Welcome to the Sports Motivation Podcast. This is your host, Niyisobo. This is Books and Bars.

All right. And we're diving into a book today because I love to read and I love to share with you the things that I read so that you can learn from them.

And many times, it's funny, I will read to you a part that will sound very, very simple, very practical.

But success oftentimes is very simple and practical. We just make it very

complicated. And I have one of those excerpts for you today, and it's from a man who happens

to be very, very successful, one of the greatest college basketball coaches of all time,

and one of a coach of the best basketball player of all time.

That's Dean Smith, who coach Michael Jordan at UNC, and Dean Smith is an absolute

titan, a beast, and is a legend, all right?

So let me share with you a book or an excerpt from Dean's book called The Carolina Way, where he outlines his philosophy. So he says this. He's talking about confidence. He says thorough preparation does wonders for anyone's confidence. We tried to put our players through every situation in practice that they might experience in a game. For instance, we would give our second team a 15-point lead with five minutes on the clock to see if our starters could go to their hurry-up offense and overcome it.

The first team pressed and gambled on defense, shot three-pointers on offense, and if it missed, it fouled the defensive rebounder.

When a situation came up like this in a game, I could say to them,

we've done this before in practice. Let's go out now and repeat it. In such a situation,

players can gain confidence from their coach because they have been prepared to face it.

And then Dean Smith says this, hard work. That results in success equals confidence. That's the only

formula I have. I know of no other way. That's why bad practices really got me down. So listen,

listen to the wisdom there, he said, and it's so practical. He would put his team through every

possible situation because he says thorough preparation breeds confidence.

So if you are someone who lacks confidence, I will question how prepared are you?

How much have you thought about all the situations that can go wrong? Have you thought about being down, quote unquote?

Have you thought about in business when you don't get customers? Have you thought about what happens when shit does not go your way? Have you thought about when your kids handle situations a certain way or go through different phases? Are you prepared? Because if you're not, that explains why you lack confidence. So what if you approach life in the way that Dean Smith approaches basketball and preparing his team for success,

you would do your best to prepare yourself in any situation.

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