Confidence. Confidence is believing: believing in yourself, and believing in your abilities. With confidence, you feel on top, in power. It is a care-free feeling. A feeling in which you enjoy what you do. For athletes, confidence gives you drive. A drive that pushes you to train harder, to train longer, and to train better. All of which you do to ensure that you won't lose the feelings that come along with that small sense of good self-esteem.

Now let me tell you what it's like to go about life without confidence. No matter what you do, you're not good enough. No matter how hard you train, you won't play well enough. No matter how hard you study, you feel like you're still going to fail. Your thoughts feel sluggish and you can't focus. Your mind is in shambles because you know that you can do better, but for some reason it's just not clicking. Your chest caves in on itself and your body doesn't want to cooperate. Nothing can calm the chaos that was let loose inside your mind the moment confidence slipped through your hands. The absence of self-assurance allows for the unwelcomed presence of anxiety.

Your level of confidence determines your performance in the game, in the classroom, and in life. For something that can determine so much, it is so very fragile. It is a fleeting thing that can last for months or only for a second. The slightest touch can send it crumbling into a catastrophic mess. Whether it's self-pressure, peer pressure, expectations, or an unfortunate injury... they are all detrimental to your confidence.

I have struggled with confidence in most aspects of my life, especially recently. As my team can tell you, my mental strength during games isn't the best. As my mother can tell you, I have the slightest trouble with academic self-assurance . As my best friend can tell you, I'm struggling through life like most college kids. I'm here to tell you that it's all my fault. I am the one who allows doubt into my mind. I allow my fears to change my personality and my anxieties to morph my drive into negative self-pressure.

Despite the overwhelming presence of unfavorable factors, we must remember that we control our level of confidence. Sometimes we allow the world to persuade us to believe that our level of accomplishments is equivalent to who we are as a person. The truth is we can't sacrifice our self-esteem to please others nor can we control what they think of us or what we have accomplished. We also can't control the ill-fated events that occasionally peek into our lives, but we can choose when and what we succumb to. I would prefer not to succumb to poor self-esteem.

I have the chance to take everything that God has laid before me and do incredible things. I have to choose to push my anxieties to the side and take that chance. I must change my mindset and believe in myself. It doesn't matter how many people believe I can do it, I have to have confidence in myself. We all must have confidence in ourselves because we can all do amazing things, and it'd be a shame to deprive the world of that.