Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Lacking Confidence is a state, not a trait. This means that your lack of confidence can change based on your environment and experience. This also means that you have no control over the fact that you lack confidence right now in this moment.

In this current moment, your lack of confidence is a product of what you did in your past. Therefore, since you can’t change your past, you can’t control the fact that you are lacking confidence right now.

With this in mind, when it comes to mastering mental skills, the experts all agree on one thing. Focus on what you can control, and don’t dwell on the things you can’t. So, if you lack confidence right now, then there is no need to dwell on this fact. Instead, focus on what you do control.

Even though you don’t control the fact that you’re lacking confidence right now, you do control how confident you will be in the future.

Therefore, all your energy must be on the amount of confidence you will have tomorrow and into the foreseeable future.

Manage Your Confidence by Controlling Your Future Confidence

There are three things that impact your future confidence.

1. Experience
2. Preparation
3. Anxiety

Rarely will anyone have confidence as a novice. It’s normal to lack confidence the first few times you experience something. If you lack confidence because you lack experience, then you must suck it up and focus on investing your time and money on experience.

If you have experience and still lack confidence, then you must evaluate your preparation. Winging it, shooting from the hip, or cutting corners will cause performance issues that lead to a lack of confidence. Confidence doesn’t come from luck and it doesn’t come because of natural talent.

Confidence comes from the preparation process. This process starts with setting goals, creating a plan to reach those goals, and then following-through with that plan. Until you do this then you will always lack confidence.

If You Still Lack Confidence, You Must Manage Anxiety

Finally, if you have experience and consistently prepare, but you are still lacking confidence, then the only thing left is your ability to manage anxiety. Other than clinical disorders which our outside of the scope of this article, typically anxiety stems from unhealthy self-talk.

When you constantly speak negativity into your life this leads to negative outcomes. Moreover, whispering negative messages to yourself either verbally or in your head can become habitual. So, the only way to break this bad habit is to replace it with a good new habit. Here are a few tips for doing this:

• First, make sure there are no outside influences putting negative thoughts in your head. If so, remove yourself from this environment or kindly ask those people to stay away while you work on breaking negativity as a habit.
• Create a daily routine of saying positive affirmations to yourself throughout the day. In the morning, in the car, and before bed are good times. Consistency is key.
• If you have trouble being positive, then just be neutral. No need to fake positivity if that’s not what you’re feeling. Neutral thinking is more about being positive about the reality of the situation. It’s being a realist without letting the negativity of what you can’t control impact the reality of what you can control. When you use neutral thinking, you focus on sticking with the facts. Facts that are not necessarily overly positive or negative, they just are.
• Do some research on anxiety. Understand that not all anxiety is bad, as anxiety can also be a performance enhancer. You must learn what level of anxiety works for you and what are the triggers that push you beyond a healthy level of anxiety.
• Lastly, make sure you understand the sources of confidence your self-talk is depending on. If your self-talk focuses on sources of confidence that are outside of your control you must identify this. Then, practice directing your self-talk towards the sources of confidence you do control.