The Ride To The Rink - Kim McCullough's Guide to Setting Goals and Gaining Confidence

Lee MJ Elias [0:08 - 0:25]: Hello, hockey goalies and skaters around the world, welcome back to another edition of the ride to the rink. I've got a full panel here today. Sherry Hudspeth is here. Mike Benelli is here, and coach Kim McCullough is here today. And we're talking about confidence. Kim wanted to talk about this. I'm actually going to give the microphone to her right now. Kim, talk to the kids. Listening about confidence. 

Kim McCullough [0:26 - 4:05]: Confidence is the most important thing in sport and in life, guys, and this is how you build it. It's not something that your coach can give to you in a little box with a little bow and just hand it to you. If we could, as coaches, just give you confidence, we'd be driving a lot fancier cars and we might not be coaching minor hockey. So confidence comes from you. Your parents can help you a little bit, telling you you're doing a great job, your teammates giving you the pat on the back. The coach pointed out that you did a great job on the back check. Those things are all going to help for sure. But ultimately your confidence comes from you. And how do you get it? Where does it come from? It's not coming from Instagram or Snapchat. It's coming from you setting and getting little goals. So what does that mean? It doesn't mean, hey, I'm going to make it to the NHL or I'm going to make it to the PWHL and I'm going to get that goal. That's a long way off. And if you're waiting for that goal to get your confidence, you're going to be waiting a really, really long time. To me, confidence comes from setting little goals every day. And quite frankly, parents and coaches who are listening on this, we know this, too. If you set a goal to go and have a workout this morning before you go to school or work and you go downstairs in the basement, you do 30 minutes of who knows what and you give yourself a little check mark. I set that goal. I was going to work out this morning and I get that little check mark. That's where confidence comes from. It is that simple. Then you say, oh, I'm going to go shoot 50 pucks out in the backyard and you do it. Oh, now I feel good about myself. Give myself a little check mark. Now I feel a little bit more confident and you can do that in the game as well. So if you set for your next practice, your next game, set a couple check mark goals for yourself. Hey, you know what? I'm a d. I'm going to make sure I always have my stick in the right position on one on ones, or I'm going to make a great breakout pass, or I'm going to make sure my shot hits that big red thing in the middle of the ice. I'm going to hit the net with my shot after the game. If you set those three goals and you come back and you can actually put a check mark next to them, you're going to feel really good about your game. And now you're not worried about what did my coach say about me? Or what did my parents say in the car ride home? Or what did Sally, my teammate, say to me or not say to me about how I played? Right. You're now taking control of your own confidence. And if you didn't get those check marks, just ask yourself why. Maybe I hurt my ankle in the first period. I didn't play the rest of the game, or maybe we were in our d zone the whole time because the other team was really good. But that's really where it comes from, is these little, little moments that add up over time. Now, I always tell players, if you just spent ten minutes a day all week long, you give yourself a day off, ten minutes a day for six days a week. That's an hour of extra stuff, right? Whether you worked on your mental game, your shooting, your stick handling, you're stretching, you know, you just ate a healthier dinner, whatever that was, that extra ten minutes, that's an hour a week that we're going to guess a lot of other people didn't do, right? They didn't take that extra time to do those little things. And those little things add up. If you had an extra hour all season long, we know the hockey season is 52 weeks. We'll give you two week vacation, right? 50 weeks of the year. You know, that's 50 hours of stuff that you did that no one else did. And your confidence is going to come from that as well. So your goals don't always have to be big and huge. Set those little goals along the way. Focus on getting the little ones, and that's how you're going to feel good about yourself. And that's where confidence is ultimately going to come from. And it's only going to get enhanced by the people around you. But you're not leaving it to be controlled by the result in the game or whether you scored a goal or whether your coach told you you did. 

Lee MJ Elias [4:05 - 4:56]: A good job, you know, can follow that up. I love that, by the way. And for those kids listening, you just got some gold medal advice with that one. What I'll tell you is this, too. There might be kids out there that say, listen, I get it. I want to be more confident. What are the questions that I need to be asking myself to find those goals? Right. Great questions lead to great answers. So I'm going to go across the board here. I want each one of you to give me what you think would be a great question within hockey that you can ask yourself to find a goal. Right. Because again, whether you're 16 or six, you might go, well, I don't know what to work on. Right. So let's just start down the board. Kim, I'm going to go back to you. What's a great question? You can give two if you want, that a kid can ask themselves to help discover those goals, to build that confidence. 

Kim McCullough [4:57 - 5:45]: Well, I coach in girls hockey, so I'm going to say, what am I already good at? And can I make that if I'm an eight out of ten, can I make it a ten out of ten? And I think a lot of times, girls out there, we worry so much about the things we're not good at. And taking those from a one out of ten to a two out of ten or a three out of ten to a four out of ten, where the truth is, you know, taking your eight out of ten to a nine out of ten is going to make you stand out way, way more than taking one of those other things on a smaller level. So that could be your mental game, could be your physical game, like your off ice training. It could be something on the ice. You're stick handling, you're shooting. But I would say turn the volume up on your strengths and make them even stronger because you're already good at those things. It's going to make you feel even better when you're excelling in them even more. 

Lee MJ Elias [5:45 - 5:48]: Love that. Mike, I'm going to go to you next and share your last. 

Mike Bonelli [5:48 - 6:19]: Yeah. No. If you're a youth player right now, ask your coach what they want out of you. If you don't have the confidence, like, I'm not playing, the coach doesn't like me, I don't get the opportunity. Ask. Those are great things, you know, just. And then you can gauge where you're at. Okay. So you might think something. We all look and say, I don't know. I don't know why the coach doesn't like me. Ask the coach, find out what, what is, you know, something you can work on and spend. To Kim's point specifically, set some goals and metrics on, and then work on that. And then. And then go to the next thing. 

Lee MJ Elias [6:19 - 6:21]: Love it. Sherry, over to you. 

Sheri Hudspeth [6:21 - 6:42]: One of the things I had growing up is when you do find your goals, is just to put it somewhere where you see it. Like, I had mine in the bathroom when I brushed my teeth in the morning, I saw, like, my little goals that I wanted to accomplish for the day or for the week or for the month or for your season. So just when you do find your goals and you figure out what that is, put it somewhere where you can see it and work on it. 

Lee MJ Elias [6:42 - 7:47]: I love it. It's funny you mentioned that. I used to write my goals in pencil on the wall in my room, and the last one I wrote when I was 18, which was many, many moons ago, is actually still there. And my father sent me a picture of it, and he said, you accomplished every one of these, and you're absolutely right. There is a massive power in writing out your goals. My question would be just this. It's kind of building on Kim's. It's, what do I love to do? Right. I think Kim makes a great point about what you're good at. I think that if you love an aspect of the game, you should be in touch with that. It's nothing, the only aspect of the game, but it's a lot easier to practice the things you love sometimes than the things that you don't. It doesn't mean you shouldn't practice the things that you're not great at, but, uh, starting with something you love can kind of help build those habits. Uh, I think that Kim's talking about that. That, that make you confident. Right. And, you know, Kim, I'll just kind of let you have last word on this in the sense of, you know, if you build one habit and you find the confidence in doing that, there's a skill in that, too. You can build confidence in building confidence, right? 

Kim McCullough [7:48 - 8:33]: Absolutely. I mean, these check mark things I'm talking about, like, I have booklets and booklets from when I played college and when I have pro, I've still got them in the closet. And when I set down my goals of what I need to do every day or every week with my business or my life, I'm still putting check marks next to a lot of things. So, you know, things haven't changed that much in however many 30 years I've been involved with the game. Um, I'm still using those skills to this day, and I don't if I have a really big goal, I'm not only feeling good. If I get to the big goal, it's all the little ones along the way that are really helping to guide me and, and building my confidence. When I get those big ones, I feel great. But I don't wait till I get there to feel good about myself. 

Lee MJ Elias [8:33 - 8:50]: I love it. Well, look, all star panel for you today. Kim McCullough, Sherry Hudspeth, Mike Benelli. Again, I'm Leah Elias parting message. We all believe in you. You should, too. This is kind of the definition of that. Thanks so much for listening to this edition of the ride to the rink. We'll see you on the next one. Remember to have fun and skate on.