Confidence Can be a Game Changer if You Master It
What gives you the biggest boost of confidence? Knowing what fuels your confidence is essential so you can refill your confidence tank or keep it high…
Confidence can go up and down for athletes. You probably have experienced several times through your athletic career where your confidence stores were low due to a slump or injury.
You need more than just confidence to perform at your peak. You need stable confidence.
What is Stable Confidence?
Often, athletes have fragile confidence. In other words, winning makes you feel skilled, confident, and on top. However, when you lose, you feel in the dumps, lacking talent and less confidence.
Stable confidence is a strong belief in your abilities regardless of results. When you win, you feel confident, and when you lose, you still maintain a high belief in your ability to perform.
Sources of Confidence
You maintain stable confidence by fueling those reserves daily.
The following strategies will help you develop and maintain stable confidence:
Think of Best-Case Scenarios – Instead of thinking of the bottom dropping out during a competition, think about how you would perform when firing on all cylinders.
Visualize Success – Seeing yourself performing an impeccable routine, running a personal best, or driving in a game-winning run are effective ways to fuel your confidence.
Flip on the Positive Self-Talk Switch – Consciously feed yourself positive thoughts. Affirmations are a sound strategy for building mental strength and confidence.
Relive Success – Mental reviewing past successes helps to remind you of your strengths and abilities.
Put in the Work – Mental and physical training help prepare you for peak performance. Nothing beats hard work and peak preparation to maintain high confidence.
The 2022 Track and Field World Championships
At the World Championships, the best of the best gather to compete. Winning is often determined by fractions of a second or by centimeters. The athlete in your heat or event is very similar in ability. The difference-maker is mental factors, more specifically confidence.
Take, for instance, U.S. track athlete Fred Kerley. Kerley, who earned the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, won the men’s 100-meter final at the 2022 Track and Field World Championships by two-hundredths of a second.
Kerley finished in 9.86 seconds to win his first world championship. In a pre-event news conference, Kerley appeared highly confident, as if he had no doubts about winning the title.
KERLEY: “I believe in myself, first and foremost. I put the work in to be great. I don’t come to run to be second-best.”
Kerley exhibited high confidence and belief in his ability before stepping into the arena.
High confidence is not something that magically appears in competition. It comes from being proactive every day.
Identify three skills you have to add to your confidence tank, such as quick feet. What helps you perform each of those skills well? Remind yourself every day what you have instead of what’s missing from your game.
For all our confidence-building strategies, check out “The Confident Athlete” audio program on CD or digital download…
Related Sports Psychology Articles
- The Mindset to Perform at a Higher Level
- Having Fun While Performing at Your Best
- The Importance of Mental Toughness
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The Relaxed Athlete
You can possess all the physical talent in the world, the best equipment money can buy, and train harder or longer than anyone else in your sport or on your team, but if self-doubt enters your mind prior to competition, you simply will not realize your true potential in sports.
The Relaxed Athlete” audio and workbook program teaches you mental strategies to develop a focused and confident pregame routine for a poised and relaxed mindset. Learn how to get your mind right by overcoming pregame anxiety and worry.