“There’s only one way to build confidence, David...”
Uh-oh, full name... Well, that is one way to kick off a conversation, and man, does JM Blakley kick it off.
JM doesn’t believe in negative motivation, which is basically someone being told “they can’t do that,” and then that person does it anyway. Anyone who’s read a book on teaching, coaching, parenting, or even dog training knows better than to rely on that as motivation.
Not only does he refuse to do it, JM calls it “the laziest way of coaching.” It’s not motivating and it doesn’t teach anyone anything. Rather, the person who was baited into doing something did it all on their own.
But if you want to do it, you can. Just know that you won’t have much respect from the creator of the JM Press. He’ll just question whether that type of motivation was necessary or not. (It’s not.)
The better way to go about it is much harder. It takes a lot of work to bring it out without negativity.
Dave Tate asks for some clarification as to what that “it” is — is it confidence?
Using those coaching skills he mentioned, JM doesn’t give Dave the answer as to what the “it” is, and there’s only one way to do it, and it’s the same way a person builds trust:
“The only way to build confidence is by victory experiences. If you tell me to be confident and I have no victory experiences, I have no reason to be confident in myself. However, if you give me a little task and I do it, and I say, ‘Give yourself a pat on the back for that,’ just tell your subconscious, ‘Good job.’ That’s what I want you to do. And remember this: you give them a carefully selected next challenge. This is the coaches’ or trainers’ job... to set out a series of events that are graded in order to lead them somewhere, and where you’re leading them is to have a whole bunch of history of confidence behind them.”
With that history, people can look behind them and see what they’ve done, which gives them a good reason to be confident in themselves.
“You can’t just choose confidence; you have to build confidence.”
And that is what separates the good coaches, trainers, teachers, parents, and dog trainers from the rest of the pack.
