You can perform without confidence, but you can’t perform without focus. That doesn’t mean that confidence isn’t important. There is no substitute for it, and everything flows better when you have it. But you would be shocked if I told you how many athletes I’ve worked with who seem like they are at the top of their games, yet they lack confidence. Here’s why I believe focus is more important than confidence:
Let’s start with an example. I talk to hitters who are struggling at the plate and they tell me they need to “get their confidence back.” As we get into our conversations, I’ll ask what they are trying to accomplish at the plate. A common and simple approach for hitters is to see the ball well and to do damage on their pitch. Seeing the ball is about recognizing a pitch or spin early, and doing damage incorporates controlling the strike zone and having good plate discipline.
So without taking confidence into account, a hitter wants to see the ball as early as possible so he can make a good swing decision, and then get his swing off when he sees a pitch he likes. This is the point where focus is more important than confidence. If the hitter is confident, he should be seeing the ball out of the pitcher’s hand and doing damage on his pitch. But guess what? If the hitter is not confident, he should still be seeing the ball out of the pitcher’s hand and trying to do damage on his pitch.
So whether you have it or not, you do the exact same thing on a pitch with or without confidence. That’s why you don’t need it, but you do need the focus necessary to see the ball out of the pitcher’s hand. You don’t have to have confidence in order to focus on the ball, unless you think you do.
The problem about lacking confidence isn’t the lack of confidence. It’s realizing that you’re lacking confidence and then feeling like you can’t play without it. This distracts you from focusing.
If you’re thinking negative thoughts, doubting yourself, or realizing that you aren’t confident, then your focus is internal—it’s directed at your thoughts. To see the ball well and to decide to swing or take, you need an external focus, which is directed towards your actions.
The solution then, when you lack confidence, is to rely on your focus. It’s human nature to notice when you’re not feeling confident. The mental skill you need to get through that moment is to accept that you have to get through this without your confidence and then focus on your job anyway.
We do this almost every day with our energy level and physical health. After opening day, how many people can say they are 100% healthy and feeling their best? When you get into the dog days of summer, everyone is banged up and dragging. But we all get ourselves ready to play, and we give “100% of our 80%” every night.
The same can be true with confidence. You may not feel like a world-beater today, but you can still get yourself ready to play and stay focused on your job. If you don’t stop to evaluate your confidence, you’ll start to feel more normal, and eventually you’ll feel that surge of confidence again. This brings me to the real villain of this equation: evaluation.
When you feel less confident, it can lead to turning your focus inward and evaluating what felt off. As you get stuck on how things feel internally, you lose focus on your external task. When you lose focus on your task, you perform poorly, which leads to lower confidence.
The next time this happens to you, instead of going straight to evaluation mode, stay focused on doing your job. If you’re a hitter, put all of your energy into seeing the ball out of the pitcher’s hand. When you do this, your focus becomes narrow and external. Pitchers should focus on the catcher for communication and then for their target.
I have both pitchers and hitters narrow their focus in their pre-pitch routines, which is one final element.
A routine should help you clear your mind and be ready to focus on your job. It should not help you restore your confidence. When ballplayers tell me they are trying to get their confidence back by finding a focal point like the flag pole or taking a deep breath and focusing on their bat, they are missing the point.
When you notice you’re lacking confidence, a deep breath isn’t going to restore it. What that deep breath and focal point should do is help you recenter and get your focus back where it belongs. If you do your routine and hope or expect to feel confident again, you’ve gone back to evaluating as you search for your confidence, and while you’re evaluating confidence, you aren’t able to focus on the ball.
If you have a routine at the plate or on the mound, do your routine to reset yourself and to prepare to focus on the job with your very next thought. Do your best not to evaluate your confidence level again. Just focus on whatever is most important for doing your job.
Confidence is a key part of sports and life. It’s understandable that we would want to be confident at all times, really. But we know that’s not reality. The reality is that focus is the key to performing well.
Geoff Miller has spent the better part of two decades working in Major League Baseball for multiple organizations. His mental skills training series and commentary are available through Optimize Mind Performance, an app that links athletes with some of the most renowned mental skills coaches from around the world. For more information, visit www.optimizemindperformance.com.