How Confident are you?

​How many of us are confident in ourselves? I mean really confident…and I am not talking about egotistical stuff.
 
Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to run through a few techniques that have helped me in the past, and those that I know help athletes grow in their mental strength. So, stay posted!
 
Self confidence is a good feeling about yourself and your capabilities. So, if you're a self confident person, it simply means that you feel good about who you are, and you also feel good about your ability to achieve things you want to achieve.

When athletes feel confident, they are more readily able to turn sporting potential into superior performance. Conversely, when they feel unsure of themselves, the slightest setback or smallest hurdle can have an inordinate effect on their performance.

What is self-confidence?Self-confidence is commonly defined as the sureness of feeling that you are equal to the task at hand. This sureness is characterised by absolute belief in ability. You may well know someone whose self-belief has this unshakeable quality, whose ego resists even the biggest setbacks. In such people, confidence is as resilient as a squash ball: the harder the blow, the quicker they bounce back. Nonetheless, although confidence is a desirable characteristic, arrogance - or a sureness of feeling not well founded in one's ability - is undesirable. If self-confidence is perhaps the 'guardian angel of sports performers' then arrogance is their nemesis.

The six sources of self-confidence

The confidence an individual feels during a particular activity or situation is generally derived from one or more of the following six elements:

1. Performance accomplishments are the strongest contributor to sport confidence. When you perform any skill successfully, you will generate confidence and be willing to attempt something slightly more difficult. Skill learning should be organised into a series of tasks that progress gradually and allow you to master each step before progressing on to the next. Personal success breeds confidence, while repeated personal failure diminishes it.
2. Being involved with the success of others can also significantly bolster your confidence, especially if you believe that the performer you are involved with (e.g. a team-mate) closely matches your own qualities or abilities. In effect, it evokes the reaction: "if they can do it, I can do it".
3. Verbal persuasion is a means of attempting to change the attitudes and behaviour of those around us, and this includes changing their self-confidence. In sport, coaches often try to boost confidence by convincing athletes that the challenge ahead is within their capabilities: "I know you are a great player so keep your head up and play hard". An athlete might reinforce this by repeating the message over and over to him or herself as a form of self-persuasion. A tip here is to avoid stating what you want in the negative; so, rather than "'I really don't want to come off second best" try "I really want to win this one". Accordingly, your mind will not need to consider what is not required in order to arrive at what is.
4. Imagery experiences have to do with athletes recreating multi-sensory images of successful performance in their mind. Through creating such mental representations, mastery of a particular task or set of circumstances is far more likely. What you see is what you get.
5. Physiological states can reduce feelings of confidence through phenomena such as muscular tension, palpitations and butterflies in the stomach. The bodily sensations associated with competition need to be perceived as being facilitative to performance and this can be achieved through the application of appropriate stress management interventions such as the "five breath technique" and "thought-stopping". I will be covering these over the next 2 weeks through my blogs.
6. Emotional states are the final source of self-confidence and relates to how you control the emotions associated with competition, such as excitement and anxiety. Very often, the importance of the occasion creates self-doubt, which is why it is essential to control your thoughts and emotions. Learning imagery and concentration skills such as those described in "the circle of excellence" will help.

The Circle of Excellence
This visualisation exercise recreates the mental state associated with past performance success and will help you in bridging the gap between your ability and confidence:

• Imagine a circle on the floor one metre in front of you. It is around a metre in diameter.
• Now think back to a time in your sporting career when you were performing at the very peak of your ability. Each movement you made brought about a successful outcome and everything just seemed to flow without much conscious effort.
• In a dissociated state (i.e. looking at yourself from the outside) examine each of your five senses. See yourself inside the circle and excelling. Imagine exactly what the 'you' inside the circle is seeing, hearing, feeling, and smelling. Notice the 'taste of success' in your mouth.
• Now step into the circle and become fully associated so that you are experiencing events through your own eyes and in real time. Again, notice what you are seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting.
• Notice exactly what this feels like so that you can reproduce it at will whenever your confidence is waning.

So, next week we shall look at ‘thought stopping’, which is a technique that some people use to help with the intrusive negative thoughts  - we all have those, but this will help limit their effect.
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Until next week…