The first Canoe Slalom World Cup is approaching, and as every year, that familiar and unsettling feeling returns: the impression of not being fully prepared. Breaking the ice of the international season is never easy. Expectations, fears, comparisons all blend together. But there’s something I’d like to emphasize right from the start: confidence should not fluctuate because of any of that.
True confidence is independent. It should not rise or fall based on how prepared we think we are, or be tied to what we feel we’re lacking. Because competition is not faced with the ideal, but with the real. We compete with what we have: today’s body, the state of mind in the now, the work accumulated up to this point. Confidence is not born from a perfect image of ourselves, but from the willingness to accept who we are — today — with clarity, humility, and commitment.
Understanding competition means learning not to feed the abyss. And as I wrote in Brushstroke 14, the abyss opens when the present becomes a shadow of what we have not yet become. If we measure everything by what’s missing, by the “not yet,” we’ll only see distance and deficiency. But if we look with openness at what is here, what we are, what we can do here and now, then confidence arises from a different place: from reality.
In this brief piece, I’d like to encourage athletes and remind them of something I often repeat: potential doesn’t help in competition (you can read more about this in Brushstroke 3). Your potential is just an idea, an internal story that promises something that hasn’t happened — or happened in the past. But the only tangible truth is what you’ve done, what you are doing. As soon as you finish your run, there is no potential anymore — only execution. And that execution is the only one possible, given your physical, technical, and mental state, given the reflexive responses your body made to the water, the course, and the pressure of the moment.
Every movement was inevitable. Every decision, a consequence of who you were in that precise second. It couldn’t have been otherwise — because we don’t compete with who we aspire to be, but with who we are.
That’s why training the mind isn’t about repeating empty mantras or convincing yourself that “everything will be fine.” It’s not about blind faith in victory. Mental training means recognizing what you truly have in your hands right now, and trusting that it is enough to perform well. Even if things don’t feel perfect. Even if doubts remain. Because your best performance is not the imagined one — it’s the possible one.
And in that acceptance, real focus is born. A focus without fear, without excuses, without anxiety. Confidence is not based on absolute control. It’s based on embracing reality without masking it.
So when the moment comes to sit on the start line, don’t think about what you could have been. Think about this: “This is who I am today. And this is what I compete with.”
That’s enough. More than enough.
And if, even then, you feel vertigo, insecurity, or the desire for something more… look at yourself, just for a second, with tenderness. Look at yourself the way you would look at a dear friend. Be with yourself in that difficult place with the same compassion you’d want someone else to show you. Because that too is what competing means: not abandoning yourself when you need you the most.
