The Four Elements That Define a Confident Athlete
Without confidence, an athlete is just a shell of their true self. In other words, no athlete can be the best version of themself without it. No matter how much an athlete increases their skill level, it will never be enough if they don’t build their confidence simultaneously.
As a parent or coach, you must be mindful that your athletes have the right foundation for confidence. Below are the four elements that define this foundation. With these four elements in place, you can be sure an athlete is prepared to compete with confidence.
1) Confident Athletes have Faith
In sports there is a clear difference between having belief and having faith. For athletes, seeing is believing. Whether it’s something you see in yourself, something you see in others, or something you have seen happen historically.
For example, an athlete will believe in a coach because they have seen that coach be successful. Or an athlete will believe in their preparation because they have seen success through preparing in the way they did. In other words, in sports belief and confidence go hand in hand. Just like success is a prerequisite for confidence, it’s also a prerequisite for belief.
On the other hand, faith does not require success. The only requirement for faith is commitment. Commitment to a process, a coach, or a team. Disappointment, adversity, lacking confidence, ambiguity are all things that happen to those who have faith. Yet, these things don’t deter athletes who have faith. Faith provides the fuel to keep going when the athlete doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Athletes who have faith in themselves do not fold under pressure because they have no fear of the outcome. Win or lose they remain committed. Belief on the other hand waivers under pressure, as belief does nothing to remove the fear of failure. What’s more, it’s failure that causes an athlete to change what they believe.
2) Confident Athletes have Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is the mindset of how one controls their destiny. Psychologist Albert Bandura in his preeminent book on the topic defines self-efficacy as the exercise of control over things that affect one’s life. Unfortunately, the subject of self-efficacy is not popular. You rarely here parents and coaches talk about it. However, self-efficacy is absolutely critical to the process of building confidence.
Unquestionably, an athlete’s confidence is heavily dependent on their ability to make things happen instead of letting things happen. But an athlete can’t make things happen if they let their current situation constrain their future opportunities. As a result, having the self-efficacy to control one’s destiny is arguably the most critical character trait an athlete needs for confidence.
3) Confident Athletes are Mentally Tough
Too often athletes think of mental toughness in vague terms instead of its practical application. Yet, athletes thrive when they understand specifics, not vague concepts. So, when it comes to confident athletes, mentally toughness is series of specific acts instead of ideas. These specific acts are summed up by sport psychologists Sheldon Hanton, Graham Jones, and Declan Connaughton in their research “A Framework of Mental Toughness in the World’s Best Performers.“
- The ability to use a long term “why” to motivate themselves through difficulties, pain and fatigue. “Mentally tough performers acknowledge that they are tired but realize and remind themselves that if they are to achieve their goal they have to get back in the gym and work.“
- Intense focus on specific tasks and performance goals with realistic deadlines for achieving, while not wasting any “time wishing for the impossible or the unrealistic.”
- Maintaining a “strong sense of independence in training” i.e., owning the process and accepting responsibility for their destiny. “Not relying on the coach or other people.“
- The ability to use adverse training environments to their advantage and can get the best out of themselves even in a bad training situation.
- Uncanny ability to embrace training pain. Derives “pleasure from being able to give absolutely everything.”
- Treats everything like a competition. Puts maximum effort into winning every warm-up, drill, rep, and scrimmage. Treats everything like it’s important. “They thrive on opportunities of beating other people and are not afraid to put themselves on the line.”
4) Confident Athletes are Optimistic
Most people boil down optimism to thinking positive and pessimism to thinking negative. While this explanation does have a sliver of truth, it doesn’t provide a true picture of the most important difference between these two mindsets.
Optimist don’t always think positive, and pessimist don’t always think negative. However, what optimist do differently than pessimist when they have negative thoughts is attribute those thoughts to things they control. Conversely, when pessimist have positive thoughts, they attribute those thoughts to things they don’t control.
For example, when an optimist fails, they will attribute the failure to their need to prepare more. When a pessimist succeeds, they will attribute their success to luck. The reverse of each of these situations is true as well. Pessimist attribute failure to a permanent lack of ability they were born with. While optimist attribute success to their ability to work hard and prepare.
What this means is that optimism is not only the key for remaining resilient through adversity, but also the key to confidence.