An Important Skill To Teach Our Students

What's going on everybody, I hope this finds you striving and thriving and doing absolutely amazing. Now, the other day, I was watching one of my young friends playing an organized basketball league. And that's fun. Watching the students out there on the court competing, getting after it, and having fun. And my young friend was doing great. He was hustling, grabbing rebounds, handing out some assists, and making some great moves. And then it got foul. Then he goes to the foul line. And it was just him on the free throw line with all the players, the coaches, the fans watching him. And he missed the first shot. And he looked over, and you could tell that he was nervous, you could tell that his confidence was gone. My name is Brian Martin. I'm a second grade teacher and hosted the teaching champions podcast. Then my young friend, he stood there at the line. he dribbled he spun the ball in his hand, he shot that ball. And he missed again. And we've all been there, when the nerves creep in. You've been in those situations where it feels like all eyes are staring in on you. And you feel that pressure and it feels like 100 pound weight on your back. We know what that feels like. And my young friend, he had a great game, he made a ton of great plays, he made a couple of foul shots. And most importantly, he had fun. But I want to share this because I think it's important that we take some tips from the sports field on how to handle pressure, and how to teach our students different mental strategies so that they can handle those situations and be more confident. Because there are so many situations in everyday life that have nothing to do with sports, where we may feel nervous, when we may feel unconfident. And all that we do. And if you're a longtime listener of this podcast, you know that I'm a huge fan of Justin Sua. He's a sports psychologist from the Major League Baseball team, the Tampa Bay Rays. And he wrote a book called parents pep talk. And it's all about mental skills that we can teach our youth. And in the book, he talks about confidence, and how we can build that confidence up, whether it's for when you're taking a foul shot during the game. And whether it's for when you're giving a solo at a concert, you're giving a book report, or you're even taking a test. And when he was talking about creating confidence, he mentioned vivid dreams, and these dreams that could be good, these dreams that could be bad. And he said, you have that dream. And you wake up and physically you feel the effects of the drink. Because it feels as if it really happened, even though it did. And he relates that to the power of visualization. And Justin suicide that people may be lacking confidence, because what they see in their mind is creating anxiety, fear, doubt, because too often, we'll picture the worst, we neglect to see the best. And when we just see the worst, it destroys our confidence. And Mr. Xu said, one way to create confidence is to picture an event in your head to visualize it. To make it powerful, he says include all five senses, and the more senses that you include, the better. And for my friend taking that foul shot, it could be imagining himself with the following. Listening to the pound of the ball on the floor, feeling that ball in his hands as he's spinning it around, feeling every part of the motion that he would take as he releases the ball, seeing it go through the net, in hearing and feeling the sensation of the crowd clapping. And you could do the same thing with a book report that maybe we teach our students to hear themselves giving In the report, to see their classmates locked in and hanging on every word they're saying, to have that feeling of finishing that book report in hearing their friends congratulate them on doing such an amazing job, and really feeling what a success that would be. And it takes practice. But, like anything that we do, the more you do it, the better you're gonna get at it. And while you may question this, let me say this. If professional athletes who are paid millions of dollars, are doing the practice of visualization, to help build their confidence, then why are we not talking about it with our students? Why are we not teaching our students how to do this? Why are we not practicing this with our students? Maybe why are we not doing this for ourselves? Let's help create a little confidence for our champions today. We've been blessed with another sunrise. Have an awesome day.