Chris, on your shows you've often talked about whether believing you can win really matters. I thought I'd give you an inside perspective from another sport. In lacrosse I played on a college national championship team as a freshman, and regularly on a top 10 ranked team for the rest of my college career. I've played on a lot of teams, but none had the sense of confidence that championship team.
Anyway, just a different perspective....
- One thing about the championship team is that we "knew" we we're going to win, and even when we lost two games that season, we knew it was us, not our opponents. Even if we were down in the score, we always knew we could do what was necessary to win, which meant people had the confidence to make great plays at the right time. That included the championship game team where we beat the heavily favored, two-year reigning champions in their home stadium
- In the remaining three years as a ranked team, we "believed" we could and should win, but we didn't "know." That meant that we made great plays throughout the game, sometimes at crucial times, but not always.
- I've also played on teams in other places and sports where we "thought" we should win, but could easily become overconfident ahead of time, or lose confidence when things went south. On those teams we didn't necessarily make great plays, or if we did they weren't often at inconsequential times. And when things went south we had a hard time mustering the will to overcome it.
- I've also been on teams in other sports where we just knew we had no chance, and we never gave ourselves a chance. Those teams just sucked and they knew it!
Anyway, just a different perspective....
