Big Idea Daily | The Confident Mind
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A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakeable Performanceby Dr. Nate Zinsser |
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."SUN TZU, THE ART OF WAR |
BIG IDEA #1
Confidence, Defined
FROM THE BOOK“So my operating definition of confidence (one that will actually help you perform well), is this: a sense of certainty about your ability, which allows you to bypass conscious thought and execute unconsciously.
Break it down with me:
Confidence is that feeling that you can do something (or that you know something) so well you don’t have to think about how to do it when you’re doing it. That skill or knowledge is in you, it’s part of you, and it will come out when needed if you let it.”
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Brian's Notes
That’s from the Introduction: “What Confidence Is and Isn’t.”
Want Dr. Zinsser’s definition of confidence? There it is.
I repeat: Confidence is “a sense of certainty about your ability, which allows you to bypass conscious thought and execute unconsciously.”
As we’ve discussed MANY times, etymologically, the word confidence comes from the ancient Latin word confidere which means “to have full or INTENSE trust.”
In other words: to have CERTAINTY.
If you look up the word CONFIDENCE in a thesaurus, you’ll find TRUST as the #1 synonym.
Look up TRUST in a thesaurus and you’ll see CONFIDENCE as the #1 synonym (followed by, for the record: belief, faith, freedom from suspicion/doubt, sureness, certainty, certitude, assurance, conviction, credence, reliance).
Dr. Zinsser’s primary point throughout the book is the fact that you will ONLY have a shot at performing at your ABSOLUTE BEST *if* (important qualifier!) you are able to turn off the voice of doubt. You do this by learning how to cultivate the INTENSE TRUST/CERTAINTY that you have what it takes to dominate. Of course, the book is all about helping us do precisely that.
P.S. Right before that definition, Dr. Z references Sian Beilock, who wrote the book Choke—which is, as the title suggests, all about the things that get in the way of you performing at your best.
As Dr. Zinsser says: “Real confidence, then, the kind you’ll need to be at your best when the heat’s on and the consequences matter, is the absence of all that mental chatter and discursive analytical thought.”
How do we turn off that mental chatter? We TRUST ourselves—certain that we have what it takes to dominate as we let it rip. Now it’s time to look at HOW we build that level of confidence.
Big Ideas
01: CONFIDENCE, DEFINED
02: CONFIDENCE BANK ACCOUNT
03: MENTAL FORTRESS
04: YOUR TOP 10
05: AFFIRMATIONS
06: PERFECTIONISM
“Please understand this: success in any field—be it sports, the arts, business, science, and certainly the military—requires both confidence AND competence."DR. NATE ZINSSER |
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