The First Type of Faith an Athlete Must Have to Go from Good to Great
Yesterday I made the case for why faith and belief are different when it comes to sports. The point was that beliefs change based on success and failure, but faith does not waver. In sports you must see to believe, but faith remains even in the darkest moments. Most importantly, an athlete can believe their way to good, but to get to great an athlete must have faith.
With this in mind, as athletes work to go from good to great, they must follow a specific process in order to move from belief to faith. This process begins by first having faith in oneself. While this may sound trivial, it’s far easier said than done.
Faith in yourself starts with a promise and ends with fulfilling that promise with the appropriate action. When you don’t fulfill that promise with the appropriate action then this means you don’t have faith in yourself. To put it differently, faith in yourself requires taking responsibility for everything that happens to you. This means that you own your choices, you accept the outcome of those choices, and you have faith that those choices will ultimately result in you reaching your maximum potential. That is what it means to have faith in yourself.
Obviously, no one is perfect. There will be times when you fail at meeting your responsibilities. However, when you truly have faith in yourself you won’t ever make this a habit. Furthermore, before an athlete can put faith in a process, technique, coach, or team they must have this type of faith in themselves first.
P.S. For many athletes faith in oneself begins and ends with their spirituality and faith in God.