The Times carried a story yesterday asserting that four in ten men think they could train their way to the 2028 Olympics if they started training today. They report:
The survey of 2,000 adults found that 38 per cent of men thought they could qualify for the Games if they received professional coaching and a strict training regime.
Just over a quarter of respondents believe they could beat a professional in their chosen sport, if given the chance.
Some 17 per cent thought they would have the best chance of taking part competitively in football. Eleven per cent said tennis. Although 20 per cent said they had never attempted to run 100 metres, 12 per cent thought they could do it in under 15 seconds.
The toughest sport to master, according to 45 per cent of all adults, would be gymnastics, while 33 per cent said diving would be hardest.
The Times also note:
In terms of general sporting ability, 38 per cent of men thought they were better than the average person, whereas 49 per cent of women believed they were worse.
A third of adults think confidence is more important than natural talent when achieving sporting success, with 24 per cent describing themselves as “quietly confident” about their own sporting ability.
There’s a lot to dig into here. Suffice to say, it is impossible not to conclude that a significant number of men are seriously overconfident about their own abilities! I cannot conceive that the only thing holding them back is professional coaching. The number of children rejected from training academies across all sports, in which they receive professional coaching and strict regiments, tells us it simply isn’t so.
British men, I suspect, suffer from belief in two particular myths and couple them to utterly unwarranted overconfidence. First, there is the myth of innate talent. Now, don’t get me wrong, there clearly are some people with a natural propensity towards certain sports, areas of study and general activities. Talent does exist. However, we seem to believe that there is a group of people out there who are able to master a sport without really trying. Indeed, it is seen to be almost preferable to a world-beater without having done any work.
This myth is not limited to sport either, it seems to pervade every walk of life. Many seem to believe that it is possible to just show up and be an expert, a ranking competitor and a world class whatever without having put in the work. The problem here is that all the evidence we have is that talent may account for something, but the overwhelming majority of professionals spend considerable amounts of time training and practising. I strongly suspect the belief that talent trumps training means many are led to believe they are simply a professional trainer away from glory.
The other undying myth is that of the gentleman amateur. This is the belief that the purest and noblest pursuit of sporting success (or, frankly, any other sort of success) will not be done for monetary gain but for the sheer love of the activity. Whilst this myth was a means of locking out the lower classes from certain sports, and we have long since moved on from such ideas (so we think), the legacy makes many think they have simply been locked out because of ‘reasons beyond their control’. They weren’t the right fit, not that they didn’t have the right ability.
These things, combined with a deep overconfidence, seem to lead many to the belief that they could easily make it if they just had the right coaching. It is patently not true. But nevertheless, here we are. It is possible some might make it with the right training and dedication, but it seems more likely that most wouldn’t because many of those who have put in the effort do not make it and an ‘I reckon’ from my sofa probably shouldn’t be considered remotely credible.
It is incredibly easy to fall into the same kind of thought process in ministry. Such as anyone aspires to be a big name or well-known evangelical figure, it is easy to look at others and think to ourselves, ‘with the right opportunities, I could be doing that’. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that is true for some, but it strikes me as unlikely in every (or even most) cases.
It is easy to become jealous of the partnerships and support others seem to get. We can tell ourselves, ‘I could have got those if I had the right opportunities’. Only, much like the prospective Olympian who never left the sofa, we didn’t actually put in any of the necessary work to get it. We can easily consider ourselves better preachers than we ought, assuming with the right links or whatever we could be just as well-regarded and well-known. It is this that sets up one of my favourite church jokes: how many pastors does it take to change a lightbulb? All of them – one to change it and the rest to say ‘that should be me up there doing that’.
Likewise, the difference between a good and a bad preacher is probably a bit more than just the practice. Certainly, the more you do it the better you will get. Practice matters. But there are inevitably some guys whose background, personality and a bunch of other things makes them a cut above. Dare I say, the Spirit might choose to work through some more than others and this isn’t really anything to do with the man at all. It is okay to accept that some preachers are better than us. It is okay to accept that we are probably never going to advance beyond being essentially competent, and that is absolutely okay. Your basic competence is still of more value to your particular church than the amazing preacher who doesn’t know your church members and has nothing to do with them.
I am in awe of those who have the kind of overconfidence displayed in the survey above. Self-doubt is hardly a freeing or helpful quality, beyond making us a little circumspect before making an ass of ourselves. But it seems many of us – whether we are thinking about the Olympics or less grandiose things – have little to no real understanding of our own abilities.