Confidence: How to build a robust self-confidence for sport

An Introduction to Self-Confidence

In this section, we will introduce you to the topic of Self-Confidence, looking at some of the issues that performers will come up against, and start looking at why confidence is a crucial element in sport. Whatever level at which you play.

Welcome to the programme on self-confidence and the first of a number of modules that will help you build your confidence.

Imagine what it would feel like to be the most confident athlete that you could be, a master of your immediate environment, someone who others look up to. By investing ten minutes a day in your personal development, working through these modules and listening to MYND programmes – and implementing the tried and tested tips in modules like ‘self-talk’, ‘optimism’ and ‘dealing with pressure’ along the way – you will greatly enhance your confidence AND your general well-being. We’ll start by addressing three key questions:

1. What is confidence?

2. What is the flow?

3. Why is confidence so important?

Remember: these are practical personal development modules that you need to use daily. By working through each module and doing the quizzes to check your understanding, and learning about and practising the techniques outlined, you will find that your confidence will begin to grow.

Enjoy the experience.

What is Self-Confidence?

What is self-confidence – what does it look like? In simple terms, self-confidence is a firm belief that you can do something well. It’s a belief that you can successfully perform a given task or skill. A belief that you can do something you set out to do. It is sometimes used to describe a can-do attitude and a healthy trust in yourself and your abilities. But while this is true, there is more to it than that. For confidence to flourish, it is important that this belief is well-grounded in your true physical and mental abilities – not a fanciful belief associated with results that you are unlikely to achieve.

Your confidence can take two forms: the first concerns how confident you generally are, across a range of situations. We all know a confident person who always appears unshakeable, whether in the sporting arena, in an educational context, or when socializing with his friends.

Self-confidence is a feeling of trust in one’s abilities, qualities, and judgement. It is a belief that you can do what you set out to do.

The second form of confidence is situation-specific. Imagine a professional soccer player being charged with taking the last kick in a cup final penalty shoot-out in front of 60,000 spectators; in such instances, your confidence may buckle under the weight of public expectation. Taking a further soccer example, a player may be generally confident in their scoring ability, however, confidence may waver when they have to make a shot in a particularly hostile and crowded penalty box, or while under persistent pressure from a strong and intimidating defender. Similarly, an otherwise confident player may struggle to remain focused and upbeat when they’ve hoofed the last four shots over the crossbar. So you see, simply assuming that confidence is a sense of self-assuredness is an over-simplification. This specific type of confidence is referred to as self-efficacy.

Self-efficacy is, according to psychologist Albert Bandura who originally proposed the concept, personal judgment of “how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations”.

Confidence is a type of psychological armour; a protective layer that you carry with you constantly.

Those who are confident are like squash balls – the harder they’re hit the faster they bounce back

In this programme, we will find out how your confidence can remain high even following errors or unwelcome defeat, and how to carry your confidence from the warm-up track or the locker room right through to competition. You’ll learn how to recover from situations and scenarios where your confidence can take a knock, and how to deal with pressure and overcome anxiety. Remember: confidence can vary depending on the situation. You are likely to be confident in some areas but not in others. In this confidence programme, we will address the areas where your confidence is most likely to come under attack.

MYND Take-Away: Self-confidence is a belief in yourself and a trust that you can achieve what you set out to do.

In the next module, we look at the concept of flow in sport.

Finding your flow

When you perform at your best, you might well not be thinking of anything at all. You’re simply having fun and are absorbed in the moment, doing what you most enjoy. Conversely, when things are not going right, you are most likely thinking about who’s watching, about the bad decision that went against you five minutes ago, or about the implications of this result for your reputation or even your career.

If you’re an athlete or any other type of performer, you’re probably doing something that you’ve spent hours or even years preparing for. Sometimes, the performance just comes naturally – you’re in the groove, nothing else seems to matter and you produce your best, effortlessly. This state is known as ‘flow’ and comes from simply enjoying what you do. When you perform just for the joy of ‘being involved’, this is what psychologists refer to as ‘intrinsic motivation’, which we will look at another time. For now, though, you need to be aware that when you are not ‘in flow’ confidence can be somewhat elusive.

We all have those low-confidence days when things appear not to be going our way. Many times, I’ve heard a team manager or senior player say “what happened there?” when someone or the team, seriously underperformed. When this question is asked, it’s not a time for negative words or recriminations, it’s a time for analysis, to make small adjustments to help you get back on the road to confidence.

Flow is a little overrated in high-level sport

One of the issues with flow is that it can be ‘overrated’. There are not many times when you’re at a tough competition and you simply ‘ go into flow’. There will be doubts, injuries insecurities, and many other obstacles, You want to be able to perform regardless of any of these – that’s true and robust self-confidence is what it will take to get you where you need to be.

So, how do we get confidence where we need it when we need it? That’s exactly what we’re going to explore in this programme – and for now, I’ll say…when things do start to go wrong, try to look at what is working and build on that – there’s always something that is going okay – even in what you might think is a poor performance. It’s rare that you have to start from scratch. In fact, it might surprise you how small an adjustment is needed to get you back where you want to be.

MYND Take-Away. Being in flow is a great place to be, it is when you appear not to have a care in the world and you’re totally absorbed in your performance. Doing intrinsically rewarding tasks gets you into this one – things like rock-climbing, playing football with mates, enjoying a great hobby. Time just speeds up or slows down as you enjoy the activity. In elite sport competition, however, this doesn’t happen that often so its worth the investment of time and effort to build your confidence for when big challenges arise.

In the next module we continue our understanding of what confidence actually is, helping building your strong foundation for this course and your self-confidence strategy.

Understanding Confidence

Confidence lies on a continuum from FRAGILE to ROBUST. When our confidence is fragile we only feel certain of our abilities when things are going well, so we only feel confident after a good result. However, as the celebrated American basketball coach, Pat Riley, said: “when a thunderbolt hits you – that’s when the confidence drains – and when it does, it tends to drain pretty quickly and it’s not always easy to get back”.

In this programme, I am going to help you develop and build a more robust type of confidence, the type of confidence which stands up to difficulties and adversity. With this confidence, you’ll come through most situations feeling that you handled them to the best of your ability and that you’re ready to move onto the next challenge. Robust confidence is not reliant on winning or achieving continual success;

“when a thunderbolt hits you – that’s when the confidence drains – and when it does, it tends to drain pretty quickly and it’s not always easy to get back”.

Robust confidence that stays with you through the ups and downs and gets you where you want to be. It will not be fickle and it won’t waver. As we’ll see later, having faith in your preparation will count for a great deal; the better you prepare the more ready you will be for whatever lies ahead. The best coaches set up realistic challenges in training so that athletes are primed for the challenges of competition.

The best athletes engage and take ownership of their practice too. One track and field coach I know enhances the confidence of his athletes in the pre-race scenario by getting them to work out a pre-race routine. They then practise this routine while being mocked and taunted by other members of the squad. The coach assigns marks out of ten for composure under duress. Of course, it never gets that bad in real competitions, but when distractions happen at the competition, or even somebody’s mobile phone goes off or a police siren sounds during a major championship, the athletes have the strength to stay focused on the task at hand. If you’ve read anything about Tiger Woods growing up and the distractions his father would make while Tiger was practising shots, you will see how he benefited from this sort of training. Training how to focus on what is important and ignore what I call ‘the noise’.

MYND Take-Away: By understanding what confidence is, how useful a robust confidence will be to you, you will develop a great foundation for your personal self-confidence strategy.

In the next module we look at other aspects of confidence to complete this section.

Why is confidence important?

Confidence is rooted in the belief that you can perform a desired skill or task, so it follows that how you expect to perform will play a critical role in your achievements.

“You are what you think”

As former Olympic 400m hurdles champion, Sally Gunnel, once said: “you are what you think” – being confident lets you focus on what you need to do rather than on what might go wrong. This will direct your physical and mental resources towards the outcome that you want. Thinking about parts of your performance over which you have no control will, invariably, detract from your ability to give the best of yourself. For example, a basketball player who is confident in their ability to take a three-point shot will not hesitate when they receive a high-speed cross-court pass in the final throes of a game. They will have a mental map of precisely what needs to happen; they will instinctively know the precise location of the basket, and in a single movement will take the jump shot and enjoy seeing the ball drop cleanly through the hoop for a match-winning play. A less confident player may break down the skill elements in their mind, worrying about the process of catching the ball and playing it on, thus losing crucial fractions of a second. They may over-concern themselves with the presence of the opposing centre and try to force the ball into the basket, only to see it seized by the opposing team.

Confidence gives you the means to act decisively at the moment without inhibition and without ever questioning your ability. It allows you to do precisely what you want to do in the way you want to do it –and to enjoy it whilst you’re doing it. Those who are confident always take time to smell the roses along the way.

section of work.

MYND Take-Away

So, we’ve seen that confidence is a belief that you CAN do what you set out to do and that it can vary from fragile and robust. Strong self-belief will give you the drive and motivation you need to reach your potential belief in your physical capability, it’s important, but it’s the belief in your mental capacity – being able to make the correct decision under pressure, and your resilience or ability to bounce back – which will enable you to reach your sporting potential.

In the next module, we’ll take a look at the key benefits of being confident.

You need confidence in 1:Physical Capability

Athletes need to be sure that they’re able to execute the skills that they need to compete successfully. In most sports, they also need the four S’s – speed, strength, stamina, and suppleness. Physical capability is essentially the skills and fitness to do what you need to when up against the kind of opposition you’re likely to encounter. A lack of confidence in your physical capability can be resolved by competing at a slightly lower level in order to experience success there, before moving back up to where you want to be. For example, after reconstructing their stroke, many professional golfers will spend weeks playing at the club and national level before re-entering the European tour. They needed a sense of assurance in their new skills, and to be satisfied that these skills will not let them down when they’re facing other professionals. It’s similar to tennis.

When I worked with Andy Murray, who reached World No.1, winning two Slam Finals as well as two Olympic Gold, the biggest contributor to his confidence came from his physical ability. You could see his confidence grow with each progress he made with his physical development. For Andy, a hugely talented player, his belief was that if he developed his fitness to a super high-level, he could compete with anyone in the world. He knew already that technically and tactically he could already match them.

Your MYND Take-Away: if the need to be confident in your physical ability is key, put together a specific physical training programme with your coaches that will help develop your attributes in this area.

In the next module, we will look at the second aspect – mental capacity

You need confidence in 2. Mental Capacity

Performers need to be confident about their…Mental Capacity, and specifically their use of mental skills, in order to be able to maintain focus and make timely appropriate decisions.

Sir Clive Woodward coined the phrase T-CUP meaning “Thinking Correctly Under Pressure” – some might rephrase that as thinking calmly under pressure. Either sentiment is correct; a crucial consideration for high-level performance.

One of the methods famously used by Sir Clive during his days at the helm of England Rugby was to employ a ‘no-blame policy’ – this meant that when a player made an obvious mistake on the field of play they wouldn’t be reprimanded but rather given a pat on the back and encouraged to play on. This was part of his confidence-building winning formula even though all players were under no illusion that they had to take personal responsibility to learn quickly from mistakes and not repeat them. Many of the mental skills that you require, you’ll gain through practising the exercises suggested throughout MYND Learn and the app.

Your MYND Take-Away: Develop your mental skills to help you carry out the physical skills under pressure.

In the next module we kat the final of the three key attributes you need to be confident in when we explore ‘resilience’.

“Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.”

Nelson Mandela

You need to be confident in 3. Resilience

The third aspect athletes need to be confident in is their resilience. Performers need to be confident in their ability to refocus and come back strong when things don’t go right. It’s one of the main characteristics shared by elite athletes.

Resilience: The capacity to recover quickly from difficulties

The path to sporting immortality is never without a few setbacks and you’ll need to understand that overcoming setbacks and obstacles is an essential aspect of being an athlete, more so even than in life in general. Just as when you walk out in the rain you expect to get a little wet, so when you enter the sporting arena you’ll face challenges. They go with the territory. Understanding that failure is part of the process is essential. Listen to what Michael Jordan says in the video below.

Obstacles and challenges could come in the form of injury, illness, seemingly inexplicable underperformance, opponents in inspired form and simply not feeling up for it. You should expect obstacles and work hard to develop the skills to overcome them.

MYND Take-Away

MYND Take-Away. Another mindset change you might develop is this ability to absorb the blows, failures and challenges and come through a stronger person.

In the next module, we start to look at the key benefits of being confident

MYND Activity Confidence C7Download

1. THE FEEL-GOOD FACTOR

For today, let’s look at the first of these, ‘The Feel-Good Factor’. This is what we might also call positive emotions or feelings.

There are considerable benefits to be derived from feeling this way and having the sureness of mind that you can achieve what you set out to achieve. When you feel confident, you’re more likely to remain calm and relaxed under pressure – leading to higher levels of performance and even more confidence as a consequence. It’s what you might call a virtuous circle – a nice upward spiral. When faced with the same challenge, people with higher levels of self-confidence will experience less anxiety than someone with lower self-confidence. Someone who has strong beliefs about his or her abilities is able to manage the emotions associated with the competition or with pressured situations much more effectively than people who lack confidence.

Confidence allows you to manage your performance

Confidence allows you to manage and cope with anxiety to a greater degree, freeing your mind to focus attention on your performance rather than worrying about your abilities and perceived inadequacies.

Confidence facilitates better concentration – when you feel confident, your mind is free to focus on what’s necessary in order to perform well and you’ll tend to focus on relevant and important cues and not be distracted by irrelevant details. In fact, confidence enables you to focus only on what’s relevant, wholly relevant, and nothing but what’s relevant!

Confidence Effects Your Approach To Competition

Confidence also influences people’s approach toward their performance. Confident athletes tend to ‘play to win’ rather than ‘playing not to lose’. This was thrown into sharp focus in the Manchester United side of Sir Alex Ferguson, who always had the resolve to fight ardently until the sound of the final whistle.

Perhaps the most famous example of this came in the 1999 UEFA Champions League Cup final when United faced the strong German side, Bayern Munich and came from behind to win 2-1 in the dying minutes of the game. In field hockey, confident players will indicate to their teammates by raising their stick that they want the ball, they’ll not be afraid to take chances or take control of the match.

Contrastingly, players who lack confidence will play ‘not to lose’, meaning that they play cautiously and try to avoid making mistakes; sometimes avoiding receiving the ball on their stick altogether! Similarly, in soccer, players lacking confidence are said to be hiding on the pitch, fearing to receive a pass and making a mistake. Confident athletes will tend to approach their sport with the attitude “I’m here to win” and understand the processes that they need to go through, as well as the choices they need to make. They know that this approach will give them the best opportunity to achieve their objectives. They are also very good at avoiding what I like to call NOISE factors – those irrelevant cues that will distract them from achieving success.

MYND Audio

Take a listen to the audio as a reminder of what we have discussed

MYND Take-Away

Confidence is a belief that you can do what you set out to do, and it can vary between fragile or robust. It’s crucial in personal development to realise that having that strong self-belief will give you the drive and motivation you need to reach your potential. A belief in your physical capability is important but it’s the belief in your mental capacity – being able to make correct decisions under pressure and your resilience or bounce back ability – that will enable you to reach your sporting potential. There are huge benefits to be had in being self-confident – one of the biggest is that feel-good factor. Confident people feel better about their lives and their sport. They enjoy life more. The feel-good factor associated with being confident can help improve concentration and reduce anxiety.

In the next module we’ll take a look at the other benefits of being confident – the better use of your resources and energy and the fact you think more effectively when confident.

Welcome back – in the previous modules we’ve looked at the nature of confidence, explored fragile and robust confidence and looked at what you need to be confident about –including your mental capacity and resilience. In the last module, we started looking at the benefits of being confident and explored the feel-good factor. Now let’s look at the next key benefit that confidence brings –

2. THE BETTER USE OF RESOURCES & ENERGY

• More persistent

• Set more challenging goals

• Can overcome adversity better

• More focused

When I work with underperforming athletes and teams, one surprising aspect that tends to cause underperformance is a reduction in levels of effort and persistence. This reduction in effort is often unconscious, which means players or teams are not even aware of it –and to get out of a slump, there needs to be a realisation that more effort needs to be expended. Don’t misunderstand this as a lack of effort – it isn’t. Sometimes it may be too much effort but directed in the wrong place – and normally as a result of a lack of confidence and subsequently thinking poorly. Fortunately with elite-level sport, at least, there is a multitude of tracking and analysis tools that can identify and monitor levels of work rate and effort and so one of the problems associated with underperformance can easily be identified and addressed.

Despite wanting to try and put things right when in a slump, some athletes and teams who lack confidence can start to exert less effort and reduce their work rate because they get into the mindset where they feel whatever they try to do, they’re not going be successful…this invariably leads to a downward spiral in confidence, which can be catastrophic. For example, the former British No 1 tennis player, Tim Henman, would often reach the final stages of the Wimbledon All England tournament. The sheer weight of public expectation and the pressure of progressing beyond the semi-finals proved to be his undoing. Despite considerable natural talent and physical prowess, Henman never graced Centre Court for the men’s singles final.

Self-confidence gives you the motivation to ‘stretch’ yourself, to ‘reach higher’ – in Henman’s case, perhaps to progress from the semi-final stages to the final of Wimbledon.

Confident athletes set Challenging Goals

Confident people tend to set goals and face challenges in which there’s a level of uncertainty about the outcome. Importantly they pursue these goals with more vigour and enthusiasm than less confident people –if you haven’t done so already, take a listen to the programmes on ‘goal setting’ and the ‘make it happen’ programme in the MYND App.

In the English Premier League, Leicester City caused a sensation in the 2015/16 season when their outstanding season form led them to attain an exceptional degree of team confidence. This enabled them to take on and beat seemingly superior opponents on a consistent basis. They played each game to win. This confidence drove them to their most successful season in the club’s history ending up winning the English Premier League after starting the season at 5000-1 outsiders and favourites for relegation.

It was similar when an under-rated and unfancied Greek soccer team, shocked the world when they won the 2004 European Championships, beating heavyweights including Spain, France, the Czech Republic and Portugal (twice) en route to their success.

Confidence can really help you excel.

So confident people or teams set more challenging goals for themselves and there’s plenty of scientific evidence to show that clear and challenging goals lead to greater achievement. We’ll take a look at the precise benefits of goal-setting in another programme but suffice to say, by setting yourself constant challenges –and particularly challenges which increase over time –you can develop your confidence with every step you achieve on the journey to your ultimate goal.

Conversely, people who lack confidence might set goals that are either easy to achieve or, perhaps ironically, that are too difficult to achieve. They might not even set a goal at all, but leave things entirely to chance – or have what I call ‘ do my best’ goals’ which can be equally ineffective. Leaving things to chance is not an effective way to build your confidence. You need to take the reins and be an agent of change – the architect of your own success. No one else can help you to achieve as much as you are able to help yourself. Confidence is about ownership, responsibility and feels empowered to make positive change.

In sport, performers who lack confidence will be all too content to play opponents who are a lot less able, or who are much better than them. This minimizes the challenge faced. It might be easy to beat a lesser opponent, and if they lose against a better opponent, they feel safe in the knowledge that not much more was expected of them. In contrast, if you’re confident you’re much more likely to invest greater effort into achieving and to be more persistent– particularly when faced with significant obstacles. You work harder because you’re secure in what you need to do and feel that you’ve prepared well for the task at hand. Most notably you don’t waste time or mental effort thinking of what might go wrong.

Athletes who have low self-confidence tend to show low levels of effort in striving to achieve a task. When faced with challenging situations such as prolonged lack of success, tough opponents or a losing match score their ‘heads go down’. That is they get demoralised and discouraged.

Coinfidence helps increase effort

For confident athletes, the sense of dissatisfaction works as a type of incentive, and they’ll subsequently increase their effort and persistence in order to realize their goals. For athletes who lack confidence, this dissatisfaction turns into disincentive and they’re more likely either to give up or reduce their efforts. Remember that confidence allows you to be like a squash ball – the harder you’re hit the faster you can bounce back.

Tennis great Pete Sampras summarised this when he said

“Confidence allows athletes to demonstrate persistent effort at ‘crunch time’ in matches, it’s important to let opponents know that you’re not going to give in or tank the match due to mental or physical fatigue”.

MYND Take-Away

Over the last two modules, we have learned that there are three main benefits associated with being confident. We looked at the FEEL GOOD FACTOR in the previous module and now have explored investment of resources and energy simply put, confident people tend to invest more resources and energy into their activities and as they do their confidence is further enhanced and they then put in more effort – it’s a nice upward spiral.

In the next module, we’ll look at the third benefit that comes with self-confidence– thinking effectively.

In the previous modules, we have looked at the benefits of being confident and explored the feel-good factor and how confident people tend to invest more effort, resources and energy into what they do. Now let’s look at the third benefit in our list…

3: EFFECTIVE THINKING

• Better decision making

• More decisive

• Avoid distractions

• Taking personal responsibility

• Use good coping strategies that are solution focused

It’s well known that people who are not confident tend to make poor decisions. This is why in times of war, successful military generals such as Dwight D Eisenhower and Norman Schwarzkopf tend to be highly confident and articulate individuals who inspire confidence in their troops and their compatriots. Politicians rely on great generals to make good decisions and to stand by those decisions. Wavering in a time of crisis or when under pressure can lead to disastrous consequences. But people who are not confident tend to make weak decisions. That’s because thinking effectively means that you use your mental resources more productively. Simply put, confident people are able to think clearly and make better decisions than less confident people. It’s the essence of Sir Clive Woodward’s T-Cup thinking which we spoke about earlier. Effective thinking will enable you to ignore distractions and take control of your thought processes. You’ll make better choices and this is an important element of superior performance. Confidence gives you the freedom to focus your attention solely on the task at hand as opposed to worrying about inadequacies or possible performance failures.

The Use of Symbolic Reminders

Confident athletes are more decisive and better able to focus on the here and now; they tend to leave performance errors in the past and not dwell on them. One badminton player that I worked with had a fantastic way of ridding herself of errors. When she inadvertently hit the shuttlecock into the net or smashed it beyond the boundary line of the court, rather than getting het up and angry with herself she would take a few seconds to park the error. We came up with a symbolic way of doing this, which was to wipe it away through the handle of her racket. This symbolic act allowed the player to refocus on what she needed to do to take control. Think about a routine that you can use in your own sport to park errors and thus stop the frustration from seeping into future plays. It may be wiping away the error on your shorts, taking a deep breath and pushing the error away through your mouth or even spitting it to the ground if you play an outdoor sport.

Confident athletes tend to take personal responsibility for both their success and failure. If however, failure is caused by a factor outside of their control, such as a poor refereeing decision, or dreadful weather, they don’t dwell on this. They’ll readily attribute success to their ability, effort and preparation – good choices as we see later in the programme. By way of contrast, less confident athletes tend to attribute success to uncontrollable factors such as luck, or opponents not trying hard enough, in addition, confident athletes tend to use coping strategies that are solution-focused.

This means that they try to understand what they need to do to overcome a problem or weakness. For example, a snooker player who finds himself getting jittery at crucial points in a match might deal with this problem by using a breathing technique, such as centring, before coming to the table (more on centring by the way in another programme). Confident athletes also engage in positive visualization – this means they see themselves through their own eyes succeeding over and over again.

Former world and Olympic champion pole vaulter, Yelena Isinbayeva, will not launch herself down the runway until she has seen a technically perfect clearance in her mind’s eye. Again, we examine positive visualization in-depth in another module. Overall, self-confidence helps athletes’ thought patterns and enables them to establish a more positive attitude toward competition. When things don’t go as expected, confident athletes tend to respond with more productive thoughts. Moreover, if you’re not confident, you might waste time thinking about things that won’t help you;

• What will people think?

• What will people say if I fail?

• What will happen to my rating?

• How will the media report on my performance?

• Such thinking will not help you in the hotbed of competition where you need to be completely immersed in the task in hand

MYND Take-Away

Over the last three modules, we have learned that there are three main benefits associated with being confident. We have the FEEL GOOD FACTOR – which means you feel better about yourself all around; there’s the investment of resources and energy meaning that you tend to try harder to achieve what you want when you have greater belief in what you’re doing -and finally and crucially there’s effective thinking – which means that you think more rationally and make better choices when placed under pressure.

In the next module we’ll start to take a look at where confidence comes from – and more things that you can do to boost your self-confidence.

#1: Previous performance accomplishments & mastery experiences

The most important and prime source of confidence is successfully having done something before – what we refer to as your previous performance accomplishments or past successful experiences. We also refer to these as ‘mastery experiences’. Put simply, if you’ve done it before you’ll have a belief that you can do it again.

Positive and negative experiences are likely to influence your ability to perform a specific task – If you’ve performed well at a task previously then you’re more likely to feel competent and perform well at a similar task in the future. For example, a young footballer asked to play up an age group who performs well would most likely relish the opportunity to step up again on another occasion; an employee making a good impact when giving a business presentation will have a high level of confidence when their manager asks them to do something similar on another occasion. In both cases, the individual’s self-confidence is high for that task, and they would likely exert even greater effort next time to achieve a higher level of performance or a better result. And so their confidence helps them spiral upwards. The opposite is also true.

If the individual experiences a failure, they will most likely experience a reduction in self-confidence. However, if the failure is later overcome by conviction and hard work, this can increase self-motivated persistence, especially when the situation is viewed as a challenge which is achievable.

So, success builds a robust belief in your personal confidence – or efficacy – whereas failure undermines it – especially if a failure occurs before a sense of efficacy is firmly established. There’s no doubt, and plenty of research evidence, about the fact that prior success, or those previous performance accomplishments, is a major predictor of confidence. So if you’ve done something before, and done it well, you’ll be confident you can do it again. And with repeated successes, the occasional failure has a little negative impact. These prior successes could include, for example, having beaten an opponent previously, reaching goals and targets that you had set yourself or doing something you didn’t think you could do. It is important therefore to not only look at past successes but also, and in some respects more crucially, look at improvements over time – because each little step toward your goal is an achievement which can build your confidence – but only if you acknowledge each incremental improvement. If previous performance is the best predictor of athlete confidence it’s a great idea to write down your achievements and remind yourself regularly of what you have achieved in the past. Even looking at successes outside of your sport is useful, as many attributes that lead to success in one area can be transferred to others.

Your Previous Successes

With many clients I ask them to write down a list of previous successes almost as a starting point in building their confidence – it’s a useful exercise and one you could benefit from. Success breeds confidence idea that ‘success breeds success’ is a well-known phrase in sport and other domains. Perhaps the phrase should more accurately be ‘success breeds confidence and confidence breeds success, and so on’. It might seem a little like a chicken and egg scenario, – to perform well consistently you need confidence, and confidence comes from performing well! So what is the way around this? There’s really no substitute for hard work and thorough preparation. Former Britain Coach of the Year, swimming coach David Calleja summed it up nicely when he said –

“The ability to handle pressure depends on a player’s self-confidence”.

In competition, confidence comes from the knowledge that preparation has been as thorough as possible – everything that could be done has been done. It is only if athletes doubt their preparation that they will doubt their ability to deliver. The seeds of anxiety are sown in the cracks this leaves in their confidence.”

MYND Take-Away

By far the biggest source of confidence is a previous success. This can be achieving a specific end goal or simply achieving incremental ‘small-step’ goals. By having both you’ll not only greatly improve your chances of developing robust confidence, but you’ll enjoy the journey along the way.

In the next module well continue to look at this super source of confidence as we explore performance mastery.

Quick recap

In the previous module, we started looking at the primary source of confidence – previous performance accomplishments. We saw that this could include small. Short-term achievements, as well as the more obvious ‘bigger wins Lets, continue as we look at

#1b Performance mastery

As well as previous performance successes being the most important source of self-confidence, – confidence also comes from continual improvement. So you might not have achieved the success or level you want at this moment, but you can gain confidence from success during the steps you’ve taken toward your goal. This is about the ability to continually improve and or master specific techniques or levels of performance. Even the ability to learn new skills can be a confidence booster – provided the performer is able to acknowledge the improvement. Many performers look at the end product only or the outcome and if it’s not at a level they want it to be or if they lose in a competition, for example, they might ignore any improvements they’ve made. That’s a dangerous place to be and not great for building confidence.

I’ve worked with a number of clients who have totally dismissed their improvements and it’s only when these have been highlighted and acknowledged that the client can benefit from what they’ve achieved – giving them the motivation to push on and continually improve. One strategy is to use what we call ‘goal maps’ – which will include the incremental steps you need to achieve in order to reach your ultimate goal. These should include performance goals that are controllable so that success is within your control. All athletes and in particularly male athletes who generally tend to be more ego-driven should be encouraged to define success and achievement in controllable ways to help keep their confidence stable and resilient through the ups and downs of competition.

So the things to be mindful of and consider would include:

• Developing new skills

• Improving and

• Achieving interim or short-term goals

Ink it – Don’t Think It

And the secret is to write it down… monitor your progress… There’s nothing quite like seeing the slope on a graph increase with every improvement – and don’t forget the graph’s never a smooth line up…. they’ll be mishaps, injuries, even a downturn in performance and results as you climb up to your ultimate goal – don’t underestimate the small improvement steps as they provide the most authentic evidence of whether you can muster whatever it takes to succeed. Success builds a robust belief in your personal confidence and failure undermines it –especially if a failure occurs before a sense of confidence or efficacy is firmly established. As an example consider two of the best soccer players on the planet – Ronaldo and Messi – they occasionally have dreadful matches – but because their confidence is well established, they are totally resilient to occasional failures – a nice place to be for any performer.t’s worth noting here that if you experience only easy successes then you might start to expect quick results in everything and become demotivated and discouraged when confronted with a highly challenging situation where success doesn’t come quickly. This often happens to talented young athletes who eventually come up against a really tough opponent –where success came quite easily before and their confidence was high, the fact they never had to push their limits can be to their disadvantage when they eventually meet their match. Their performance may well slump –they’ll tend to even reduce their effort because they haven’t developed that resilience to persist and work through problems. A resilient sense of efficacy or confidence requires the experience of overcoming obstacles through perseverance and effort. It’s almost the ability to put yourself in situations where you will fail, in order to learn to find ways to succeed. There’s nothing more satisfying than approaching these situations with the mindset that they are learning opportunities and remember to stay focused on still achieving specific goals and targets to gain confidence. You just need the right mindset.

Some of the most successful athletes I’ve worked with have learned to put themselves into tough situations where they will fail because they know they will grow from the experience.It’s the ones who hate losing too much and who never put themselves into highly challenging situations, who might never grow.So seeing self-improvement can be a great source of confidence – It’s that “I know I’m getting better all the time” attitude –

you may not necessarily have achieved your goal as yet, but your improvement over time gives you your source of confidence. This is something I see very clearly with many athletes. Looking at Andy Murray it took him a long time to win his first Slam and whilst the media kept questioning his ability he just got on with the job of continually improving. After two slam wins and an Olympic Gold Medal, he continues to improve today. More recently when Johana Khonta reached her first Slam semi-final in the Australian Open in 2016 the press was shocked. They shouldn’t have been if they’d followed her continual improvement over the previous 10 years! These performance sources of confidence come particularly from competing in a sport or in business but they also come from training and rehearsal – perhaps even more so…It’s therefore good practice to keep reminding yourself of things you do well, and this is a reason why training and performance logs/diaries can be beneficial. It is also why coach feedback can be a source of confidence…more of this later

MYND Take-Away

We’ve explored in some detail how previous performance accomplishments is one of your main sources of confidence. Use the ideas in these two modules to keep looking at all the areas in your life where you make any small achievement and look at these as building blocks – foundations if you like – towards building your robust self-confidence.

In the next module well take a look at another primary source of Confidence, 0 Modelling or vicarious experiences

Quick Recap

In the previous two modules, we looked at one of the primary sources of building self-efficacy or confidence – past successes and what we called mastery. We now look at another of the big four sources of confidence…

#3 Vicarious experiences or models

Confidence is contagious The second source of creating and strengthening self-confidence is through what we call vicarious experiences primarily it’s about learning– or taking inspiration, from others – you’ll sometimes hear this called social modelling but you’ll see that even self-modelling works when used correctly. By modelling, we mean that just by watching people you respect and admire – and yes, this can and does help enhance your confidence. Young soccer players who go out and emulate the skills they’ve just seen their favourite player execute on TV is a great example of this. They learn a previously unknown skill simply by modelling or mimicking, the move of their hero, practising and persevering until they can do it. This is similar in other sports with young performers copying their heroes.

Models, as we’ll call them, can come from a multitude of places. It could be a hero on TV, your coach or even a teammate, and as we’ll see, the more like you the model is, the more influential they can be in becoming a source of confidence. The point is, simply watching successful models can be a source of confidence for any performer. Visual and verbal instruction from coaches can give athletes the confidence to successfully learn new skills themselves and we’ll come onto this in the next module.

Confidence from COach & Manager

Coaches are important models for their athletes not only in skill execution, but also for modelling confident behaviour, decision-making, and strategy development. Coaches who are more confident in their coaching abilities have been shown to have more successful teams and more satisfied athletes than less confident coaches. Performers simply joining a group, team or squad where the coach or leader has a high-reputation will gain confidence by being accepted into that group. That said, ‘modelling’ works best when the people you watch are similar to yourself – particularly in age and ability – and you can make easier comparisons. So when you see a colleague of similar ability succeed by sustained effort, this will raise your belief that you too possess the ability to do something similar.

Confidence from players you know

Whether it’s a teammate, a work colleague or a friend, they can serve as confidence-builders. In the Premier League in 2016, Jamie Vardi’s scoring record at Leicester City was exceptional and contributed to his teammates the confidence to have their best season ever in their history when they took the English Premier League by storm. Imagine the players who a few seasons ago were playing alongside Vardi in non-league football – they may also gain confidence from the fact someone who not so long ago was playing alongside them – and of similar ability – is now playing for the England National Team at Euro 2016, and a Premier League winner too. It’s that “if he can do it – so can I’ attitudes. I see this when a member of a particular tennis centre has an exceptional tournament, only to give confidence to all her squad colleagues to believe they could do the same because they know they are of similar ability. Earlier we mentioned Johanna Khonta reaching the Australian Open semi-final –players who have grown up playing with her and perhaps even beaten her in the recent past could grow with confidence simply by seeing what she has achieved and believing they are at least as good as her. By the same token, seeing others of similar ability fail despite high effort could lower your judgment of your own efficacy or confidence..So you can develop either high or low self-efficacy through other people’s performances. Models don’t only influence you by the way they perform, they will also influence you by the way they act, talk and behave. This is why being around people who set high standards and approach life and performance with a degree of positivity and optimism can really rub off on you.

Unfortunately, the reverse is also true. Even your thinking patterns are likely to be influenced by the people you surround yourself with. An example of how this could happen in the workplace and in teams is through mentoring programs.

The mentor can help raise confidence levels by sharing thoughts on what they did to achieve their success. It’s another reason why sharing the ideas in the MYND App work. Examples of where this might work in reverse could be when someone is trying to give up smoking or drinking but see their colleagues fail to do the same, -lowering their own confidence to quit. It’s similar to diet clubs if you see lots of others not losing weight!

MYND Take-Aay

Lots of f performers start in their sport precisely because they see someone doing a sport and admire what they do. By emulating their heroes they are using vicarious experiences. But it can be so much more than that if you do it systematically and look at many sources including coach, manager, teammates, competitors, people you admire and those you don;t. Take opportunities to learn from them all.

In the next model we take a look at the second part of #2Vicarious experiences when we look at the concept of self-modelling

#2 Vicarious Experiences (cont) -Self-modeling

It’s worth pointing out here that you can even use yourself as the model! Many a time I’ve filmed an athlete’s performance and cut a highlight tape only for them to turn round and say – ‘I didn’t think I could play that well.’ Thus gaining confidence through their own modelling… So using a videotape of you, or even just visualizing yourself doing well can also be an important source of confidence.

Athletes who are in slumps and/or who are struggling with confidence often view videotapes of their previous performances when they were in the groove to serve as a model to improve.

So a common confidence builder is a production of what I call personal motivational videos, where best performances are captured on ‘tape’ along with energizing music, often selected specially by the performer. With the various video editing software and Apps now available – great quality highlight videos can be really easy to produce. And you can see that combining the first of the BIG 4 sources of confidence – Previous performance accomplishments – with the second – VICARIOUS EXPERIENCES or Modelling – and using your own video footage will be a really useful confidence boost – and when you can now carry these videos around with you 24/7 on a mobile device your confidence boost is totally accessible – use it!

1. See others, particularly colleagues, teammates, and friends similar to you perform well

2. Watch video footage of yourself doing something well and

3. Use visualization to view yourself performing perfectly (and I encourage you to listen to the module on visualisation which goes into detail about how to get the best from this psychological skill)

4. Watching and emulating role models and successful performers

5. Surround yourself with positive, optimistic and hard-working people

6. Work with inspiring and enthusiastic coaches.

MYND Take-Away

So In this module, we’ve looked at another key source of building your self-confidence, modelling or vicarious experiences. You can use vicarious experiences or modelling to increase your confidence when you:

In the next module we’ll take a look at the next key source of confidence, verbal persuasion.

Quick Recap

In the previous modules we looked at two of the primary source of building your self-confidence – past success and vicarious experiences or modelling – now let’s take a look at the third primary source of confidence. . Source 3: Verbal persuasion

#Verbal Persuaion

You can gain a lot of confidence from people you respect who might simply talk to you. They might…tell you they believe in you, or they reinforce the skills and capabilities you have or they remind you of what you do well especially at the time that you doubt yourself. This kind of verbal support and encouragement can be a huge source of inspiration and confidence. Floyd Mayweather, the richest athlete in the world and at teh time of writing, the only undefeated boxer ever, often cites his grandma as his source of inspiration, She would tell him he was going to be teh best boxer ever and he believed ger. He calls himself TBE – The Best Ever!

For most people, telling themselves how good they are doesn’t come naturally, and you might even feel embarrassed reminding yourself how good you are. So, as we see in the programmes on self-talk and thinking errors, negative self-talk and thoughts come a lot easier than positive ones.

As a consequence, it’s easy to see how confidence can be drained when you confronted with a challenging situation or even competition. How often have you heard one person say to another – ‘you just don’t know how good you really are’ Maybe someones said that to you at some time?

As with vicarious experiences verbal persuasion can work both ways – your self- confidence is influenced by either encouragement or discouragement regarding your performance or ability – so if a manager or coach tells you ‘you can do it, you’ve done it well on many occasions and I have confidence in you’– that’ll add to your confidence. Positive reinforcement is very likely to lead to you putting more effort into what you do, which has that upwards spiral I talk a lot about in MYND app – and this gives you an even better chance to succeed. Of course, the opposite also happens. So if your manager or colleagues are negative towards you and tells you – ‘I don’t think you can do this’ or simply overlook you for a task or job you thought you were well equipped to do, your confidence can drain. it can not only reduce your confidence, but also the effort and persistence you might put in going forward. This has a doubly negative impact and you end up failing again – not entirely down to the lowering of your confidence but due to the fact you never put in the effort or persistence needed to succeed –the downward spiral again. That is, of course, unless you set out to prove the coach or colleague wrong in which case it can be a motivator to get better.

Credible or not?

It’s worth noting here that the credibility of the person giving you the feedback will impact on how you respond. The higher the credibility of the person then potentially the bigger the effect – In football for example if Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger said you were good, your confidence is likely to soar, as you really respect and believe them. when a local team manager tells you you’re not that good you might simply to choose to ignore the comment because they lack the credibility.

What qualifies them to give you feedback?

In this respect, it’s worth bearing in mind here that before you allow yourself to feel bad or not confident the following comment from anyone – ask yourself what qualifies them to give the criticism. And that’s important because one negative comment can affect you more than 100 positive ones – if you allow it to. On many occasions people are quick to knock your confidence because they lack confidence and humility themselves – so don’t allow unqualified or people you don’t respect to knock your own confidence. BUILD AND WORK ON YOUR SOCIAL SUPPORT TEAM Encouragement from significant others, for example, parents, coaches, work colleagues and friends can really help improve confidence –

so it‘s important to have a good support network, particularly, but not only, for when things are not going as well. Part of the reason for putting a team around Andy Murray when we worked together was precisely this positive support effect and it worked and continues ti work, a treat. So verbal or social persuasion can strengthen your belief that you have what it takes to succeed. If you’re persuaded that you possess the capabilities to master a given activity you’re more likely to put in greater effort and persist for longer, than if you had self-doubts – In which case you might choose to dwell on any personal deficiencies – real or perceived.

..and I’m not saying that people should be unrealistic in what you can do – but reminding you of your proven strengths, ability and skills is beneficial and useful. A persuasion boost can get you working harder, and help perhaps developing even more skills to succeed. In truth people who have been constantly told that they lack capabilities or talent needed to succeed tend to avoid challenging activities that will actually cultivate their growth – and they tend to give up quickly in the face of difficulties – its that self-fulfilling prophecy. By avoiding challenges, your motivation to try new things diminishes and your belief in yourself is lowered. So the encouragement and feedback you receive from significant others in your life is an important source of confidence.

When you see managers in football, corner-men in boxing or parents, all shouting encouragement to their athletes or children, this is all a means of attempting to boost their confidence – often with reminders of what they can do well or encouraging them to keep going. Sometimes this can backfire, as we’ll see later. “I believed in myself because my parents/coach believed in me” might be a common saying amongst athletes.

“I am the Greatest”

VERBAL PERSUASION – IT’S YOUR OWN TALK TOO!

We mentioned previously, when looking at vicarious experiences, that you can also learn in this way from watching yourself. It’s very similar in verbal persuasion, and as you’ll see in the programme on Self-Talk, your own verbal persuasion can also affect the way your confidence moves Positive self-talk or self-persuasion can inspire, motivate and build your self-confidence – look no further than the late and great Muhamed Ali His use of positive self-talk was legendary. So don’t think verbal persuasion has to be from others. Your own self-talk is a critical factor in your journey to success. As with all the sources, you’d do well to seek out the ones in each area that works best for you and try each in different situations and at different times – trying them first in training and then at competition..

You might amaze and delight yourself at the results

You’ll find that the more you nurture a positive and supportive team around you the more your confidence will be developed.

MYND Take-Away

So In this module, we’ve looked at verbal persuasion. Along with reminding yourself of previous successes and vicarious experiences, you now have three of the bug 4 crucial techniques to build your robust and unshakeable self-confidence. Build and nurture your social support network, giving as much as taking benefit from your network.

In the next module we’ll take a look at the fourth key source of confidence – emotional or physiological arousal

Welcome to this module on building confidence and well done for keeping up your personal development.I hope your;e starting t understand more about confidence and that your levels of self-confidence are slowly starting to rise. We start this module by looking at the fourth of the four Key sources before moving on to see how other sources can be really useful to have in your confidence toolbox.

#4 Emotional or physiological arousal

Whenever you’re in an important situation, it’s highly likely that you’ll experience physical sensations in your body, butterflies, changes in your breathing or sweating, for example. How you perceive this emotional arousal will influence your belief in your confidence. As we’ll see, many athletes get worried if they don’t feel aroused and stressed at the competition! They interpret the signs as excitement – a signal to say they’re ready for whatever comes their way. For years I used to sweat profusely when I gave presentations – not great when you’re teaching 100s of university students about anxiety and stress control – it had a negative effect on how I delivered and felt. I was interpreting this stress reaction and tension as a sign of vulnerability to poor performance. It wasn’t until I changed my focus from the physiological change – the sweating – to the content and delivery of the presentation that the problem went.

In sports athletes might judge their fatigue, aches and pains as signs that they are below par and maybe give up – others would accept the aches as part and parcel of their sport and simply get on with things – driven forward by the thought that their opponent will be feeling the same Moods also play a part – if you’re in a better mood your confidence will be higher – if you’re despondent the opposite happens So when it comes to emotional arousal, the secret is to reframe what it means to you personally. By developing an accepting mindset, and learning to deal with stressful situations better – we call it being comfortable being uncomfortable. So you might tell yourself in sport – yes it hurts but I know I can get through this – or giving a presentation – yes, I feel nervous but I can do this so I’ll focus on giving the best delivery I can today with the nerves.

The nerves tell me I’m where I want to be

Acceptance is the first step to getting through and overcoming these feelings – it’s about perception and interpretation – it’s changing, ‘I fell nervous’ to ‘I feel excited’ – or simply – and one of my favourites – ‘these nerves tell me I’m where I want to be’ or ‘even though I’m nervous it’s great to be here’. .

The fact is, confident people will likely feel that this state of arousal has an energizing effect on performance – so feeling nervous when you’re in a confident frame of mind is seen as good – athletes often tell themselves it shows that they’re ready for action and this is a good way for you to interpret those butterflies of that anxiety when you’re about to do something challenging. If you’re full of self-doubt though, you’ll regard the nerves as debilitative – so situations that bring those physiological signs on for you – butterflies, sweaty palms, or racing heartbeats – situations like competing at an important event, giving a business presentation or a speech..will need to be interpreted in positive or even neutral ways in order to best use them for signs you’re ready.

Accept, avknowledge and focus on what’s important

Learning to control or even ignore these signs will be key. And I’m afraid the only way of getting over this hurdle is to accept you’re going to feel uncomfortable and look at the benefits doing something so challenging that it brings on these feelings in the first place. That might be a sense of pride and achievement in getting through… By approaching these situations head-on, and with the right mindset – you’ll find that your negative physiological response fades quite quickly.

I used to tell myself I would feel uncomfortable – really uncomfortable – during the first few minutes of a business presentation and then I would start to enjoy it… as time went on that uncomfortable period never lasted as long, nor was it as bad, as it was in the beginning.

Be brave to get through the real uncomfortable period – it’ll be worth it Although the psychological or emotional response source of confidence might be the least influential of the BIG four we’ve mentioned,it may also be the biggest single factor that stops you performing, so understanding it and what you can do about it is crucial. Remember – nerves tell you you’re somewhere special, doing something not everyone can do…so enjoy those nerves and seek out situations that bring them on.

WHat’s next?

Now we’ve seen the big four sources of confidence previous performances Vicarious experience Verbal Persuasion Physiological arousal … it’s time to explore other sources of confidence and look at expanding our confidence foundations. Other sources OF SELF CONFIDENCE We’ve just looked at the four key sources of confidence and it’s useful to go through other potential areas where you can gain or build on your confidence levels – look at it like your foundations – the more pillars you can use to build your confidence on, potentially when one isn’t working as well for you or you’re in a slump..you can then look at the various sources and draw on the most appropriate at the time. ..Look at it like your toolbox of confidence. Picking out the best tools for the job on that day. So let’s look at what the research tells us and go through eight more sources of CONFIDENCE – I’d encourage you to use every source possible to help you build that ROBUST CONFIDENCE As with the whole concept of the MYND-APP and psychology in general, many of these will be inter-related and overlap – if you tend to be strong in certain areas, you’ll probably find that you’ll be strong in others as well.

In terms of physiological arousal, start to be more aware of your own specific responses and the first thing to do is learn to accept they will happen –

Knowing that once you accept them, they’re likely to be reduced quite quickly – as a minimum you’ll learn how to compete and perform with them.

Start to reframe the meaning of this nervous response as signals that you are doing something special, and challenge yourself to make the right choices in terms of where you put your attention…

By focusing on the important elements of your performance – your actions and where you choose to focus, the physiological response will actually be useful and helpful to you…keeping you alert and ready for action.

That’s natures way of getting you in the zone so don’t fight it

MYND Take-Away

So In this module, we’ve looked at the fourth Key source for confidence Physiological Arousal, Evidence has shown that for all the factors affecting confidence, these are what we consider to be THE BIG FOUR Previous success Vicarious experiences – or modelling verbal persuasion and Physiological arousal Understanding how each of these can work best for you will help you use them to your advantage. Don’t underestimate how useful they are – so learn well.

In the next module We’ll carry on exploring the other main sources of confidence and ultimately, we’ll share twelve separate factors with you.

In the previous modules, we explored the BIG four sources of confidence. Now in the next two, we’ll give you eight more sources to add to your confidence toolbox. Starting with ..

#4 Preparation

Ultimately confidence comes from preparation. When an athlete is about to compete, or someone is about to give a business presentation, and they’re feeling nervous or anxious, it’s highly likely that they’re not as well prepared as they should be. That’s not to say they haven’t put the effort into their preparation but possibly they haven’t spent the crucial time to prepare their mindset and give themselves strategies to cope with the nerves. If that is the case all the other hard work in preparing may well go to waste if you can’t mentally deal with the situation. It’s why the US Navy Seals in their groundbreaking mental toughness programme, take great pride in making sure all their recruits are very well prepared for whatever might come their way. So correct preparation is an absolutely key source of confidence for you to consider. I take great pride in preparing as well as possible for any challenge – not taking any for granted and certainly not being complacent –

Look at Manchester United’s legendary manager, Sir Alex Ferguson –it was rare for any of his teams to lose against lower-level competitors because he made sure his teams prepared very well – every time

Many times performers go into an arena – whatever that may be – with thoughts of disaster and negative thinking –But if preparation has been thorough and the performer UNDERSTANDs the implications of their training mindset, then there is no reason for them not to gain significant confidence from their preparation.

Research shows that athletes have rated physical and mental preparation as one of their top sources of confidence and successful World-Class athletes have particularly emphasized the importance of quality training for their confidence and performance success. I’m reminded here of one of my favourite quotes in sport from the legendary and late Muhamed Ali when he said

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights”

MYND Video

Watch the video below and then answer the question at the end of thi smodule

Lessons from Michael Jordan

“Work ethic eliminates fear”

• Practice, practice, practice

• Every day in practice [my attitude]was practice like I am in a game

• Any training challenge – We’ll bounce back and win the game

• When the game came there was nothing I hadn’t practised

• Whatever happened in-game was like ok I’ve done this before

• I never feared my skills because I got in the work

  • Work ethic eliminates fear – if you’ve put in the work there’s nothing to fear

When looking at your preparation you’ll need to take a whole host of areas into account –not just the time in the gym or on the training field for example –Elements might include the following:

• How much effort you’ve actually put into everything

• Your training programme

• Your fitness and the work you’ve done to improve it

• Your Nutrition and knowing you’ve eaten the right things at the right time

• Your Hydration levels

• Your mental preparation and going through the ‘what if’ scenarios

• Your expectations of replicating at least what you do in training and yet being prepared for the unexpected

• Developing well-practised strategies to execute what you need to

• Having routines to keep you where you need to be when you need to be there and simply

• Knowing you prepared for the situation

Preparing extraordinarily well will give you a big confidence boost.

MYND Take-Away

Quality physical and mental preparation will add bundles of confidence to your armoury. It is possibly the single most important factor in the twelve we discuss.

In the next module we explore how you can use the power of feedback to add another foundation to your confidence tool box

Source #6: Feedback

We’ve already seen how useful verbal persuasion is in enhancing confidence. This form of confidence boost comes from inspiration and encouragement from significant others.

A further source along similar lines is getting feedback from significant others –people you either admire, respect or experts in their areas. This feedback will be a more objective assessment of where you are and could be in the form of coach feedback, video analysis or other formats. Not everyone likes feedback, especially when it highlights deficiencies, but if given in the right way it can not only boost your confidence, it can also give you high levels of motivation to improve in the areas that need work. Athletes who train with coaches who give frequent praise, technical instruction, and encourage whilst correcting errors significantly increased their self-esteem over the course of the season.

Coach feedback then is positively related to self-confidence. It’s that combination of positive messages, praise, encouragement and motivation –as in the verbal persuasion we’ve already identified, and also more specific information on what you can better. I make a point of asking for feedback when performing – generally asking what was good and what could be done better – and I’m also mindful to ask people I respect and those that will be honest. So this source is all about receiving useful feedback, as well as support and encouragement, from coaches, managers, teammates, parents, and friends

MYND Take-Away

Build up a list of where and when you will seek feedback for your performances. The more you have (within reason) the better this base will be covered. You might include three items – your coach feedback, video analysis and a close friend/gamily and then schedule how much and how often to suit you

In the next module, we see how you can gain confidence from your coach and/or manager

Source 7: Coach or manager leadership

As with models and feedback, having a coach or leader that is on your wavelength, believes in you and is a source of inspiration can also be another element in building your self-efficacy.

As with all these sources you need to remind yourself why it helps and believing that your coach or manager is skilled in decision-making and leadership in terms of running the team and / o your program is important. As we’ve already seen in modelling and vicarious experiences, working with someone who is highly regarded in your area can boost your confidence on its own. Sometimes you just need to remind yourself of this, not taking the relationship for granted.

A close-relationship

Relationships vary tremendously between coaches and athletes, but healthy ones are based on mutual trust and respect, and it this trust and respect that once solidly built will help you as another source of confidence.

Many coaches become close confidants to athletes, sharing personal issues, outside relationship and family matters. Coaches can be a strong source of support to athletes and I have experienced a multitude of cases where the relationship goes way beyond just the sport. You will end up spending a lot of time with your coach and if the trust and respect is there, and you get on, that relationship will last a lifetime. You only have to read the biography of many managers and players to see how this works and how the work dynamic extends to a lifelong friendship.

Reputation

Imagine as a young talented tennis player, the person who coached two of the best players of all time Pete Sampras and Roger Federer became your coach. That would be a huge confidence boost and is exactly what happened when Paul Annecone was appointed to coach the young men at the Lawn Tennis Association. Not only was he a great coach, but he was also a terrific person; humble and decent. You may also be in a position whereby your coach has coached some of the best talents in your sport. That’s a confidence boost in itself.

MYND Video

Watch the following video and then consider how Sir Alex Ferguson helped the players he worked with. How did he improve their confidence?

MYND Take-Away

Whilst you may not always be in a position to chose your coach or manager. the relationship can prove crucial to your development and progress. If you are able to, build and nourish this relationship

In the next module, we will see how simple the way you present yourself can have an effect on your confidence

Source 8: Self-presentation

Another source of confidence is what we call self-presentation.

You probably can think of times when you felt you really looked the part or as a junior had a new kit, boots or racket and couldn’t wait to go and compete. I remember playing with a football team that took real pride in their kits. Going out most weeks in quality tracksuits and kitbags, we felt confident in the way we looked, as well as in the way we’d prepared. That self-presentation gave us a sense of pride and confidence. If you give business presentations for example or lead meetings, then buying a nice suit and being well-groomed could be what does it for you. It certainly never harms to look great in terms of nice clothes and being well-groomed. Again, another critical non-essential as Sir Clive Woodward would say. Something that on its own won’t give you the confidence you need, but along with the other sources we’ve discussed it’s another element in your armoury, another brick in the foundation to robust confidence. Elements here will include:

• A thought process that says – I feel good about myself

• I feel my body is in good shape

• I like the clothes I wear to compete or present

And even in everyday life, just taking time in your presentation helps you feel better about yourself, and with any compliments that subsequently come your way, your confidence will only be enhanced even more.

As a side-benefit (I like side benefits), the very essence of you ‘looking confident’ can have a detrimental effect on your opponents. Just look at the All Blacks Haka of a way to present yourself to your opponent!

MYND Take-Away

In the previous few modules, we’ve added four more evidence-based sources of confidence to you toolbox Preparation Feedback Coach or manager leadership and Self-presentation each of these sources that can contribute to your levels of confidence. Add these to the big four previous successesvicarious experiences, verbal persuasion and arousal regulation and you’ll start to understand that confidence can come from a multitude of areas and by drawing from each, or all, at varying times, your confidence will start to become unshakeable.

In the next modules, we’ll look at four more sources of confidence: Social support your environment o or organisation Self-regulation and situational favourableness

Source 9:Social & multi-discipline support

Knowing you have a strong social support system around you can also enhance your confidence. This can means having supportive family and friends, for example. Some athletes are privileged enough to work with a complete support team, coach, fitness trainer, physiotherapist, masseur, nutritionist and psychologist, and that’s before you look at parents, boyfriends, girlfriends and significant others. I know many athletes who, when they first gain access to such support, feel so privileged and more confident – there’s that feeling…

“ I must be doing well to receive this level of support”

You can see how gaining that sort of access could be another addition to your confidence box.

Team Murray

When I was the National Psychology manager at the Lawn Tennis Association and privileged to work with Andy Murray, it became clear to me that he’d work better with a team around him A team that would travel the world with him, rather than the normal and sometimes intense player-coach relationship many tennis players had – and as did Andy at the time whilst working with the super Brad Gilbert. For a young 21-year-old, the nature of travelling and working with one person can get quite monotonous and tension can come into any relationship, especially when you’re travelling together, eating together and training together every day. Coming from a football background I saw the benefits for Andy to work with a travelling support team. and so developed Team Murray that went on and continues to have real success.

Remind yourself about your own social support system, and the people involved in your own immediate and close circles –be that an inter-disciplinary sports science support team, or friends and family. Draw on their support when you need it. They can be a fantastic source of confidence in challenging times. And always be humble and show your gratitude for their support and efforts,

MYND Take-Away

Your support team could be a terrific source of confidence, particularly when you’re going through tough times Build those crucial (non-essential) relationships when things ar going well and always show gratitude, humility and thanks to every one of them

In the next module, we explore how the organisation/team you are with could be a source of confidence

Source #10: The Organisation /environmental comfort

The photo above is the futuristic and stunning Tottenham Hotspur training ground. I used to do some work for Spurs and have seen their training grounds change dramatically over the years. This one is exceptional and one of the best in Europe. Imagine driving through the gates every day yo work!

The organisation you belong to can also be another source in your confidence boost armoury. Again, this is another element that we tend to take for granted. As a soccer player, when Barcelona knocks on your door and asks if you want to sign for them, or GOOGLE come knocking to ask you to join their organisation, you know you must be doing something right! And they believe in you! This by itself could be a huge boost for your confidence provided you don’t let it move to arrogance…something we’ll touch on later in the process.

I remember attending a coaching course when Steve McClaren, then Derby County manager, was making a presentation, It was clear he was a highly talented individual and worked hard to achieve his success. Two seasons later he gave another presentation. This time he was assistant manager at Manchester United. He walked in with a different air of confidence. He looked more confident, spoke more confident and was more confident. What had changed? The organization he was working for.

History, culture & reputation

The organisation you are with may have a history of producing talented athletes. It could have a great reputation locally or nationally and/or culture of high-performance. This is one aspect we can get complacent with, particularly if you have been at the organisation for many years. Take time to reflect on where you are and how good it is.

MYND Take-Away

Never take for granted the organisation you are with, whether it’s a rough gym in South London or a swanky new building like the Tottenham Training ground – it’s your club/venue so take pride in it and remind your self of why it can add a little to your big C

In the next module, we will explore ay how simply DOING this course will add another block toward your robust confidence

Source 11:Psychology & self-regulation

Psychology and self-regulation overlap with one of the four key sources we explored earlier – physiological arousal. Psychology and self-regulation involve developing and using skills and strategies to maintain focus and manage your thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. This will help lead to optimal performance. It’s the confidence from simply understanding the psychological aspects of your performances or the things you’d like to do.

I’ve worked with many athletes who, simply by studying and engaging in psychological training – and knowing they have the skills needed to mentally stay in the game, became much more confident in their approach.

Self-regulation as a source of confidence is closely related to preparation because athletes must mentally prepare and practice their self-regulation strategies for them to be effective in competition. And using these strategies during competition often serves as another important source of confidence. A common example is the use of routines to create a familiar and comfortable plan for how to act and think as the time for competition nears. Research is consistent in finding that routines help athletes maintain a sense of control and confidence in relation to the upcoming competition. Pre-competition routines – you might also call these rituals and focus plans – are critical predictors of how well athletes perform, especially in the championship or high-pressure situations.

MYND Video

Watch the video in the context of this module topic and then answer the question at the end.

So in this source, the key elements and ones to bring into your confidence toolbox include:

• Developing and using skills and strategies to maintain focus and manage emotions, thoughts, and behaviours

• Understanding what the uncontrollable and the controllable factors are and dealing with them appropriately

• Having good mental skills experience and knowledge you’re mentally tough

MYND ACtivity

Having the knowledge ofof how and why psychology works is, in itself, a confidence boost for you. Utilising the skills you learn until they become part of your ‘DNA’ will help you soar.

In the final section, we look at how situational favourableness will also add to your confidence armoury

Source #12: Situational favourableness

Sometimes, it could be a period in your life , it could be training or competition has been going really well, a big rival has an injury, you feel the stars are aligned, whatever. but everything comes together. This is when you feel the situation just favours you.

, you might simply feel that things are going your way; you may be in great form and momentum is in your favour.; you – you enjoy playing at a certain venue, you feel the time is right – the weather’s just as you like it – things are falling into place. You’ve probably had those days when things seem to fall in place for you. You just feel good at the time.

These are moments that might not come along that often, but when they do (as inflow that we discussed right at the start), by being well prepared you will be in a position to take maximum advantage of this.

Luc k happens when preparation meets opportunity

When Andy Murray reached No..1 in the world rankings, some of his major rivals had gone through difficult times with injuries and form. Had he not been very well prepared and ready, he would not have taken advantage of the situation. He was and he did. It”s like the famous Gary Player quote – “The harder I work, the luckier I get – it comes down to this – Luck happens when preparation meets opportunity’

MYND Video

Look at the video and answer the questions at the end of the module. In particular, consider how situational favourableness effect Mo Salah. What other aspects of the course that we have already considered were used by Mo to build his confidence?

MYND Take-Away

In total, we.ve explored 12 evidence-based areas that can contribute to your levels of confidence, including those four key elements of previous successes – vicarious experiences – verbal persuasion and arousal regulation. By regularly reviewing all of these sources and reminding yourself of the things that work best for you and trying the ones that might not have worked in the past, you can ensure that along with the hard work you put into performances, you’ll give yourself the best opportunity to grow and develop your robust self-confidence. Higher levels of confidence are related to focusing on sources or strategies that you can personally control, such as mastery of physical skills and preparation. Confidence is more stable and resilient when you directly control the sources on which your confidence is built. All sources of confidence are useful at times for you and focusing on sources like mastery and improvement, achieving personal performance goals, exhaustive training and preparation, and personal self-regulation serve to develop strong and stable confidence.

In the next module2we will summarise the lessons learned.

Well Done You! – almost there….

Congratulations on almost finishing this short course. We hope you enjoyed it and learned some new skills (or refreshed some you already had), and are able to put these into practice into your game. Doing the steps on a regular and consistent basis over a three month period will help to engrain them as habits – and remember, we all need reminders to train our minds. Look at it like going to the gym – regular, often and from time to time reviewing your progress and looking at fresh ways to stimulate you.

Regularly review these sources of confidence and become aware of the ones that work best for you and when.

A reminder of what we have covered in this course, including the twelve components to build your self-confidence

1. Previous performance accomplishments & what we call mastery experiences

2. Vicarious experiences including learning through role models

3. Verbal persuasion

4. Emotional or Physiological Arousal

5. Preparation

6. Feedback

7. Coach or manager leadership and

8. Self-presentation

9. Social & multi-discipline support

10. The Organisation /environmental comfort

11. Psychology & self-regulation

12. Situational favourableness

One final step to finish….