Building Confidence

This post and the previous post discuss confidence. If you haven’t read “Confidence Over Doubt”, read that first then return to this post.

We know high confidence helps our performance and our enjoyment of sport, while low confidence and doubt hurts our performance. So how do we help ourselves or an athlete through these periods of doubt in their ability or who they are?

Confidence is built through work and mindset. These are two different things and both have immense value. One without the other is not enough. Let me break this down a little more.

Work: When we put in the work and earn the right to be good at something, we naturally have more confidence doing it. The first time you sky dive, you aren’t very confident jumping out of the plane. The 30th time you sky dive, you have a certain level of confidence about leaping, pulling your shoot, and landing. You have been there before! This is the number one way to build your confidence: prepare and do the work. This is earned confidence.

Mindset: What are you and those closest to you saying to you about your upcoming performance or task? Self talk and encouragement from others builds confidence. You control your self talk and getting better at this is a huge step towards higher levels of confidence. Tell yourself “you got this”, remind yourself of the work you put in, dispel the fears/doubts that say you aren’t going to be successful. Positive affirmations and self talk are the number one thing I see missing in young athletes who struggle with confidence.

If you want to work on building more confidence, I hope this helps you break it down and start with some small steps in your preparation (work) and mindset. If you want to help an athlete with this, share this post and encourage them to use self-awareness, self-talk, and a plan to work hard to get better, and then check in on them through that process!