Yin Yang of Humility and Confidence

Your sensei lied to you about humility.

Sad news: you’re betraying your potential.

Sensei taught you beginner’s mind, service, humility. Half-right. Sensei forgot to tell you about ‘Black Mamba.’

You see, humility wins in training, in learning, and in analysis. Silence, service, caution, invisibility. But when its game time, where you must perform at your best, fuck that. You must have full faith that you’re the best. Intensity, cockiness, alertness, and an unshakable will. That’s how Kobe Bryant dominated, he was humble outside game day, and The cocky Black Mamba on game day.

If you need an alter ego like Kobe’s Black Mamba or Beyoncé’s Sasha Fierce, then do that. But the takeaway isn’t ‘create an alter ego.’ The takeaway is winners know when to be humble and when to be confident. Learn to recognize which situation demands extreme humility and which demands extreme confidence.

When learning a skill, be humble. When performing a skill, be confident. In the lab be humble, on stage be confident. With your friends be humble, in a crowd be confident.

Be humble in practice, and the best on game day.

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