Confidence Part One
Confidence is a topic that is talked about a lot in sports. What is it? What does it mean? Where does it come from? How do I develop it?
Most athletes want to just straight to the result, “tell me how I develop confidence” they say. However, it is important not to skip understanding what it is, as this is the first step in developing it.
In Part 1 of Confidence, we will learn what confidence is and where it comes from. In Part 2 we will learn how to develop it.
Before we dive into confidence, we will first talk about self-image and self-esteem.
What is self-image?
Self-image is how you view yourself as a whole. This is bigger than the sport you play. It is the mental picture or perception you have of yourself. It includes your physical appearance, personality, capabilities, and more.
What is Self-Esteem?
Self-esteem is how an individual feels about how they view themself or how they feel about their self-image. In other words, self-image isn’t connected with many emotions; it is more how you view yourself as a whole. Self-esteem is how you feel about how you view yourself. What emotions do you have about who you are? Do you like what your self-image is?
Self-image and self-esteem are developed all the time, throughout our whole life. Our successes, failures, how we are treated by family, friends, teachers, coaches, religious authorities, and by ourselves. It dictates our actions, beliefs, and how we live our life.
What Is SeLf-Confidence?
Confidence, simply put, is a belief in one’s skills and abilities to perform. This is your overall belief in your athletic performance. You can also have confidence in your ability to perform a task (make a jump shot, play defense, score, be a good teammate, etc).
You likely have a different level of confidence in each aspect of your game. This is normal. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and often we are more confident in the skills we are good at (strengths) over the skills we can improve (weaknesses).
What do self-image and self-esteem have to do with confidence?
Now that we have defined all three, let’s talk about what they have in common. Oftentimes, an athlete that has a poor self-image has lower self-esteem and less self-confidence. At the same time, there are athletes who have high self-confidence in their sport but low self-esteem. They love their athletic self but they have a hard time loving themselves as a whole and have poor self-image. Typically these athletes have fragile self-esteem as their value as a person (self-esteem) is connected directly to their performance in their sport. By their definition, if they have a great game, they feel great about themselves. If they have a bad game, they feel bad about themselves. This is all too common and can lead to struggles in other areas of life. We will talk about this more in detail in a later blog post.
what am i confident in?
Let’s start with a Confidence Resume. This will help you assess how confident you are at this point in time. You can reflect back to this and complete the Confidence Resume again in a month.
On a scale of 1-5 (1 is least confident, 5 is most confident) how would you rate your confidence in the following skills
1. My overall performance in my sport
2. My ability to be a good teammate
3. My ability to move past mistakes and play in the present moment
4. My mental toughness
5. My shooting ability
6. My finishing ability
7. My passing ability
8. My ball handling and footwork ability
9. My defensive ability
Where does confidence come from?
Now that we have a general idea of where our confidence is at, let’s talk some sources our confidence comes from.
Confidence comes from quality practice, believing in your abilities, coaching, quality instruction, fitness, diet, and doing the right things off the court/field.
Below is a table listing different sources of confidence. Take note of the ones that impact and develop your confidence.
You will likely notice that some of these sources of confidence are directly, 100% under your control and others are not. Do you know which is which?
Things like gym and weather conditions, comments from others, supportive people in your life, and even the outcomes of the game are NOT directly under your control. What IS directly under your control is your study and preparation, belief in your abilities, and your mental preparation.
If you found that a majority of your sources of confidence came from things that are outside of your control, then you may have what we call, “fragile or reactive confidence.” This is when you rely on outside and external sources for confidence and validation. This can be good at times, especially as you are growing up and learning what you are good at. It can be helpful to know what others see in you that you should be confident in. It helps us develop an accurate view of our self-image and self-esteem.
However, if you are relying on others to determine how confident you feel, then you are leaving it up to chance. Nobody can make you feel confident, nobody can make you feel anything. That is up to you. You get to choose how confident you are based on your thoughts and emotions.
“You dream. You plan. You reach. There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, with belief, with confidence and trust in yourself and those around you, there are no limits.”
The more work you put into your relationship with yourself, the more your confidence will improve. The more you believe in your skills coupled with hard work, the more confidence you will develop.
We will continue talking about confidence in future blog posts including:
How to develop stable confidence
What can kill your confidence
How to apply confidence to your sport
In the meantime, work on developing confidence in the ways you can control. Notice if you are relying on others for you to feel confident or if it comes from you internally.
If you wish to book a free, introductory coaching session with Coach Bry then send her an email at [email protected] or visit her individual coaching session page for more details
And as always, keep elevating your learning!
