Blind self-confidence is a cheat code in sport

The nice thing about this website being my own, is that I can essentially write about whatever I want. Yes, the first 4 have been directly related to a sport and something going on in its current landscape but that’s not all I’ll dive into here. The Philosophy In Sport category isn’t just there to fill space!

Lots of people say, ‘never meet your idols’, and that is for good reason. The elite professional athlete is likely not the best human being simply due to what it takes to reach that elite level. The level of self-obsession it takes to refine yourself so much that you are now one of the best in the world is not to be understated. Many of those elite athletes will be blindly and sometimes delusionally confident in their abilities in their given field, and that self-belief helps them more than you think.

The thing with blind self-confidence is that it almost completely eliminates anxiety; and since anxiety is one of the biggest obstacles in sport, the blindly confident have already jumped over one of the highest hurdles.

Anxiety is the feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome. But when you are blindly confident, the outcome might be uncertain to an onlooker, but to you, there is only one outcome – you succeeding. And that feeling is truly what I believe carries most of the best performers to continued success – a lack of over-analysis and a blind faith in themselves.

Because realistically, any NBA player is capable of missing a few free throws and any Premier League footballer is capable of missing an open goal – but when you are aware of those possibilities, the mere acknowledgement of them can cause them to come to fruition. The understanding that there are many different possible outcomes can distract a player from the job they have to do (i.e. making the free throws or scoring the open goal).

And I have had first-hand experience of this in my playing career. For the last four years, I played basketball at the University of Nottingham, playing with and against some seriously good players in that time. The level of play, in my last two years especially, was of a level that made me super analytical about the intricacies of the game as I could no longer rely on pure talent; and it helped me have a clearer idea of what was going on around me. However, this had a knock-on effect on the way I thought about the game. Because I was so in tune with what was going on, I was also hyper-aware of what could go wrong. Whether that be which finger the ball came off when I shot, how hard I dribbled the ball on a crossover, how tightly I used a ball screen, or how active my feet were when guarding the ball handler – I was almost too aware of all the outcomes and possibilities.

This zapped my ability to be blindly confident and focus completely on how my skills could allow me to do my job because I was thinking so rationally. So, although I played very well in my final two seasons, I couldn’t help but feel like there was something holding me back from fully expressing myself.

Fast forward to today and I’m playing men’s league basketball at home in Norwich. Here, I barely think about the peripherals of the game, outside of a few basic reads, and don’t think too much about my opposition or even teammates – I just play ball.

And in my first two games I have played with a freedom that I would only ever feel in practice at uni. In those practices, I would play like I was the best player on the team, because why not? But in games, I just played a role because of my fear of the uncertainty that real games brought. I would pull out moves in practice that would never cross my mind in a game – and now my men’s league games feel like practice.

Whether that be calling for the ball all the time, treating the opponents like mere little leaguers, or just going out and having fun – the blind confidence that I have in myself is making a massive difference. Obviously, coming from a big university to a Norwich men’s league will give you some confidence that you are one of the best players, but it goes even further than that.

When things aren’t going well in sport, you can very easily take that information and conclude that maybe ‘today isn’t your day’ or there are some things you’re simply not great at. But when you’re blindly confident, you don’t even register the bad times because you’re sure you’ll succeed next time.

In this week’s game, I made my first shot, then missed my next three in a row. I had two quick fouls and had to sub out for 10 minutes. At uni, I might have seen that as evidence that the level was too high or I just wasn’t feeling good that day. But in this men’s league game, I had no doubt that I would eventually start showing out. Not a peep of doubt – I truly thought I was the best player there regardless of the evidence.

And by the end of the game it was pretty clear. My confidence had carried me out of the mud and all the way to playing the way I was confident that I would. And without that confidence and an extra dose of over-analysis, I likely wouldn’t have turned things around.

So, when you next see Anthony Edwards say that he’s the best at every sport in the world, or you watch a clip of Kobe shooting over four defenders – just remember that it is that blind self-confidence and lack of care for the peripherals that has taken them to their respective heights. Why would they give that up now that they’re at the top?

All of this is to say that during my time at uni, I was the same player that I am now, in terms of ability. If anything, I was better when I was still in school. The difference now is the way I think about myself as a player. Now, I’m going into games with the idea that I can do anything, whereas before I was too anxious to fulfil that potential.

And the perfect personal example of how this self-confidence is influential is the way I think about football. I have been playing football for twice as long as I have played basketball and I couldn’t be more confident when I play. Even though I took four years away from playing full-time, I am twice the player I was before and that is all due to the way I view myself. I have all the same tools I had before, but now I have faith in them and it shows. Even if I haven’t played for a while, I don’t think about what that might mean and go about playing as if I am better than I ever have been.

Blind self-confidence does, in some ways, make you a worse and more stupid human being, because you’re not being rational, but when it comes to sport – it might just be the best cheat code there is.