You’ve put that quite beautifully. I was trying to resolve something that I’ve learned from competing at a high level in a skill based adversarial sport (sail

You’ve put that quite beautifully. I was trying to resolve something that I’ve learned from competing at a high level in a skill based adversarial sport (sailing), with the fact that it’s trivially obvious that just believing that you can do something doesn’t mean that you can. What I learnt over the years as I improved at sailing was that you take decisions to consolidate your position and eliminate risk when you reach the place you believe you should be in the field. You don’t attack any more because you believe that if you do, you will probably lose what you have. In this situation, the allegory is in fact true. If you want to win a race, you have to make race winning decisions and you won’t do that unless you believe you can win the race. So why don’t you just do that, and then you’ll start winning? Because you won’t and you shouldn’t. You should only make “race winning” decisions if you actually have the ability to win. So how do you know when you should “believe”? That in itself is an ability you have to learn. In order to win you need to have the ability or skill, and you have to recognise a situation where your ability or skill means you can win. This is what the “believing” really is. Then you have to successfully execute and ride through the things you cannot control (the part that luck always plays).