Here is the full text and summary of Dr. Ivan Joseph’s talk: The Skill of Self Confidence at TEDxRyersonU conference. In this TEDx Talk, Dr. Ivan Joseph, former athletic director and soccer coach, discusses how to build the skills of self confidence.
TRANSCRIPT:
Dr. Ivan Joseph – Athletic Director and Head Coach
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!”
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. Every time 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, because 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 no’s 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. 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 admin is 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.
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