Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you lack confidence right now in this moment there is nothing you can do about it. Your confidence right now in this moment is a product of your past. Moreover, there is nothing you can do about the past.

So, if you lack confidence right now the best thing you can do is acknowledge this fact.

On the positive side however, you do have control over your confidence in the future. Therefore, once you acknowledge you lack confidence right now, all your energy must then turn to building confidence for tomorrow and into the foreseeable future.

There are three basic steps to do this.

Step 1: Assess the Source of Your Lack of Confidence

In step one, start by assessing what is causing your lack of confidence. You can use these 9 questions below as a starting point:

1. Preparation: Do you lack confidence in your preparation from training and practice?
2. Performance accomplishments: Do you lack confidence due to past failures in achieving goals?
3. Coaching:  Do you lack confidence in your coach having the ability to help you achieve your goals?
4. Innate factors:  Do you lack confidence in the innate abilities and talents you were born with?
5. Social support:  Do you lack confidence in the support you get from family, friends, and teammates?
6. Experience:  Do you lack confidence in your experience and the learned lessons from prior successes or failures?
7. Competitive advantage:  Do you lack confidence in how you compare to your competition?
8. Self-awareness: Do you lack confidence because you are unsure in what you want and how to go after it?
9. Trust:  Do you lack confidence because you don’t trust yourself, your preparation, teammates, or coaching?

Step 2: Focus on Controlling the Controllables

Most things that are a source for lacking confidence, could also be a source for gaining confidence. However, the only way to flip this with intention is to focus on those sources under your control.

So, in this step you want to separate out the controllable responses in the assessment from the uncontrollable responses. You are not going to ignore the uncontrollables, they just will not be the focus for this basic process.

The controllable questions come from: preparation, coaching, experience, and self-awareness.

Step 3: Establish Healthy Habits and Routines Around the Controllables

Finally, establish healthy habits and routines based on proven patterns of success for the things under your control.

For example, looking at each of the four areas of controllables:

Preparation: If you lack confidence in your preparation, then find a role model who is successful in the way you want to be successful and copy their preparation routine. If possible, join or shadow that person in their process of preparing.

Coaching: If you lack confidence in your coaching, hire a private coach and get one on one help. Getting coaching from someone with a proven track record of working with someone in your situation can be a game changer for confidence.

Experience: If you lack confidence in your experience, invest time in getting more experience and doing more video review sessions of your performance. Break down the video of your performances by writing down the lessons learned and critiquing the good, bad, and ugly.

Self-awareness: If you lack confidence as a result of self-awareness, then I suggest you start by taking the CliftonStrengths Assessment. Then start of daily routine of journaling about the things you enjoy that allow you to use your strengths. Through this process you will begin to understand what gives you confidence at a deeper level. As an alternative, you could also hire a coach such as myself to help you work through this process of self-discovery. If you are interested in finding out more about how I can help you with this, contact me here.