Emmaus Hornets Softball 2012 - ehssoftball

 

Community

A Team without Walls

 

Community comes from the Latin word communitas.  Com means “with” or “together” and the root word munus means “gift”.  Community literally means to gift to one another.  A team without walls is a group of individuals who gift to one another with a mutual sense of authenticity, trust, care and support.  “Team” is a synonym for “community.”  It’s a microcommunity of interdependent players, parents and coaches that shares its gifts to one another’s benefit. Team means every individual is inextricably bound to the others and to the success of the whole community.  No player, no matter how talented, has ever won a game by playing alone.

 

For us these three virtues will form the core of our community: liberty, respect and moral courage.  “” is a word with very patriotic overtones in this country, but it applies at the personal and team level, too.  for us means being released from the imprisoning self-concepts and the cultural chains that impede our growth, fulfillment, and potential.

 

The Second virtue is respect.  Respect is internal as well as external; respect for one’s self and respect for others.  Respect can be summed up in the Golden Rule:  Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.  Respect is the virtue that cements a team.  Always, respect the game, respect your opponent. 

 

Moral courage, our third virtue, is what enables us to stand up for what is right even if it means standing alone.  This is courage because it not only maintains personal and communal values but at the same time risks personal rejection.  Players, parents, coaches with moral courage stand up and speak out when faced with behavior, gossip, and criticism that defy the values of our team and community.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who Owns Your Confidence?

 

Having confidence is one thing, owning it is another.  Webster defines confidence as “a feeling of one’s powers or reliance on one’s circumstances”, “the faith or belief that one will act in an effective way”, and “the quality or state of being certain”.  When you boil down these definitions you come up with the following four words: Power, Reliance, Belief, Certain.  These words are powerful and convey both a feeling of strength and trust.  To me, confidence is just that – a strong belief and trust in yourself.

 

We all know that confidence is necessary for succeeding at anything and yet it’s not an easy thing to teach or understand.  Some people are born with a high amount of confidence while the rest of us struggle to some degree believing in ourselves.  Although the amount of confidence each of us has may differ, one that doesn’t is the fact that confidence is personal.  Confidence is something that YOU have in some amount – either large or small – and that nobody else can have for you.  Confidence is personal – it’s yours.

 

Building, improving and strengthening confidence is an individual effort that everyone needs to do on their own.  Confidence is a lot like lifting, nobody can do it for you, and if you want to get stronger you’ve got to do it yourself.  While all of this makes perfect sense you might be surprised to find out how often our simple little “helpful” gestures start hurting a player’s confidence.  Anytime we do things for a player that they are very capable of doing themselves, they build a reliance on us.  Something simple like offering to carry a player’s equipment bag to the car is a very nice thing to do.  But what if you did it every single day?  Pretty soon the player would expect you to carry their bag, and eventually, they wouldn’t feel like they were capable of carrying it themselves.  That player would go from knowing they could carry their own bag to believing they couldn’t.

 

This might sound like a silly example but we are currently in a culture where parents want to do everything for their kids.  I’m not saying that the concept of those intentions isn’t good, it its.  Parents should want to do everything they can for their kids, but there are things that kids can, and should do, for themselves.  Things like carrying their own equipment, figuring out when their next practice or game is, knowing what time the bus leaves, knowing how they did in their last game, talking for themselves and practicing.  These are not things that we should do for our kids because the simple act of doing and knowing these things helps make that player stronger and smarter and more self-reliant.

 

 

 

So what does all this have to with “owning your confidence”?  Because so many parents want to save time and do so many things for their kids, kids are learning to rely on other people for their success instead of on themselves.  Players learn that if they dumb it down a notch then adults will do a lot of the heavy lifting for them.  Remember that confidence is a strong belief and trust in yourself, which you don’t have if everybody around you knows everything and does everything for you.  Sure, it’s easier that way, but it doesn’t do anything to build up your belief in your own thoughts, and words and knowledge and skills.

 

In life, we have Confidence Influencers, or Helpers.  These influencers can either build up or break down our confidence.  They can be:

• Our parents

• Our teachers

• Our coaches

• Our family

• Our friends

 

While these people can influence our confidence, they don’t own it unless we allow them to.  Confidence is such an important element for success at anything in life that we need to do all we can to build it up and keep it strong.  Making sure we own our own confidence instead of allowing outsiders to own it for us is the first step in managing those tough days and coming through them with a strong belief in ourselves.

 

Players – surround yourself with people who don’t do all the work for you but instead, respect you enough to allow you to do your own work.

Parents/Coaches – resist the urge to talk for the girls and do all the work for them.  These girls are very capable of doing great things and you’d be amazed at how strong they’ll become when allowed to think, and talk and act for themselves.

 

Sure, we can all lend a hand whenever someone needs it, but helping someone out is different than doing it for them.  Teach our girls that they’re the keepers of their confidence – that nobody can own it for them.  Surround yourself with positive confidence influencers and get rid of the confidence suckers in your like!

 

The key to being confident is to OWN Your Own!  Make it Yours!  Only let positive confidence helpers impact your confidence and become a positive confidence helper to your teammates!  Confidence is just like a muscle – when we use it, it gets stronger and when we ignore it, it dies.

 

 

 

 

The Challenge of Consistency

 

What do you want people to say about you?  That you have the best genes or the most potential?  No.  That you’re the world’s luckiest person?  No.  That you are Reliable and consistent? Absolutely.  Everyone has good days and bad days, but tough competitors have fewer bad days than everyone else, and even on those rough days they remain competitive.  They find a way to give themselves or their teams a chance to win.  It’s ok to have a good bad day.

 

What does it take to be consistent?

 

Effective self talk

A proper perspective

Control of emotions

Physiological self control

Work ethic

Effective communication

 

Who won’t learn these skills?

 

Excuse makers

Lazy people

People without high goals

People who worry too much about how they look and not enough on doing what’s right

People who allow their emotions to dictate their thoughts and actions, rather than converting those emotions into action signals that help identify the best course of thoughts and actions to follow.

 

What does it take to learn these skills?

 

Motivation – Formal goal setting can aid your consistency in this

mental skill.

Awareness of current habits.  Always pay attention so you can figure 

out what’s working and repeat it, and figure out what’s not working and change it.

Courage to change what’s not working, despite the discomfort involved.

Discipline to honestly give your best effort one step at a time, often enduring pain now to enhance pleasure later.

Patience – It will take time and persistence to reach major goals.

Faith – If the course you’re taking is headed in the right direction, keep going even when adversity tries to knock you down.

Momentum: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  That first one is the hardest of them all.

 

 

 

Discipline

First, you have to decide that you want a particular goal – that you are committed to finding a way to get it.  Then with enough motivation, you will be able and will need to have discipline.  Discipline may not be your favorite topic, but to get to any worthwhile “end”, you must go through the “middle”.  No cheating, no shortcuts.  Discipline is the “middle”.  You can get whatever you want in life if you have enough MOTIVATION and COURAGE, and it is DISCIPLINE that will take you there!

 

What is discipline?  It’s hustle and sweat and fighting through pain.  It’s eliminating excuses.  It’s attention to details.  It’s consistency.  It’s hard work without having to be asked.  It’s more, though many of us lack a clear concept of what discipline really is.  Personally, it was through discipline that I am here today and able to do what I’m doing.  It is accepting responsibility for the results I am getting and dedicating myself to reality so that I can figure out what’s working and what isn’t.  This requires stringent self-examination, a willingness to be challenged and relentless honesty.  Then, choosing one course of action over another requires flexibility, good judgment and courage.  With discipline, we can work both hard and smart.

 

Personally, I think life is still quite challenging…even difficult.  But when we learn to take it one step at a time, trying hard and being open so that we learn every step of the way, amazing achievements become common.