Strengthen Your Belief System – Part 4
“A higher concept of yourself involves taking on new truths and shedding your old views of what you can achieve.” – Wayne Dyer

Welcome back to our ongoing mini-series on how to Strengthen Your Belief System from the Inside Out.
If you haven’t read the previous posts, I highly recommend starting here:

• Strengthen Your Belief System: How Confidence Gets Built from the Inside Out
• Out with the Old & In with the New: Disempowering Your Inner Critic
• Trace It to Erase It: Where Your Inner Critic Was Born

In today’s post, we’re diving into Step 3 of our “Out with the Old & In with the New” exercise:
Debunking the false beliefs that have quietly shaped your self-image and limited your potential.
Let’s turn the light on.

Step 3: Debunk

When you flip on the lights in a dark room, what happens? The darkness disappears.
That’s what this step is all about—exposing your false beliefs to the light of truth so you stop mistaking them for reality.

Through my journey as both a player and a coach, I’ve seen the same four culprits show up time and time again as the root causes of Inner Critic thinking:

• Empty Wells
• Comparison
• Past “Bad” or “Failed” Performances
• “Haven’t Done It Before” Thinking

Let’s break each of these down so you can start identifying them in your own story—and begin the process of breaking free.

A. Empty Wells

If you’re in the desert dying of thirst and come upon a dry well, will it help quench your thirst? Of course not.
Yet in life, we often draw beliefs about ourselves from people who were never qualified to give them—empty wells.

One of the earliest beliefs I carried was:

“Not athletic enough to play quarterback.”

Where did that come from?

A Little League football coach of mine. Through his words and actions, I allowed him to plant that belief. He played me at tight end—a glorified offensive lineman in youth football—and made comments I took personally and let stick.

Now I ask myself:

• Did he have real expertise in quarterback development? → No
• Had he coached at a high level? → No. Our 10-year-old Little League team was the highest level.
• Did he play at a high level? → No
• Was there any bias in me not playing quarterback (like the fact that his son played QB)? → Yes

Looking back now, he was a dry well. And I was trying to draw validation from someone unequipped to give it.

Athlete Action:
Look back at your beliefs from Step 2.
Were any shaped by someone who wasn’t qualified to speak into that area of your life?
If so, write (empty well) next to them. Recognizing this starts to free you and stop “drinking” from that empty well.

B. Comparison

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” – Theodore Roosevelt

Comparison is a confidence killer. Whether you feel behind others or ahead of them, the moment you start comparing, your focus shifts outward—away from what you can actually control—and your anxiety increases.

Here’s what typically happens:

• You see someone ahead → Your confidence drops. (The Inner Critic seed gets planted.)
• You see yourself ahead → You feel a temporary boost in confidence (but it’s like building on sand—it can wash away as soon as someone else passes you. Also, you potentially could let off the gas thinking you don’t need to work as hard.)

In either scenario, comparison pulls you out of your lane and distracts you from what truly matters—your progress and growth.

A personal example:

At the Elite 11 camp at TCU, I was a sophomore surrounded by mostly seniors. During warm-ups, they had us throw on our knees, and my throws started one- and two-hopping as they moved us further back.
The kid across from me? Threw missiles that nearly put a hole in my chest.

I immediately thought:

“I don’t have a strong enough arm.”

Unfortunately this belief system stayed with me for a long time. But finally once I stepped back and created this exercise, I saw the reality:

• I was a sophomore. Most quarterbacks at Elite 11 were juniors or seniors—a massive difference in physical maturity.
• I had no formal quarterback training at that point.
• I was in Texas, going up against the best of the best. (Shoot, I might’ve been warming up across from a 6A Player of the Year committed to Texas.)

I was comparing apples to oranges—and writing a false story about my talent.

Had I focused on my own progress—like the fact I was throwing 7 yards further than I was at the end of my freshman season—I could’ve walked away with a real confidence boost.
Instead, I walked away with a planted Inner Critic seed and a new negative narrative.

Performance Tip to avoid the comparison trap:
Focus on what you can control. Focus on your progress.
That keeps your attention inward—where real growth, confidence, and peace come from. It also keeps you off the “Teeter-Totter Trap” of unstable confidence.

Athlete Action:
Check your list again.
Did any beliefs stem from comparing yourself to others?
If so, mark those beliefs with (comparison) so you can bring awareness to the root and reclaim your power.

That wraps up today’s blog. Stay tuned next week for Part 2 of Step 3, where we’ll break down two more common sources of Inner Critic thinking:

• Past “Bad” or “Failed” Performances
• “Haven’t Done It Before” Thinking

See you then!