Ted Williams is one of the most successful baseball players of all time. Inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, this major league baseball player was arguably the “greatest hitter in baseball.” However, it’s not just his statistics that make Williams a great inspiration, but what he has to say about his career and how he looks at his career. Learning from his successes and the way he perceives his life can help you transform your life.
Bryan Flanagan uses Ted Williams as an incredible example
of somebody who embodies confidence in its purest, truest and most honest form.
When talking about the importance of confidence in his bookEncouragement for the Sales
Professional, Flanagan points to Williams’ “lifetime batting
average of .344 and his 521 home runs” to “qualify him for that distinction” of
being the “greatest hitter in baseball.”
He then tells the story of Williams’ 70th birthday
and how a sports writer asked the storied Hall of Famer “Ted, if you were
playing in today’s game with the smaller ball parks and lack of quality
pitching, what would you hit?” What the write obviously meant to ask is how
Williams thinks he would have sized up to the people of today, playing baseball
in conditions that differed greatly from the conditions Williams was used to as
a professional major league baseball player.
However,
the tremendously confident Ted Williams was not about to let a sports writer
make him feel as if his age would prevent him from reaching success. “Without
hesitating, Williams replied, ‘Oh, I’d hit about .320.’ The writer was taken
aback and quickly said, ‘But, Ted, you were the last player to hit .400 and
your lifetime average is .344. And, you think you’d only hit .320?’ Williams
said, ‘Yeah, but I’m 70 years old!’ Now, that’s confidence!” We would have to
agree!If somebody like Ted Williams can maintain the confidence to say that he could still play baseball at seventy years old with people a third of his age, and not just play – but play well, you might just need to realize the lesson being taught here. You can transform your life if you just remember to be confident in yourself you’re your abilities. “Confidence is maintaining faith in yourself no matter your age,” no matter your situation and no matter your environment. Confidence is what gets you through life when you are feeling down, when you are feeling old, when you are feeling like the cards are stacked against you.
“Confidence makes a difference. Confidence is a firm belief in yourself; it’s a certainty or belief in one’s own abilities.” Flanagan wants people to remember to “never leave home without” confidence because, as Williams shows here, it can not only help you with success – but it can help you when you are beyond your successes and need humor in your life again, or when you just want to get back out there and see what you can do again. Confidence can help you transform your life.
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