Throughout our lives we’ve competed many times. Our competitions may be different based on what we’ve tried to accomplish, but an underlying element that determined how it all ended up was the amount of confidence we had at the start. When we compete and are not sure of our ability, failure is almost assured at some point. Looking back at my successful competitions, no matter the area of life that was involved, I’ve found two fundamental concepts at play:
- A lot of proper practiced
- Then competed as often as I had to until I had successful results
The one thing I learned was how important it was to be practicing the ‘right’ stuff. When we’re trying to get to the next level we need to understand there are things we don’t understand yet, and it will take some time until those new things are understood clearly and can be implemented comfortable. So, researching your subject to make sure you’re practicing the ‘new’ methods properly can save years of hard effort.
All competition produces pressure and the only way I know of learning to handle the pressure is by competing, because until you compete and win, you’ll never have the confidence to get where you’re going. And winning doesn’t mean ‘first place’. It means we’ve set realistic goals and accomplished them. And the most fundamental goal is making sure we learn regardless of where we finish; it’s the learning that makes us do better the next time. As long as we walk away from a competition learning more about ourselves and our subject matter, we’ve won, and winning in this regard is a surefire way of building our confidence.