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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