I Can't Believe It's Not Confidence!

A slump is a funny little thing. It's sneaky. It pokes it's head out when you're not looking, when everything is going great and you'd never expect it. Then, out of nowhere, wham! You're stuck tighter than two pages in Playboy. Which, at first ain't so bad. You know that's the way it goes sometimes, that everybody goes through it and that, eventually, you'll pull out of it. And then a couple of days go by. And a couple of weeks. And a couple of months. And that's when you start to wonder. And right then, at that moment, mid-thought, before you even realize that you're wondering if you'll ever pull out of it- that's when the slump wins. That's when it grabs you by the neck and gives it to you hard- right in the junk. That's when it gets really bad. That's when the slump kicks it into high gear. That's when your 1 for 4s with a strike out and an error turn into 0-5s with 3 strike outs and 2 errors. Once you lose your confidence- you lose everything.

Over the last few weeks I've encountered a fair number of minor frustrations and disappointments and I feel like I'm in a bit of a funk. Things haven't been awful, in fact, I've had some great times recently, but amidst the many ups and downs I've noticed an overall trend that's having a negative effect on my energy, confidence and performance.

It's a weird little slump I'm in. My performance hasn't dropped off noticeably, but just this week I noticed that my confidence was shot. I've been doubting myself at baseball, I've been second guessing myself at work. I've caught myself silently shaking my head at myself more times than I'd like and generally thinking too much in the past tense.

At baseball on Sunday (after another untimely strike out), I made an unusual decision: I decided to be confident. Despite my performance and despite my complete and utter lack of confidence, I decided to do something I've never done before: fake it. That's when something really interesting happened: my game turned around.

Confidence is a funny little thing. It's sneaky. It pokes it's head out when things are going terrible and you'd never expect it, when you think you're just faking it and telling yourself that you believe when really you don't. The great thing about wannabe confidence is that, in my experience, it works just as well as the real thing.