In this case, MVP stands for Most Valued Perception, and it comes from a true MVP.

Joe Montana took the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowls, and won them all.  After retirement, he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and was named by Sports Illustrated as the greatest football player in the past 50 years.  Joe knows something about winning.

When asked by a reporter how old he was when he won his first Super Bowl, Joe said:  "Twelve years old, and I've won a thousand of them since.  All but four of them took place in our backyard in my hometown of Monogahela, Pennsylvania, a few miles down the road from Pittsburgh."

What a great answer!  That's the attitude it takes to be successful at anything.  You must imagine being a winner in order to make that reality come true.

Of course, you have to put legs on your dreams to make them materialize.  Without the hard work and dedication that Joe put into becoming the best, he would have just remained a dreamer.  He wasn't sitting in his backyard dreaming of throwing touchdown passes, he was actually throwing the football at imaginary targets, each one representing Jerry Rice if he'd have only known the future.

As a comedian, I spend countless hours performing.  I perform everyday.  I get plenty of stage time.  The audience is small -- most of the time my dog Beau may be the only audient -- there's no stage, no lights, no sound system required. It's just me talking into anything slightly resembling a microphone, but I KILL!

As a radio talk host, I get more airtime than Howard Stern.  I sit at this computer and broadcast into the air every day.  It takes practice to be spontaneous and witty.  And that results in really believing you can do it.

This past Saturday the producer of our radio show dared me to throw the prepared subject matter out the window and wing the whole show.  "Just be yourself," he said to me.  Of course, I was thinking:  "Sure.  That's easy for you say.  But, if I flop on air, I'll be the one paying the price."  However, as I sat in the booth before the show, my mind recalled all of those hours of "open air" talk I'd been doing for the past six months.  A new thought jumped into my head:  "All right, if that's what he wants, watch my smoke."

I took that mic with a mission and I let it rip.  When the show was over, we had had more phone calls than ever before and the buzz in the booth was electric.  The producer walked in, smiled, and said:  "That was your best show yet."

My next thought:  "Well, if that's what he wants I can do that all day."

Why was that my next thought, because I had been doing that all day, therefore, I was confident that I could do that.

By practicing the way you want to play (just as Joe did in his backyard), you give yourself that winning edge.

The bottomline:
Confidence is built on the back of rehearsing your dreams.