My Personal Battle with Confidence

Welcome to issue #10 of Referee Playbook. Each week, I send one short essay that helps sports fans understand the view of a referee.

Confidence - The Secret Sauce

• It’s not something you tell yourself in the mirror.

• It’s not something you attract or memorize.

• It’s not something you supplement for.

It takes hard work and structured effort.

Confidence for a leader, coach, or sports referee is the key that unlocks all doors. Ensures you can work every room, and perform on every stage.

Confidence is the key to the city. 🔑

My Personal Battle with Confidence

In the early days of my international hockey umpiring career, I would show up to test matches and overseas tournaments searching for reasons to feel confident.

I would rely on signs from the players, coaches, and umpire managers to signal that I was good enough to be there. I needed their permission to feel confident.

This fixed me in a state of searching:

• Searching for approval

• Searching for acceptance

• Searching for validation

I couldn’t have been further from actually BEING confident.

3 Practical Steps to Build Confidence

I’m now 10 years along in my journey internationally, and 20 years domestically. I’ve spent the last 24 months trying to manage a performance plan to the standard of a performance athlete.

I’m not perfect (by a long way) - But here is what I’ve learned.

I believe that confidence is stacked in small amounts. Like making tiny deposits into your bank account, on a daily basis.

Through reflection and self-discovery, I’ve narrowed down confidence to:

3-Practical Steps:

1. Meticulous Planning

2. Scheduled Reflection

3. Ruthless self-accountability

The deliberate practice of keeping promises to yourself and tracking things you said that you were going to do.

The result is:

• I feel successful

• Increase in self-belief

• Sense of achievement builds

This self-belief and sense of achievement lead to motivation and determination to stick to my plan, hold myself accountable, and do the work.

The Confidence Toolkit – Form Confidence Habits

An incredibly simple, but awfully challenging practice.

Create a list of daily habits that build your confidence. The things that help put you get into a positive mood. Those tasks that, if done consistently, make you feel great.

• Going for a walk

• Reading a book

• Working out

• Eating right

• Journaling

• Stretching

Then, every day, measure your success. How good were you at doing the things you said you would do? Now find ways to hold yourself accountable.

• Engage a coach, put a calendar on the fridge, share, and challenge a friend.

The longer you can stack these wins… The reward is developing confidence.

There is Only One Hack – Time and Experience.

Of course, the 100th time you compete or perform, you will feel more confident than on your first 10 times. But we need confidence now. We don’t have time to wait.

Confident individuals are presented with more opportunities and are more likely to seize them and succeed when they arrive.

They are armed and ready to embrace the moment without hesitation or the need to seek reassurance and validation like I did.

It’s simple: Practice planning and keeping promises to yourself. Track and measure things you said would do. Ruthlessly hold yourself accountable.

Try it, and watch your confidence soar.

Thank me later!