My son and I were talking about confidence. Particularly we were talking about understanding what it takes to be who you want to be and how that is an actual switch that gets thrwon in your soul. Mine feels like a GFI these days, and the green light popped off. He’s in a better state than me. He made the mental decision to do what he needs to do to get to the league. I can remember being exactly where he was 31 years ago and making the decision to go the other way. It is, for all intents and purposes, a state of mind. I’ve spoken about this in bits and pieces in many posts….
Most recently I listened to a speaker who was discussing arrogance and confidence. The speaker, a social psychologist, talked about how confidence is positive and arrogance is poisonous and how we can see the effects of each in people in our society.
He has that confidence and understanding of how there is a clear path to be successful. He has the athleticism to be sure. He also is not arrogant as mentioned above. Instead he realizes that most of the individuals who play at the college level are playing. They are not plotting and studying. They are not drawing up plans of how to attack an individual coverage or connecting each opportunity dot to dot in order to form a picture of what the next step could look like. They are instead as I wrote of how I became as a writer:
Over time that confidence (or was it lack of concern or fear) faded and the slow tear away rose in my mind. This is when writing resembled chore more than pleasurable work. Even then I would have occasional nights of sitting at the laptop and being tickled by a turn of phrase or excited to see the words of a conflict unfurl themselves in slow pecking succession.
Most players lose the ephemeral quality that makes them great. This is the same way in which writers such as myself lose that same quality. It is in how we approach the work and what we believe is possible in any given moment. This is the core difference between, say, Russell Zimmerman and myself or Mel Odom and myself to name two authors who write in the same line as I do yet are far more prolific because they choose to be and have maintained the mental state that allows them to be as they choose.
It all comes down to belief and focus–not as big picture items but in the very minutiae that makes us individuals. It is cellular and, in a sense, undefinable by one such as myself. I am still struggle to unlock it, because if I can then I can get back to where I was when I was a kid sitting on a bus writing stories and wanted to share with the world. I miss that kid. I miss what he could do.
Some Thoughts:
- I’m starting with this one and then going to the post itself, because I had to get it out: People need to get better at patience. There is an entire ecosphere based around the lack of patience. For example, I was trying to see today’s CFP official rankings. I found a dozen articles predicting what would happen and one solitary post simply stating that the rankings are dropped at 7 tonight. So, instead of reading the dozen articles and stewing needlessly about what some pundit with no actual say thinks, I decided to shut that thread off until 7pm. It is easy. Just let yourself experience patience. I guess maybe that isn’t so easy for a society built on the now now now…