Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

When it comes to performing to your potential, the experts all agree on one thing. Control what you can control, and don’t dwell on the things you can’t.

Confidence is one of those things under your control. Headed into any event that requires peak performance, it’s always worth it to take time to improve your confidence. In order to do that, I believe you should start by using the questions to assess confidence that I shared yesterday.

However, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The secret is to take it deeper beyond the tip. As it turns out, the 13 questions I shared yesterday can be broken down into controllable and uncontrollable factors of confidence. Below is the same list broken into these two categories.

Questions to Assess Confidence that are Under the Athletes Control

1. Did you give maximum effort during training and practice?
2. Do you have a coach that you believe can help you achieve your goal?
3. Have you learned lessons from a prior success or failure?
4. Do you know your strengths and weaknesses well?
5. Are you sure you know what you want and how to go after it?
6. Do you have an overall sense of trust in your preparation, teammates, and coaching?

Questions to Assess Confidence that are Not Under the Athletes Control

1. Have you had past success in achieving a goal related to this current goal?
2. Were you born with one or more abilities that make achieving this goal easier?
3. Are you getting consistent encouragement and positive support from family, friends, teammates and coaches?
4. Have you learned from seeing someone else achieve success who you believe you are similar to or better than?
5. Did you see your opponent perform badly or choke under pressure in a prior event?
6. Do you have a form of “home-field” advantage?
7. Do you believe there is some other environmental factor that can provide you an advantage?

The Secret for Controlling Confidence

The fact of the matter is that anything that is a source of confidence can also be a source for lacking confidence. For example, if having a “home-field” advantage boost your confidence, then playing at the “away” location will hurt your confidence. With that said, the secret for controlling confidence boils down to two things:

1. Reduce dependencies on those sources of confidence that are uncontrollable.
2. Boost the amount of confidence derived from those sources that are controllable.

In summary, the more confidence one can gain from preparation, coaching, experience, self-awareness, and trust the more stable their performances will be. Furthermore, this requires a commitment to developing the four domains of emotional intelligence:

1. Self awareness
2. Self management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management

Each of which are comprised of behaviors anyone can learn and teach with the right amount of desire.