables a team to perform at a magical level.  When each one of us tears down the powerful mental constructs that hold us back, together we can achieve something spectacular.   

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