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Kevin Hoffberg/guest rants

Eric Hoffberg is my brother and a man to be admired. I'd promote him even if I wasn't related to him.  From his website . . .

I have played and coached hockey for nearly 35 years. At age 27, I became the youngest head coach in college hockey. When I left college hockey after 14 years of coaching, I left as one of the top twenty coaches of all time and the winningest coach in the history of a storied hockey school. Except for two seasons, our teams turned in winning records (in my last 5 years as a head coach we lost an average of only two games a season) and regularly competed for the league and national championships.

Now I coach coaches (and "players" too) . . . people just like you who are responsible for helping others be the best versions of themselves that they can be. Some are in athletics, many more are in business.

You can reach Eric directly at eric@erichoffberg.com or at his website, http://www.erichoffberg.com/.

Building Confidence

Maybe you are a coach and you are looking for ways to build your team’s confidence or an individual player’s self-confidence. Maybe it is you who has an interest in feeling a sense of being in your “zone” more often and you know that greater levels of true confidence will help. Either way, if you are reading this, then you are on the right track because I have some ideas for you. Take them and make them your own. More than likely you know a lot of what I want to share, but needed a little bit of my torch to reignite your fire.

I hope that I can provide you some fire!

I like to keep things simple. Therefore I am big on things like checklists.  

Below is a checklist for the development of self confidence. If you are consistent within the following concepts then you are going to find new and more powerful levels of self-confidence. The key point is that I believe that you don’t have to wait for positive results to become confident in who you are. True confidence needs to be based on something more than just a happy outcome or else it won’t sustain itself the way it can and should.

Ask yourself the following questions on some regular basis and be certain that your work ethic revolves around these concepts:

• Am I “hoping” for success or feeling powerful because I truly “want” success?
• Is the hard work that I put into my world honest and wholehearted?
• Am I engaged in and believe in a system that includes positive thinking?
• Am I fully using the good skills that I possess?
• Am I working to stretch my abilities to new and higher levels?
• Does the pursuit of excellence feel truly meaningful to me?
• Am I feeling a sense of admiration for the qualities that are part of the character that I put into evidence in my work?

You’ve got to “want” it!

The important task in “wanting” success, and seeing this perspective as part of what it takes to start building true self-confidence, is to stop “hoping.” A great deal of my work is spent working with my one-to-one clients that are goalies. One of my responsibilities as their mental toughness coach is to help them feel prepared. There is a somewhat obvious understanding that we stick to in our work that if you are prepared then you can feel confident.

The first step of preparation for anyone that feels concerned about performance, and the outcome of that performance, is to drive their levels of courage to where they need to be. The courage that I am talking about has to do with deciding to give everything that you have, everything that you are, to the challenges in your world that confront you. This courage that I am talking about is what takes place when you are comfortable “wanting” to do well and that you understand that really “wanting” the best means that you are going to step up to the plate and commit to trying to do your best.

I like to get the idea of having courage to do the best you can into the constant dialogue that I have with my clients. I don’t think that courage has to be only in evidence during critical and dramatic situations.

But there is a fairly dramatic story about courage that brings to light my point about “wanting” rather than “hoping.”

The story of David and Goliath makes my point. David had to have huge confidence when he went to the fight with Goliath didn’t he? How was it developed? I am not entirely certain of that answer, but I guess I think it would be fair to say that David didn’t go to that fight with the feared giant “hoping” to win. He went to that fight with a huge level of “wanting” to win. He had decided it was time for him to step up to it and do what must be done. It was the “wanting” to succeed – a focus that had no room for “hoping” – that gave David the initial energy to be confident enough to even go to the fight?

You may not have a Goliath to knock down in your life. Or maybe you do. But the point is that courage is something that we all must work on all the time. Start your process of developing more courage in your everyday life by deciding to have the courage to do what you do the right way and to get yourself fully engaged in your world. Give everything that you can to your tasks. Decide to really and truly “want” the success that awaits you. To “want” is to feel optimism. To “hope” is to feel pessimism. Optimism will lead to self-confidence way faster than pessimism will.

Accept that hard work will be part of the process

When I am involved in coaching my one-to-one clients that are hockey players I see my role as being a part of getting them completely comfortable and confident on the actual day of the game. Many of us can relate to wanting to feel confident and comfortable on “game day”, can’t we? To really get to the point of being able to feel relaxed and ready on “game day”, feelings that have everything to do with be confident, we have to feel like we have put in the grit and sweat of a champion. There is no other way. If you cut corners during the preparation segment you will never feel confident on the day of your big game. Whatever your work is, if you want to feel confident, you will have to feel a great sense of the “sweat” and “grit” that are the biggest part of having worked hard to prepare.

The legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus is responsible for a great quote that fits here perfectly.

“Confidence is the most important single factor in this game, and no matter how great your natural talent, there is only one way to obtain and sustain it: hard work.”

Your system must include positive thinking

I want to share with you an excerpt from a program that I do with corporate clients of mine, called “Coaching You.” The program is all about the idea that we all have a great coach within ourselves. We just need to know how to bring that inner coach to life.

Positive thinking is the key that opens the door to self-confidence over and over again. Positive thinking won’t just open one door for you. Positive thinking is the ultimate master key to all the doors that can spring up in your life that will try to barricade your rhythm of confidence!

Positive Imagery and Positive Self-Talk

Our attitudes control our lives. Attitudes are a secret power working twenty-four hours a day, for good or bad. It is of paramount importance that we know how to harness and control this great force. (Tom Blandi)

I have spent my entire adult life in a career path training individual athletes to become more mentally tough and to balance their emotions during performance and competitive moments. I am a person that knows how important it is for a player to think good thoughts and support himself with positive self-talk. No doubt about it, thinking good thoughts about any situation that has an outcome that matters to you will provide better energy than thinking bad thoughts will.

You have to use your imagination to make positive imagery work for you. Here is a quick overview of a process that will help you get the use of positive imagery into play as you are preparing for a key moment:

• Focus on what you want to do and eliminate images of what you don’t want to happen. I always say to my clients, “Make no home for negative images. Delete them and replace with a positive image.”

• Pay attention to what you will need to do to perform the way you want to. For instance, if you know that being composed is part of being successful then “see” yourself as composed as you picture what is going to happen during the key moments.

• Take the time to picture everything you can about the experience that will take place. Picture how things will look and how you expect the “opponent” to behave. Give as much texture to your imagery as you are capable of.

• Always finish the imagery with “seeing” success and with images of you feeling satisfied and triumphant. Imagine the very best happening for you.

Great self-talk is just as important as good imagery. My theory is to talk to yourself during tough times just the way you would to a great friend. Be supportive of and encouraging to you, just the way you would to a best friend that had angst about something in their future or was under confident for some reason about the outcome of a situation. When we can’t give ourselves a good pep talk we are basically just looking to sign up for defeat, so think about the importance of always being a great friend to you.

Positive self-talk and positive imagery keep our mental and emotional state of mind on a track that heads in the direction that we want and need to go. No matter how much pressure seems to be involved we can stay centered and find our optimal “zone” of performance if we embrace only positive energy. Remember that the positive energy we need can be created from within – it doesn’t have to come from someone else - when we use the tools of positive imagery and positive self-talk. The second important point to remember, and the most important point, is that the more we work at positive imagery and positive self-talk the better we become at getting these tools into play when we need them.

Make these two tools – positive imagery and positive self-talk - part of your daily system for doing what you do!

If you want to build more self-confidence get really dedicated to being a positive thinker.

Be certain that you are using all of your skills

When I was still coaching college hockey I had one of my players come to me and ask me for help because he was in a scoring slump. The players name was Chris. After listening to everything that Chris felt about what was going wrong in his world as a hockey player, I recognized exactly what was lacking. Chris wasn’t using all of his skills, to not only be the best overall player he could be, but to score more goals the way he thought he should be.

So what we did is list all of the great skills that he possessed. (To be a great scorer in hockey you have to have aspects to your game that make you a great shooter, but there is so much more to being a great score than just being a great shooter.) I pointed out to him that when he was communicating his frustration he was entirely focused on skills that had to do only with shooting. My idea was to list and get focused on all of his great skill. So we listed things that had to do with skating, puck handling, aggressive play, composure, and leadership of his teammates.

Once done with the list, my coaching to Chris was to stop being focused only on his shooting skills to break his scoring slump, and to get entirely focused on using all of his skills. I pointed out to him how all the skills that we had listed had something to do with scoring, including the good energy that he would provide for his team and himself if he focused more on his role as a leader for the team. The key here was to get Chris to think about total excellence and to get him determined to make good use of all of the great skills that he possessed as a hockey player.

When Chris had asked for the meeting he was under confident. (By the way, my recollection is that if he hadn’t initiated the meeting, I would have. After all I was the head coach of a team whose top gun had suddenly stopped producing.) When the meeting was over, he was no longer under confident, nor was he over confident. He just knew what had to be done.

The player I have just described was an All-American for the third consecutive year that season and the slump in question was short lived. After the meeting he went on to score in almost every remaining game we played that season. At the end of the year we had a good visit, as he was getting ready to embark on his pro career. It was because of the conversation that we had that I remember the story that I have just shared with you. Chris took the time to point out to me something that he had learned and it is the same point I am making now. The gist of what he said to me was:

“To stay consistently confident on the ice, you must be certain that you are always using, not some of, but all of your skills. I learned that to score goals the way I wanted to, and to be the player I wanted to be, meant that I had to be fully confident going into each game and I had to stay confident during the entirety of each game. The focus on being certain that I went into every game trying to use all of my skills was the key to me being confident and therefore the key to my success."

Here then would be a good rule of thumb. To find a great groove of self confidence, one that sustains itself, don’t focus on outcome as much as you do on your determination to get all of your skills into play where it counts. When Chris wasn’t scoring he was going into games thinking about whether or not he would score or he was worried that he wouldn’t. This perspective set him up for frustration and distracted him from doing all of the things well that he was capable of doing. When he got himself centered on the idea that the key was to simply work to use all of his skills in every game he played in and to just let the goal scoring take care of itself, he was able to feel confident that he would do what must be done. And then the existing confidence carried him to the level of play that he was capable of.

Always keep your eye on improvement and “stretching” your abilities

It feels really good to have the sense that you are always working on “your game.” When we are trying to improve ourselves, we are working to learn. Learning gains us an edge. What does learning and improving have to do with confidence?

If you are trying to take the abilities that you presently have and “stretch” them and make them better, then you have an energy that is in your favor. If you are dedicated to learning and improving on what you already are capable of, then eventually you will learn and improve. That is what’s so cool about really working at something. If you really try, you will get results.

Work on your game = Results = Confidence

And on and on the sequence will go

The other element of working to improve and having that work make you more confident, is how you feel about yourself. One of the reasons that you become really self-confident is that you see yourself as a “doer” and not as just a “talker.” Working on your game in every way you can, when you really try to constantly “stretch” your abilities, it makes you a “doer”. There is great confidence that comes with this sort of self-perspective. When you involve yourself in purposeful action and are dedicated to “stretching” your abilities you can’t help but feel positive and confident about yourself.

Let’s put this point in bullet form:

• Build confidence in yourself because of the actual positive results that come from “stretching” your existing abilities.
• Build confidence in yourself because you are a “doer”, someone that will take action when there is work to be done. Working on your game and finding ways to “stretch” your existing abilities is taking action and being a “doer.”

Make your life about the pursuit of excellence

When I am helping my clients get ready for the upcoming games, we always talk about being “clean.” Our language in this instance has to do with a commitment to the simple pursuit of excellence, an excellence that is defined by the client, not by anyone else.

It is important for all of us to determine for ourselves what excellence feels like to us. We need to know what our excellence is so that we can pursue it and then find satisfaction and triumph in having felt it.

Each of my hockey playing clients would have a different list of concepts that have to do with their sense of excellence. But all of their lists have things in common too. They all would have lists of excellence that would include the pursuit of a feeling that during the game they will:

• Be focused and clear in their mind
• Demonstrate their love to compete and their desire to test their skills
• Have a sense of composure
• Have fun

When they focus on pursuing their excellence, rather than worrying about the outcome and results, they all find that they are much more confident in doing what must be done.

For all of us, whether the outcome of a game is in question or whether there is another sort of important outcome in question, the determination to just stay focused on feeling a sense of excellence within who we are gives us much more of an opportunity to feel satisfied at the end of the day. For an athlete there are many things that can happen during a game that will influence the outcome. If the athlete’s success is only defined in the outcome, then there isn’t as much opportunity to feel triumph, to build enthusiasm and to feel confidence. But if success is defined by feelings of having pursued and once again found a personal sense of excellence great satisfaction and momentum occur.

What is most important in all of this is that excellence needs to matter to you, and if it does – if you can really make it matter to you that you will pursue an excellence that is defined by you – then you will feel a genuine pride in yourself and you will create a more powerful confidence in who you are.

Before every game I will ask my client, “Are you clean right now?” When I do, I am making certain that there is no confusion on what must be done in the game itself and that their personal agenda has not become muddled. To be “clean” is to not worry that something must be “proven” in the upcoming game, but that something can be “accomplished.” What can be accomplished is another triumphant pursuit of excellence.

The best part about what I am sharing with you now is that all of my clients have found greater results in terms of the actual outcome of their performance and a positive result for their team by paying more attention to excellence!

Be able to admire yourself

Before you can truly have confidence in yourself, you must be able to admire yourself.

So here is my last little piece of coaching for you as you focus on ways to build up self confidence. You have to actually admire who you are and here is how you do it:

Create for yourself a list of qualities that have to do with what you admire in others and what you want others to admire in you. Typically when this exercise is done honestly the lists have identical entries on them.

Now you have a checklist that helps keep you stay focused on being the very best version of you

You have to bring the real you to whatever it is that you do each and every day.

How do you make this idea work?

Once you have made your “admiration list” keep it close by. You are going to want to remind yourself of what you have said. Stay focused on what you admire and be that person. The more that you have success being the person that you admire, being that “player” that you can admire in whatever “sport” that you play, the more that you will feel energized and fully confident.

Turn those ideas into a personal philosophy. You need to live them. When it comes to feeling confident, sometimes there is little else at stake other than just making ourselves feel proud. The trick is to know how to do that. And now you have the answer. Be certain to admire who you are.

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Copyright © 2002 Kevin Hoffberg
Last modified: 07/24/05