Building Confidence: Part 1 of 3

"You have to play with confidence!" - If you were an athlete growing up, you've heard this phrase too many times to count.  Your parents, your coaches, even your teammates tell you to be confident.  As an athlete, it can seem like everyone around you believes that being confident is a choice… like picking what shirt you wear in the morning.  If this were the case, players could spontaneously tell themselves “Ok, I am confident now” and play every game with the same confidence exemplified by all-time greats like Muhammad Ali. Unfortunately, it does not work this way. Instead, confidence comes from a variety of factors; some of which we can control, while others we cannot.  There are two essential facets of confident performance that an athlete must be mindful of when building confidence: external factors that are present in each specific performance situation and the athlete’s mental framework. 

External factors are events, interactions, experiences, and anything else outside of the athlete’s thought process that can affect his or her confidence at any given moment.  For athletes looking to perform at their best, they must develop awareness of what external factors exist in their specific situation.  Common examples of external factors that can affect confidence include: team cohesion, coach efficacy, performance environment, caliber of the opponent, and calls made by officials.  Once performers become aware of the factors influencing their confidence, they then must become aware of the impact these factors have on their confidence.  For example, athletes performing in front of 20 people might have an entirely different experience than if they were performing in front of 2,000 people. Some athletes would perform more confidently in front of 20 people, while others may thrive off of the energy of the crowd and perform more confidently in front of 2,000 people.  In another example, some athletes perform with peak confidence when playing a weaker opponent, while others need a strong opponent to bring out their most confident performance.  Once understanding the impact that these factors have on his or her performance, each athlete must then comprehend the degree to which each factor affects confidence.  For instance, the number of people viewing the performance may have an enormous effect on one athlete’s confidence; for another athlete, the effect of the number of spectators may pale in comparison to other factors like the caliber of his or her opponent. After athletes become aware of external factors, the effect that each factor has, and the degree to which it effects their confidence, they must learn how to manage external factors to put themselves in the best space to be confident.

Athletes’ mental framework, or how they view and mentally process the world around them, is the other side of what it takes to be confident.  While athletes can significantly improve their own confidence through building awareness of external factors and employing strategies to manage them, athletes can’t always avoid external situations that can decrease confidence.  Even if you can’t always avoid external factors that may decrease confidence, you can still control how you process the information you receive. This is why it is so important to have a strong mental framework for confidence.  For example, it may be helpful for certain athletes to know that they play most confidently when they have a strong connection with their teammates.  In this case, these athletes could use their own awareness of the impact that team cohesion has on their confidence and work hard to build strong connections with their teammates.  In doing so, these athletes would become more confident as a result of building strong team connections.  Unfortunately, in sport we do not always have the opportunity to play with teammates that we are familiar with.  What happens when an athlete goes to a tryout where they do not know anyone else trying out?  If that athlete has a rigid mental framework towards the effect team cohesion has on their confidence, they would certainly lose confidence as a result of not knowing anyone that they are playing with.  Meanwhile, if they have a flexible mental framework, they may choose to process the challenge of attending a tryout where they do not know anyone to be a great opportunity to develop team building skills that could help them to foster and improve team cohesion for the future.  Although they may initially still lose confidence since they are playing with athletes they do not know, the negative impact on their confidence is moderated by the thought process that they have an opportunity to improve their team building skills.  It is so important to have a strong mental framework; while external factors are transient and can come and go from situation to situation, an athlete’s mental framework is more consistent.  Athletes who understand how to process the external factors around them as opportunities to improve will gain and maintain the confidence they want more frequently. 

As you reflect on your own athletic experiences answer the following questions:

·       What are 5-10 external factors in your own performance situations that affect your confidence?

·       Which factors increase your confidence?

·       Which factors decrease your confidence?

·       To what degree does each external factor affect your overall confidence?

·       How do you interpret challenges?

·       How do you respond to successes?

·       How do you process failures?

·       When do you avoid situations that make you uncomfortable?

·       When do you embrace challenging situations as an opportunity to grow? 

Confidence is a skill that athletes can improve upon by understanding how external factors affect their confidence and by developing a mental framework that allows for themselves to embrace potential challenges.  Stay tuned for part two of our three-part series where we take a deeper dive into how to manage external factors that affect confidence!

Dan Matulis, MS, CMPC