The 10 Essentials: Essential #8
The eighth Essential is learning to Maintain Confidence. By far, this is one of the most common challenges that athletes mention when I work with them. There is this belief that confidence is necessary for athletes to achieve all that they are capable of in their sport. While I’m not convinced that it is necessary, having confidence certainly makes it easier for athletes to accomplish their goals and achieve high levels of success.
So what do you do when your confidence falters? What do you do when the doubt begins to creep in?
Do you remember back to the first Essential? When we talked about controlling the controllables? If not, check out this blog post on it.
Typically, when you begin to feel your confidence slip, you are attempting to be confident in the wrong things. Too much emphasis is being put on things outside of your control. You are trying to be confident that you will win, that you’ll make the shot, that the other team won’t hit your pitch, or that you’ll get the time in your sprint. The reality is that all of those things are outside of your control. You can do a lot of things right and still not get those outcomes because there are other variables that can impact them. Since you are unable to control them, there is no guarantee that they will occur. And it’s that guarantee that leads to confidence.
Instead of placing your confidence in an uncontrollable, like an outcome, place your confidence in your controllables. What are the things that you can control that puts you in the best position to achieve that outcome you want? What is it that you have to do to make it most likely that the outcome will be in your favor? Maybe it’s giving 100% effort or being fully committed to the action. Maybe it’s making a smart decision or being fully focused on one aspect of your play. Identify the top 2 controllables that put you in the best position and place your confidence in those things. These are things you can actually DO something about, which means you can guarantee them to happen. By placing your confidence solely within your controllables, you can ensure that it always stays high AND you are consistently putting yourself in the best position to achieve your desired outcomes, which boosts your confidence even further. These are the confidence snowballs you want to create.
So when you feel your confidence start to falter, check in on what you are trying to be confident in. Most likely it’s an uncontrollable and you need to shift it to your top 2 controllables that are most impactful for you.