The Confident Champion Session Two Transcript

The Confident Champion
Session Two Transcript

Hi it’s Lisa Lane Brown welcome to the Confident Champion System. In this System, you are
going to discover how to create breakthrough confidence so you can believe in yourself so you
can deliver incredible peak performance, become a star athlete, and dominate your sport.
Remember, I created this system so that you NO LONGER:

1. Lose your confidence, be passive and self-conscious, and over-think what you are doing so
you perform at only a fraction of your potential and really don’t enjoy competing

2. Approach competing overwhelmed with fear, choke, and get worse and worse out there so
that your performance goes up and down like a yo-yo and you lose playing time, get yelled at,
or let your team down.

3. Try to compete with sub-par skills or skills that have hit a plateau so you really can’t
accomplish your goals no matter how motivated you are because you don’t have the skills.
Instead, you will learn to do the following:

1. Create breakthrough confidence for yourself so that you are energized, confident,
aggressive, and excited to perform whenever you go out there.

2. Transform yourself into a star athlete with superior, amazing skills so you can deliver
peak performances, get instant respect, and win, even against tough competitors.

3. Develop consistent confidence by mastering the art of persistence and the will to win so
you achieve total self-mastery and are in control of your athletic destiny.
In this program you’re going to learn five key skills:

Session One
How to Create Unshakable Confidence and BELIEVE in Yourself in Sport
Session Two
How To Express Your True Greatness & Transform Yourself Into A Genuine STAR
Session Three
The Magic Formula for Becoming Fearless and Super-Charged with Confidence BEFORE You
Compete
Session Four
CONSISTENT Confidence: How to Master the Art of Persistence & the Will to Win

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Session Five
Relationship Mastery - How to Create Happy Relationships for Ultimate Confidence

Session One Agenda
How to Create Unshakable Confidence and BELIEVE in Yourself in Sport
1. What is Confidence?
What confidence really is (and is not) and why so few athletes actually know how to
create it. You will discover the REAL secret to genuine confidence, because no one has
ever shown you the truth.
2. Why Athletes Need Confidence
Why confidence is the foundation for becoming a star athlete, winning, and lovin’ your
sport – and how it affects every element of your performance.
3. Why Most Athletes Lack Confidence
The psychology of fear and why it is the opposite of confidence – including and how to
become fearless in sport so you NEVER choke or under-perform in big events again.
4. How Champions Master Fear and Create Breakthrough Confidence
How To Trigger Your Confident Self - Gain Control
The THREE Practices of Confident Champions: Face It, Master It, and Make It Happen
5. Face It – The Practice of Consciousness
Facing Your Fears
The Two Types of Fear
What Is Confidence?
Confidence is the belief that you can cope with the challenges of competition and fulfill your
desires. It is a profound belief in your athletic self.
It's a truly wonderful feeling. You know you're the goods and you believe you can succeed.
But, there is a LOT of confusion about there about how to get confidence. You cannot go after
confidence directly, which is why I will often say, “Confidence is not a CHOICE.”
What would I mean by such a statement?
Most self-help books tell you confidence IS a choice.

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They tell you that if you want confidence, all you need to do is "ask yourself" for it.
You're supposed to repeat to yourself things like:
"I feel great today."
"I'm calm, confident, and cheerful right now."
"Lisa, go out there and be confident."

Sort of a 'fake 'it till you make it' approach.
Exhausting, because it doesn't work most of the time.
You can't trick yourself.
Let me repeat: You CANNOT trick yourself.
Here's why...
Confidence – the belief that you can cope with the challenges of life - is a by-product of dealing
with fear effectively.
If you're not feeling confident, it means you're feeling fear, doubt, anxiety, or depression.
And when you're feeling these feelings, it doesn't work to pretend you're not – because as you
learned in Session One, either your fear is coming from a problem you need to solve or you’ve
created it with your imagination.
Either way, you need to deal with it.
One athlete I remember well is Karen,* a figure skater who came to see me because she had
lost her motivation months after a bad fall.
Karen had no 'confidence' in her ability to win anymore.
And she was frustrated with her coach and parents, who were constantly giving her pep talks.
At first Karen scoffed when I asked her to listen to her fears about competing.
She just wanted to get her discipline back.
I persisted. I kept asking Karen to visualize a time she felt really confident when jumping.
After many tries in which she couldn't get an image, Karen made a breakthrough. She finally
touched the fear in her heart about missing axels, falling, and re-injuring herself.
I asked Karen what her fear was asking him to do.
"My timing is a mess. I don't know how long to wait before jumping. Sometimes I jump too
soon or too late. My coach needs to help me correct this and get my timing back."

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Karen left my office determined to get her timing back both in practice and competition.
If you don't listen to your fears and figure out what they are asking you to do or learn in
competition, they will get stronger.
Your body will literally yell at you, making you anxious and even panicky.
Obviously if you feel this way, you cannot improve your confidence, because fear is the
opposite of confidence.
That's why you need to be open to what your body has to say at all times.
Recently I worked with Joan, tennis player who lost her confidence and choked at the key
moment in her doubles match.
She had no idea why.
Finally she admitted, "Lisa I hit an overhead smash to win but the other team called it out. I was
wild with anger and wanted to protest, but my doubles partner didn't back me up. Instead of
sticking to my guns I backed down. But after that, I wasn't the same. I lost all the key points."
Sometimes confidence requires honesty and assertiveness – even if other people don't like it.
But the starting point is always listening to your fear and figuring out what it wants you to do,
assuming the fear is real. If it’s not, you’ll want to stop punishing yourself by creating a bogus
fear over and over.
This is what I mean when I say that a lot of athletes, coaches and parents have been mislead
about confidence, because they’ve been told that we can go after it DIRECTLY.
To re-cap: we don’t gain confidence from ordering ourselves to “be confident”.
We develop confidence from continually defeating fear using the three mental practices of the
Confident Champion: Face It, Master It, and Make It Happen:
Face It – The Practice of Consciousness
Master It – The Practice of Competence
Make It Happen – The Practice of Commitment

When you engage in these three practices every day, you gain more and more CONTROL over
your performance, which triggers your Confident Self.

Over time, your Confident Self – your ability to TRUST yourself – starts to dominate, your fears
subside, and BELIEF in yourself takes hold.

In Session One, Face It – The Practice of Consciousness, you completed several exercises on
facing your fears, including an Action Plan at the end.

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EXERCISE - Session 1 Action Plan
In the space below, write down TWO action steps that you will take THIS WEEK as a result of
facing your fears today. Make sure the first step is based on your real (legitimate) fear and the
second step is based on a fear created by the imagination.
For example, you will do one thing every day to improve your shot, whether it’s practising it
after training or visualizing it. You will stop your negative image every time you notice it and
replace it with your new, positive image.
Record both steps here:

Real Fear Action Step

Fear Created By the Imagination Action Step

How did it go?
I recommend you set a goal to conquer two major fears every 30 days using this exact same
exercise. It might be an opponent who has suddenly improved, a weakness in your skills or
game, a new coach who doesn’t buy into you, finding yourself on a new team or level, a
teammate who gets under your skin, and so on.
Master It – The Practice of Competence
In Session One you learned that some fears are legitimate – they come from the fact that we’re
facing a problem and we’re not dealing with it effectively.
You also learned that to master this type of fear, you need to step up and solve the problem by
taking action on it daily, which is what you started for seven days last week after Session One.
This is where the Master It, The Practice of Competence comes in.
Competence is defined as, “the ability to do a thing successfully.”
This is essential to defeating fear and creating breakthrough confidence, because once you
identify a weakness in your skills, game, or strategy, you’ll want to eliminate or at least shore
up that weakness as quickly as possible.
In Session Two, Master It – The Practice of Competence, you will discover exactly how to do
this. Specifically, you will learn:

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Letting Go and Locking in Superstardom. The astonishingly simple tool that all superstars use
to draw the lesson out of every setback, let go of emotional baggage, and free themselves to
make exponential gains in their performance.

How to Create a Winning Self-Image. How to make ‘being a star’ and a ‘true winner’ feel
completely natural in your heart, no matter what your past. You will construct a powerful,
unstoppable self-image that will set you up to dominate your sport.

Get Better, Faster. Why superstars have better skills -- and how to harness their secrets to
become 30% better this season (without adding any time to your practice schedule).

The Greatness Mindset. Most athletes are trapped inside their Comfort Zone, afraid to take
chances and express their true greatness.

GOALS! How to find The Big Goal for you that will cause you to finally Break from the Pack - and
fill you with excitement every single day.

LETTING GO and Locking In Superstardom
Why Emotional Baggage Kills Your Confidence
Before you can truly master your sport and gain the breakthrough confidence that comes with
it, you’ll want to let go of any emotional baggage from the past and start with a clean slate.
If you don’t face your fears, as I taught in Session One, then you will automatically push them
out of your mind.
The technical term for this is suppression.
If you do suppress your fears, you could be setting yourself up for months (or even years) of low
confidence.
I can speak with authority on this subject.

When I was 15, my parents divorced.

My mother moved 2,000 miles away and my father plunged into an intense affair with his new
girlfriend.

For the first nine months after the divorce, I did not cry.

In fact, I did not think about the divorce at all until my sister said, "Dad thinks you hate him."

Her words shocked me. As far as I was concerned, I wasn't upset at all. I even prided myself on
my stoic nature.

See, I thought I could outsmart emotional pain by stuffing it down.

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No, I wasn't feeling intense pain. But I wasn't feeling confident either.
My trademark as an athlete - my unstoppable confidence - was gone almost overnight. Plus I
was overwhelmed with negative thoughts about myself, including my skills as an athlete.
This really alarmed me. I was a great athlete and a nice girl.
Why had I lost my confidence?
Simple.
When we’re shutting out fear or disappointment or loss, we get depressed.
Depression does not give us peak performance.
When you’re depressed, you have no motivation.
When you’re depressed, you have no confidence.
And when you’re depressed, you don’t BELIEVE.
But this is exactly what happens when we have trauma, loss, disappointment, and failure - in
sport or life.
When we are traumatized, our instinctive response is to shut down. We mute our feelings a bit
because they are painful and difficult to have.
This makes us depressed.
We’re plugging along, hoping our negative self-talk and low confidence goes away on its own.
The moral of the story?
If you want to keep your confidence strong, you need to be able to face and feel your fears.
You can’t be depressed, shut down, or numb - for any reason.
My story has a happy ending.
I made an appointment for counseling. There I finally touched my true feelings about the
divorce. When the tears finally came, my sadness was so great I feared my chest would split
open.
I didn't run away though - running from myself made no sense.

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I stayed the course and healed my heart.
Little my little my confidence and self-esteem were restored.
The wins came back too.
How To Restore Your Confidence When You’re Depressed
If you’re in a confidence crisis because of emotional baggage you’re carrying around, you can
actually restore a lot of confidence simply by facing these emotions and then letting them go.
Otherwise, it’s like trying to play your sport with a piano tied to your back: Not easy, and
certainly not pleasant.
What do I mean by “facing these emotions and letting them go?”
It was a five-year-old who taught me how to let go.
Years ago when I owned a chain of sports training camps for kids, we were getting the athletes
ready to go rollerblading.
Suddenly we realized the youngest player in the group, Lyndsay, was crying because there
wasn’t a pair of rollerblades that fit her.
Just then Lyndsay’s Mom came along. She was tired and holding a smaller child in her arms.
“Lyndsay, stop crying,” she said in exasperation.
Lyndsay started to wail.
“Lyndsay, if you don’t stop crying this instant, I’m pulling you out of this camp and we won’t be
back tomorrow,” her mother said.
Lyndsay sat down and was quiet for a moment. Then she looked up at her Mom as said, “I just
want to cry a little.”
She was only five, but she got it.
Sometimes, when there is just loss, the crying IS the healing.
I learned that day that your body knows how to heal itself, and if you get out of its way and let
it do its job.
The crying is the healing.

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EXERCISE – Letting Go of Emotional Baggage
In the space below, write down one thing that’s happened to you in the past that you might still
be holding strong feelings of sadness, fear, or disappointment about. It might be getting cut
from a team, something a coach said to you, a fight with a teammate or friend, a comment
from a parent, or something personal (like my parents’ divorce):

Now, think back to that situation and lock on to the image that most upsets you. Picture this
scene in your mind and let yourself have any emotions about it that come up. Don’t try to force
any emotion to occur, but ask yourself to be OPEN to anything that might be troubling you from
the past – even events that might have happened years ago.
Then, write down your reflections, including what emotions may have been stirred up:

The Final Step - The Sedona Method
Once you’ve identified past losses, setbacks, or disappointments that might be depressing you a
little and crippling your confidence, you can let them go. There is a very powerful method for
this called The Sedona Method. In the Sedona Method, you resolve to let go of emotions that
are dragging you down because they are related to the past, not the present or the future.
In The Sedona Method, you ask yourself the following questions:

1. What is the emotion I’m feeling? (Fear, anger, frustration, disappointment, sadness)
2. Can I let it go?
3. Will I let it go?
4. When?
At each step, make sure you pause and answer the question honestly. Sometimes, if you say,
“No! I won’t let it go!” and you are able to accept this from yourself, it paves the way for your
body to let it go at a later time.
Try it now.
The Lure of Self-Pity
One caveat, though: letting go of emotional baggage is not an exercise in self-pity.

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Feeling sorry for yourself is different from healing. Self-pity is a special type of misery that we
inflict on ourselves by believing that we should NOT have to deal with life’s challenges and
setbacks.
If you find yourself having thoughts like, “This isn’t fair!” and “I should not have had to put up
with that!” you know you’ve thrown yourself into self-pity.
EXERCISE: Self-Pity Be Gone
Self-pity will never heal you, and you can easily shift out of it by saying to yourself, “My
challenges and losses are no different or worse than anyone else’s. Everyone has loss and
setbacks, including me.”
Write these two sentences in the space below, and notice what a difference it makes to your
mindset and emotions:

How To Create A Winning Self-Image
Map of Reality
We all have a map of “reality” in our mind and we operate as though our map is actual reality.
Example: you can take five volleyball coaches, have them watch a try-out, and ask them to rank
the top five players in the court, in order of most valuable to least valuable. What you will get
from them are five different lists. There will likely be some commonality on those lists, but they
will all be different.
How is this possible?
It’s possible because each coach has a different “reality” or map in his head that tells him ‘what
a valuable volleyball player is’. There will be differences – some will value defensive skills more
than offensive skills; some will value the ability to communicate to talk; others will value height,
speed and strength; still others will value the athletes’ perceived mental toughness.
You have a map of reality in your mind about everything: about how your sport works, about
how a person makes money, about how a relationship is supposed to work, and even how
subjects such as how math works, how English essays work, how music works – everything.
A GOOD Map = A Good Trip
A BAD Map = A Bad Trip
The better and more complete your map, the better your trip will be. That’s another way of

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saying that the better model of reality you have in your head, the better you will be at dealing
with everything from math to money to relationships to your sport.
Your Map of YOURSELF
In addition to having a map of your sport and how it works in your head, you have a map of
yourself. This map is called your self-image.
Your self-image is the athletic vision of yourself deep in your unconscious mind. It is a complete
blueprint of the kind of athlete you consider yourself to be.
Whether you see yourself as quick, strong, and smart or slow, weak and dumb all depends on
your self-image.
The level of detail in your athletic self-image is astonishing. It includes every dimension or trait
in sport you can imagine.
Why is this important?
Because, as we said in Session One, we don’t do things based on what’s going on around us. We
do things based on what we THINK is going on around us, or our BELIEFS.
All your actions, emotions, and decisions are consistent with the beliefs inside your self-image,
the map of yourself in your mind.
Convinced you can't beat a certain opponent?
You'll find a way to lose in the end.
Consider yourself unlikely to win those 50-50 battles?
You'll hang back and play cautious.
Not sure you can ascend to the top of your sport?
You won't set worthy goals.
The good news is that you don't have to be controlled by an outdated or negative beliefs.
You can take control of your beliefs and create a NEW map.
A new map creates a NEW reality.
What Are Beliefs?
A belief is anything you think is true.

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The Power of Beliefs
Your beliefs set the boundaries of personal accomplishment; they define what you can and
cannot do, because your actions, feelings, and behavior are always consistent with this self-
image.
This concept comes from author Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon who became fascinated by
this concept when he started operating on people to give them more beautiful faces: “My book
told of amazing changes that often occur quite suddenly and dramatically in a person`s
personality when you change his face. Some patients showed NO change in personality after
surgery. In most cases a person who had a conspicuously ugly face, or a `freakish feature`
experienced a immediate rise in self-esteem and confidence.
But in some cases, the patient continued to feel inadequate and experienced feelings of
inferiority. These people still acted and behaved like they had an ugly face.”
What Maltz figured out was that our beliefs create our reality, and our reality dictates our
actions.
Therefore, our beliefs dictate our actions and results.
Some people have a belief that says, “I am attractive no matter what I look like on the outside.”
When you fix their appearance, they don’t feel any differently.
Some people have a belief that says, “I am attractive on the inside and ugly on the outside,”
and when you fix their face, they are suddenly happy, because now they feel attractive on the
inside and the outside.
But if they have a belief that says, “I am ugly,” and you fix their face, they continue to feel and
act as though they are ugly, because this belief has not changed.
Our beliefs create our reality, including how we feel. If deep down you believe you are
unattractive, you are going to feel bad about yourself and not be very sociable. The opposite is
true if you believe you are attractive.
Example: let’s imagine you believe you are dumb in math. Your report card will bear this out.
The same applies to sport. If you believe you are an average player, not a superstar who rises to
the occasion in games, then you will not want the puck at the end of the game. But, if you
believe that you are that player, you will call for the puck with a sense of determination and
purpose.
In the 1972 Summit Series final between Canada and Russia, Paul Henderson remembers the
game being tied 5-5. He remembers:
Time ticked down. There was less than a minute to play…Esposito, Cournoyer and Peter
Mahovlich were on the ice in that final minute as I watched from the bench. I then did
something I had never done before, and would never do again in my hockey career.

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`Pete! Pete!`I hollered at him. Don`t ask me how or why, but I felt I if I could get out there one
more time I could score a goal. I just felt it. For the first time in my life I was screaming at a
player to get off the ice so I could get on, just more time. You just didn`t do that - I had never
heard another player do it in my eighteen year hockey career – but I did it.
EXERCISE – Beliefs
Write down 10 positive things about yourself as an athlete that you know to be true. Example: I
am fast, I`m a great passer, I have an accurate shot, I`ve got the moves, I`m a tough defender,
etc.

Now write down 10 negative things about yourself as an athlete that you believe to be true or
you are afraid are true. Example: I`m an average athlete, or I`m not a pressure player or I`m not
a scorer or I`m too fast, too slow, too big, too small, too dumb or too smart.

What do you do or not do out there because of these beliefs?

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It’s very easy to develop a negative self-image filled with negative beliefs, because we all have
weaknesses. We all have current realities that are depressing.
When he was in high school, 4-time NBA Champion Shaquille O’Neal tried out for his high
school basketball team. He was 6 foot 8, but matched up against a better kid. His knees were
bad and he couldn’t jump. He was also lazy and didn’t use his size.
Shaq was crushed and thought, “I’m never going to make it.”
When he told his Dad, he said, “Go back up to the gym and keep working.” His father wouldn’t
let him quit and made him play on a base with soldiers. The coach was nice and then another
coach noticed he couldn’t dunk. He showed Shaq how to do calf raises every day. “From the
end of my freshman year to the end of my sophomore year in high school, my vertical leap
went from 18 inches to 42 inches.” Finally, he could block shots, jump, and hold his own.
How to Take CONTROL: Create NEW Beliefs
In Session One you learned that the best way to trigger you Confident Self is to take CONTROL
of what you can control, because it has a major positive impact on your emotional state and
actions – which in turn makes you perform better.
You also learned that you can use your imagination to create confidence, not just fear.
The good news is that you can change your beliefs and become a winning, confident champion
simply by using your imagination in a positive way rather than a negative way.
The moment you do this, you start to create a NEW reality, one that reflects your goals and
dreams (not your fears).
You take control of your beliefs by creating a new persona – a new role based on exactly the
athlete you want to become.
Most athletes, when they train, practice, and compete, attend as “themselves.” They just show
up as the same person they have always been, both in their mind and in their actions.
Confident champions are different.
They ask themselves, “What would a champion in my sport act like in practice? In the warm up?
What would he say to himself? How would he walk? What image would he project to
opponents? How would he prepare with his sleeping habits, his nutrition, his fitness? What
weaknesses would he eliminate and what strengths would he have? What kinds of game
strategies and risks would he take?”

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Then they carefully model themselves after this vision.
Up until 2011, and especially agains Rafal Nadal, Djodovic used to fall apart regularly. He'd just
find a way to lose.
Those days are gone.
Djokovic is now No 1 in the world and is officially considered one of the greatest tennis players
of all time.
Djokovic is a triumph of self-image. He learned how to live out of his imagination rather than
surrending to 'reality.'
You see, Rafal Nadal and Roger Federer's domination of men's tennis has been intimidating.
Most athletes in Djokovic's place would have just treaded water, hoping for an injury on the
part of Nadal or Federer.
Not Djokovic. He realized the power of taking the long view and using his imagination. He
plugged away on his game, improving his self-image all the while.
His most notable areas of improvement? His forehand and his movement. They've gone from
great to stupendous.
This is no small feat when you're already one of the best in the world...because you only get
better in very small doses, and you have to BELIEVE without massive amounts of reinforcement.
Novak`s website says:
Dare to Dream. “I was dreaming of becoming number one. Wimbledon was in those dreams.
Then, in a span of just two days - my dreams came true.
For a long time after that, images were moving in my mind – clearer than ever before.”
EXERCISE – Your Persona
A persona is a special role that you play based on a vision of yourself as an athlete that you
want to create. I once read that the singer Beyonce creates a persona for herself on stage called
Sasha Fierce that really helps her get psyched up to go other there, and your persona will be a
bit like that.
In the space below, answer the following questions about how you would conduct yourself as a
star athlete, a true confident champion.
“What would a champion in my sport act like in practice? In warm up? What would he say to
himself? How would he walk? What image would he project to opponents? How would he

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prepare with his sleeping habits, his nutrition, his fitness? What weaknesses would he eliminate
and what strengths would he have? What kinds of game strategies and risks would he take?
How would he react when faced with setbacks or losses?”

Most athletes don’t do this because they see themselves as “fixed” entities, not a work in
progress. Years ago I stumbled across a teammate sobbing in the hallway. I knew she was upset
because she had been named to the National Team’s “taxi squad” – players who dress but only
play in case of injury or illness.
“I’m quitting,” she told me.
I was puzzled. I knew she was disappointed, but throwing in the towel at the tender age of 18
didn’t make any sense to me because the average age on the National Team was 26. I said this
and she said, “But Shelley made it.”
Ah ha.
Shelley was a superstar from a very young age and had made the National Team at 16 years old.
This is why a lot of athletes don’t have any patience in taking the long view when it comes to
becoming a star, champion athlete. They don’t realize they can make massive gains over time
and transform themselves.
One of the best examples, of course, is basketball star Steve Nash who basically toiled away in
obscurity for years before being voted the NBA’s most valuable player. Steve says:

“People have always doubted whether I was good enough
to play this game at this level.

I thought I was, and I thought I could be.
What other people thought was really always irrelevant to me.
Once I figured out I could play in the NBA, I also figured I could be an All-Star.”

--Basketball star Steve Nash

Exercise – ONE New Belief
I want you to select ONE new belief about yourself that you would like to instill in your mind.
Here is the criteria I would like you to use when creating it. Your belief should:
--Make a huge difference in your overall game
--Excite and motivate you

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--Get you to overcome a technical, physical, or tactical weakness (or several)
Now here’s the tricky part.
To select the right belief, you need have to ignore “reality” as it stands right now.
Recently I asked a group of athletes to imagine themselves TEN TIMES better than they are
right now.
At first, they thought I was crazy.
“How can I believe something that’s not TRUE?” one of them demanded.
“Is there a fear in your mind that isn’t necessarily TRUE, but you believe it?” I asked.
He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah.”
“The defense rests,” I said. “Now please imagine yourself TEN TIMES better than you are right
now.”
To help you, I’m going to reveal something I’ve never really told many people because it really
could be misinterpreted. From the time I was nine years old, I wanted to be the best ringette
player in the world. So when I decided to choose my new belief, I picked, “I’m the best ringette
player in the world.”
I felt really silly about this because I was NOT the best player in the world when I created it. But,
I figured I had nothing to lose, and I was right. This belief changed how I conducted myself. The
best player in the world would always be rested, hydrated, and mentally ready to compete. The
best player in the world would bring 100% quality effort to every game. The best player in the
world would be the total package, and always ready to listen to good coaching. You get the
idea.
Write your new belief below:

EXERCISE – Instilling Your Belief
Your next assignment is to repeat this belief for two minutes in your warm ups for practices,
games, or training. Don’t worry that your belief is not “TRUE”. Simply repeat it. Remember, this
is where the rubber hits the road. This is where you create a NEW reality in your life – you do
what Stephen R. Covey says, which is to Begin with the End in Mind.
Every great athlete who ever accomplished something extraordinary had, at one point, not
done so. Every athlete who won Wimbledon had never won it. The key is believing FIRST, not
the other way around. If you wait for reality to show up before you are willing to believe in
something, you’ll be waiting a very long time.

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

How To Get BETTER, FASTER
A simple way to develop breakthrough confidence and BELIEVE in yourself is to make yourself
better – and not just a little bit better. I’m talking about TEN TIMES better than you are right
now.
The simple truth is that star athletes have better skills than virtually everyone else in their
sport. This gives them a sense of CONTROL and triggers their Confident Self because they trust
their skills instinctively. Even if they are having a bad day, or things are falling apart around
them, they can rely on their skills to get themselves out of even the deepest hole.
To truly express your greatness, you will need to learn the joy of evolving yourself as an athlete.
This is how basketball superstar Michael Jordan transformed his confidence from the inside out.
Michael says:

It was like a tree getting taller.

As I grew upward my roots grew deeper and formed a foundation that kept getting stronger.
When the wind blew, I was able to stay steady.

They could blow all the wind they wanted about Michael Jordan, but they never could take
on my basketball ability.

I dug down deep into the layers of the game.

I learned as much as I could about the game, every nuance, every variation.

Some trees stop growing and they get blown over in time.

I never stopped growing.

As I continued to grow there was less and less anyone could say about my skills.

Why Star Athletes Have Better Skills
There are three reasons why star athletes have better skills:

1) They work harder than other athletes
2) They work smarter than other athletes
3) They go outside their Comfort Zone more
Working HARDER
The 10,000 Hour Rule for Success in Sport
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell reveals why some people achieve extraordinary things.
One undeniable factor is the 10,000 hour rule.

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

Whether it's Mozart, the Beatles, or Bill Gates, all extraordinary achievers put in a minimum of
10,000 hours developing their skills.
And there are no exceptions.
This doesn't mean that talent isn't a factor. You must have some innate talent. Assuming a
minimum base of talent, though, what takes you from good to great is how hard you work.
Gladwell says, "The people at the top don't just work harder or much harder. They work much,
much harder."
The reality is, few athletes train long or hard enough to discover how good they could truly be.
Most athletes are training at 60% capacity and think they are working too hard.
Once upon a time speed skater Gaeton Boucher decided he was going to win a gold medal at
the 1980 Olympics.
The summer before the Olympics Gaeton went to to train with U.S. skating star Eric Heiden. It
was in this training that he got the biggest surprise of his career.
He recalls: 'Heiden started with a 10,000 metres warm-up of skating imitations. I had never seen
skating imitations before. You run in a skating position (bent over). Ten thousand metres is 25
laps. Heiden was warming up and he was going fast!

I stopped after 20 laps. My legs were hurting, and that was just a warm-up! Then he did a 5000,
1500 and 1000 all at maximum speed, just like a race.

We took 5 to 10 minutes of rest to recover a little bit and he said, 'Okay, I am doing a 5000.' I
followed him and I stopped after 3000 metres.'
At this point, Gaeton had a life-changing epiphany. In his own words:

'I thought, 'I cannot beat him, he is going to win,' because his training was so much harder. I
thought I was training as hard as I could, then I saw this guy train even harder...that gave me
the idea I could go beyond.'
Boucher was right.
Eric Heiden went on to win 5 gold medals at the 1980 Olympics.
But Boucher soon fulfilled his own dream. In 1984 he won two gold medals in speed skating,
become one of the finest athletes Canada has ever produced.

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

To become a star athlete is not rocket science – you can get started today simply by
dramatically increasing both the number of hours you are training/practising and the quality of
your effort.
Olympic swimmer Dara Torres says that elite swimmers know that being a top swimmer means
that you have to get all the details exactly right:
“Swimming fast is about having the mental discipline to get every last detail right, every single
day…I know it’s a weird thing to say, but swimming is sort of like one of these Impressionist
paintings made with millions of dots. Sure, a dot is a dot. What’s the big deal? But if you care
enough to make each dot the exact right size and the exact right colour in the exact right place,
something amazing occurs.

Torres quotes Daniel Chambliss, ‘The champion athlete does not simply do more of the same
drills and sets as the other swimmers; he also does those things better.’”
I remember my first “Ah Ha!” moment about this idea – it happened when I was in high school
at exam time. At the time I had about an 82% average (in my school they had the Honour Roll
up on a huge wall in our school lobby) and I had always wondered how some kids were getting
92% averages. During this exam week, someone came into the cafeteria and said, “Jennifer
Pirie studied 10 hours for the biology exam.”
I was stunned, because I had never studied more than 2-3 hours for any exam in my life. So the
next round of exams, that’s what I did and before long my average was up at 92% and I was
pretty stoked about it.
EXERCISE – Working Harder
This week, I want you to put in one to two ADDITIONAL hours practising your sport. If you don’t
have access to the training facilities, then improvise something at home. Example: my sport is
played on ice and as a young athlete, I didn’t have access to ice when we weren’t practising, so I
made sure that I always lived in an apartment or condo that had a heated underground parkade
so I could practice my shooting. It wasn’t ice, but it was the next best thing. If you sincerely
don’t feel you can even manage an extra hour this week, then anything you have a “break” in
practice (a water break, a warm up, after practice), take the few minutes there and perfect
something – a swing, a shot, a move – anything. Then record what you noticed below:

Working SMARTER - The Perato Principle
To gain breakthrough confidence truly BELIEVE in yourself, you’ll want to work smarter too.
Confident champions understand that when it comes to skills, not every skill is weighted
equally. Some skills are MUCH more important than others.

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

There’s an idea called the Pareto Principle which basically states that 20% of the one thing
creates 80% of something else. For example, if you’re studying for an exam, 20% of your
studying time will get you 80% of your learning. If you’re a salesperson, 20% of your sales calls
will result in 80% of your sales. If you look at a baseball team, 20% of the players will score 80%
of the runs; if it’s a hockey team, 20% of the players will score 80% of the goals.
In sports, what this means is that 20% of your skills will bring you 80% of your results. Example:
In figure skating, jumps are more important than speed; in tennis, serving is more important
than volleying; in soccer, the ability to score is more important than the ability to pass.
In Moneyball, actor Jonah Hill explains this idea to actor Brad Pitt:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qd1aZb4ORmw
What Hill is saying is that there is one skill that is far more important than all the others when if
you want to win baseball games, and that’s hitting. It’s more important than stealing bases,
bunting, and even playing defense. In the movie Moneyball, the Oakland A’s become far more
competitive because they spend their money to acquire players who can get on base, even
though they have flaws in other parts of their game.
EXERCISE – Working Smarter
What is the most important skill in your sport that, if you perfected it, would make the biggest
difference in your overall performance and results?

Getting Outside Your Comfort Zone -
Turn Your Weakness Into Strengths
The third way to get better skills, faster is to go outside your Comfort Zone more often in
training and competition.
You've heard of the Comfort Zone?
It's a place we feel comfortable.
We have a Comfort Zone in everything: food, tasks, people - even driving routes.
I learned about the Comfort Zone a few years ago when I went to my high school reunion. The
first thing I did was have dinner with the most popular guy in school.
He was handsome, charming, and yes, captain of the football team. "Chris how are you?" I
asked him. "Actually, I'm terrible," he replied. I was really surprised. "What happened to you?"

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

"I'm going through a traumatic divorce. Not only have I lost the person I love most, but since we
cocooned and spent all our time together, I don't have a support system now."
Then Chris brought up the Comfort Zone.
His theory? "We find one person who knows all our insecurities. That person becomes our
Comfort Zone, so we spend 92% of our time with that person. We don't challenge ourselves to
hang with new people or do new things."
The Comfort Zone simplifies life. You don't need to exert effort or thought when you're inside
your Comfort Zone.
Problem is, the Comfort Zone becomes a habit. We stop moving outside it and challenging
ourselves.
That's when the Comfort Zone becomes the enemy of high achievement.
Defeating the Comfort Zone was one strategy Arnold Schwarzenegger used to become one of
the greatest bodybuilders of all time.
Early in his career, Arnold figured out that you can only become great in a sport if you’re willing
to step out of your comfort zone every day.
Schwarzenegger realized that in bodybuilding, the main obstacle to successful training is that
the body adjusts so quickly. “Do the same sequence of lifts every day, and even if you keep
adding weight, you’ll see your muscle growth slow and stop; the muscles become very efficient
at performing the sequence they expect.”
Basically, muscles want to stay in their comfort zone. The more you accommodate them, the
more you plateau.
To combat this, Arnold developed the idea of shocking his muscles. “The way to wake up the
muscle and make it grow again is to jolt it with the message, ‘You never know what’s coming. It
will always be different from what you expect. Today it’s this; tomorrow it’s something else.’
One day it’s ultra-heavy weights; the next day high reps.”
Using this method, which he nicknamed ‘stripping’, Arnold got outside his comfort zone every
day. This led to extraordinary results from his muscles. “I’d shown them who was boss. Their
only option now was to heal and grow.”
I noticed this in the gym myself recently because I got a new workout partner and in our first
workout together, she let me pick all of the exercises, so I had us do all leg strength exercises,
and she burned out pretty fast.

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

I thought I was hot stuff because she’s about 12 years younger than me...until the next
workout, which SHE got to design – and it was all upper body and abs. That’s when I figured out
that I’ve gotten in a “rut” with my workouts and was only picking exercises I was quite grooved
in.
The same thing happens in to you when you’re working on your skills and strategy, no matter
what your sport is. I remember years ago I had a coach who wanted me to shoot more
forehands because my backhand was really in my comfort zone. He’d bribe me, “A buck a
forehand,” he’d say and then give me money after the game.
Staying in your Comfort Zone will not only make you predictable to opponents. It will cause you
to accomplish far less than you’re capable of. Example: An elite hockey player told me that it’s
really hard for her to take chances in the game, whether it’s carry the puck and drive to the net
or even try new shots.
EXERCISE – Your Comfort Zone
List three skills, moves, techniques, and strategies that you avoid practicing and using in
competition because they are outside your Comfort Zone:

a. _______________________________________________
b. _______________________________________________
c. _______________________________________________
EXERCISE – Your Athlete’s Training Journal
To become a star athlete and express your true greatness in sport, you’ll want to take a super-
simple approach to your practices and competitions. Here’s a simple formula that you can try
that will make you 30% better this season with very little extra training time.
Step One
Select three weaknesses you want to turn into strengths.
Step Two
Select the #1 skill in your sport that, if you perfected it, would make the biggest impact on your
results.
Step Three
List these skills in order of importance from 1 to 4, with one being the most important:
1. ___________________________________________
2. ___________________________________________
3. ___________________________________________
4. ___________________________________________

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

Step Four
Choose to devote one month (30 days) to improving each skill (making this a four month
training program). Then, work on this skill using the following four step format:

1. Practice this skill for one extra hour each week outside your regular training and
competition. Record and make notes in your training journal.

2. Visualize executing this skill perfectly for 10 minutes a day, three times a week. You can
do this in warm up or while falling asleep at night. Record notes in your journal.

3. In practices or competition, put much more effort into improving this skill, and make
sure you go outside your Comfort Zone. For example, if you’re a softball catcher, call a
different pitch than you would normally call; if you’re a conservative tennis player, come
to the net; if you’re an overly aggressive volleyball player, pass the ball rather than spike
it. Record what you did to go outside your Comfort Zone, what you learned, and how it
worked.

4. After each competition, record what you learned about this skill and how your efforts
are paying off.

The key to success is writing down your efforts, learnings, and progress in your athlete’s
journal. This is the “glue” that will guarantee you express your true greatness in sport and
become a star athlete.

Let’s re-cap today’s Session. You learned the following:

Letting Go and Locking in Superstardom. You learned the Sedona Method, an astonishingly
simple tool that all superstars use to draw the lesson out of every setback, let go of emotional
baggage, and free themselves to make exponential gains in their performance.

How to Create a Winning Self-Image. Using the power of beliefs and the imagination, you
learnedhow to make ‘being a star’ and a ‘true winner’ feel completely natural in your heart, no
matter what your past. You will construct a powerful, unstoppable self-image that will set you
up to dominate your sport.

Get Better, Faster. You learned why superstars have better skills -- and how to harness their
secrets to become 30% better this season (without adding any time to your practice schedule).

The Greatness Mindset. You learned how to move outside your Comfort Zone, afraid to take
chances and express their true greatness.

GOALS! Using your Athlete’s Journal, you discovered how to find The Big Goal for you that will
cause you to finally Break from the Pack - and fill you with excitement every single day.

I’ll talk to you again soon.

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com

Your friend,
Lisa B.

Confident Champion System © Lisa Brown 2013. All Rights Reserved.
www.thecouragetowin.com