MAKE THE FIRST STEP
Confidence in sport Self-confidence in competitive sports is mainly built on our ability to believe you can win and that you can be successful in your efforts. The United States Tennis Association reports that confidence is one of the most important qualities an athlete can possess and should be fostered by both athletes and their coaches. The most important step in building and maintaining confidence is to develop it at mind level. Confidence is not something anyone can teach you or give to you. Positive encouragement will of course contribute to it but if you yourself do not believe in your chance to success and your own abilities, no amount of applause will make it happen.You must understand that outside circumstances have nothing to do with the confidence you feel inside. Not even on ‘off days’. Confidence is yours to grow and build on and nothing can affect other than yourself. Of course, surrounding yourself with positive role models, coaches and supporters will help maintain and resonate that confidence back to you. Always know that positivity and confidence are contagious so make sure the people around you are inspiring, helpful and will be there to reinforce your confidence and keep any negative self talk at bay. An important thing to realise is that self confidence or self assurance does not mean feeling great about yourself all the time. It is natural to have bad days here you may not feel on top of your game or feel anxious about a competition coming up etc. The key here is that once you have built that self confidence, you can work through these bouts of doubt of negativity and focus on your confidence as opposed to the feelings at hand. A confident athlete will realise that the negative spell is exactly that, a spell and certainly not something that defines him/her. Managing emotions and understanding that it is not the outside circumstances that affect you, it is your internal perspective on the outside event that matters will make you a successful and resilient athlete. Confidence is about falling and getting back up! That is the mark of success, getting back up and not quitting. Because a confident athlete knows his true measure and one hurdle will not bring him down. Not allowing failure to drag you down or make you feel angry or negative is all about using a failure as fire for improvement. Experience the struggle, learn from it, let it go and use the passionate response to it positively not negatively. If struggles do occur, get back to training both mind and body. Visualise success, train to perfect anything that needs work in your technique. Remember, continued success breeds self-confidence. This success can be real or imagined, it’s all about the mind set working with your physical attributes. Are you in need of a confidence boost? Good levels of self-confidence can be drawn from a number of different areas such as realistic expectations of success based on your training, a good knowledge of your sport, respect for your skills and physical abilities, sufficient preparation etc. Success should be measured in terms of achievement of personal goals, not achievement goals such as winning. As with anything in sport, a level of balance in confidence levels is a very important factor in ensuring you are fully prepared in the field. If you are under-confident, then you may not take necessary risks needed to achieve your goals. If you are over-confident, you may not try hard enough and you could face losing. This is a great area to use positive suggestion, visualisation, and effective goal-setting to improve your self-image.
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MAKE THE FIRST STEP
To increase your confidence before and during sport, talk to yourself and talk positive! Here are a few examples of phrases you may like to use:
‘Take it one shot/step at a time’ ‘Come on (insert your name here) - you can win this!’ ‘Everyday in every way you get better and better!’
Always remember to set yourself goals. Goal setting is one of the most effective ways of building your selfconfidence. When you set measurable goals and work towards achieving them make sure you celebrate and bask in the sensations of success. Make sure you live AT goal level don’t just reach it and move on to the next. Letting yourself feel all of the sensations of success will give you the confidence and self-belief that you need to be able to achieve higher and more difficult goals. Confidence is an attitude, grow it within and let is shine without! And remember it’s a positive thing, it’s something that will contribute to your happiness and make you a better athlete and a better person. Believe in yourself and believe you can achieve anything you set your mind to. Athletes are generally confident characters and how do you maintain this confidence even around others and not be drawn into their negativity and nerves. Ability and skills are not lost, confidence however, can come and go in a blink of an eye. Hopefully not when you need it! To guarantee you are confident when you need it… we will let you in on a Secret…
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MAKE THE FIRST STEP
About Stuart | Australia's #1 for Sport Hypnosis “You are what you choose to believe you can be” • • • • • •
Professional Clinical Hypnotherapist Australia’s No. 1 for Sports Hypnotherapy Published author of ‘The Dear Diary Process’ book Creator of the ‘Meta 4 Kids’ program Co-creator of the FitMind program Presenter and speaker
As a professionally trained hypnotherapist, I specialise in elite athletes and sporting teams. Incredibly the same way athletes work allows me to integrate my abilities and awesome processes into business performance, working with people to maximise performance and attitude. My sporting clients include Olympians, National, Commonwealth and 25 World Champions and… add to this a collection of professional golfers, footballers from every code, surfers, netballers and motorsport drivers and teams. Within the walls of my professional offices in Brisbane, Australia many lives have been transformed forever by releasing their potential. Once we remove blockages, doubts, fears, beliefs and old habits that are restricting them, life becomes awesome.
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Please visit http://athletessecretweapon.com/
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