Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Without confidence, an athlete is just a shell of their true self. Unquestionably, confidence is the fundamental building block for every aspect of performance, mental toughness, and resilience in sports.

Therefore, if an athlete lacks confidence, then that must be the #1 priority in their training. All other training will suffer until this fundamental building block is strong. It’s a fact that anything built on a weak foundation will eventually collapse.

With this in mind, it’s best to start by eliminating the biggest misconception about confidence that holds athletes back.

Renowned sport psychologist Dr. Michael Gervais explains this misconception in very simple terms. In a video where he breaks down the science of being clutch he states:

Self-confidence is at the cornerstone of great performance, and the misconception is that I need to have done something extraordinary to be confident is upside down. The way it works is that confidence only comes from one place and one place only, what you say to yourself.

So, to state it plainly, you don’t need to be elite to have an elite mindset. Moreover, confidence comes from having an elite mindset that’s built on top of what you say to yourself on a regular basis. In other words, your self-talk habits.

Confidence Comes from Your Self-Talk Habits Not Past Performance

In essence, confidence is the habit of positive self-talk. On the other hand, lacking confidence is the habit of negative self-talk. Self-talk is one’s internal dialogue.

As stated in the textbook Applied Sport Psychology:

You engage in self-talk any time you carry on an internal dialogue with yourself, such as giving yourself instructions and reinforcement or interpreting what you are feeling or perceiving (Hackfort & Schwenkmezger, 1993). This dialogue can occur out loud (e.g., mumbling to yourself) or inside your head.

As research suggests, our brains can only concentrate on one thing at a time. So, when you have positive self-talk, you are focusing your brain on positive outcomes and not the negative ones. When you have negative self-talk, you are focusing your brain on negative outcomes and not the positive ones.

Consequently, those who create a habit of using positive self-talk have confidence and those who create a habit of using negative self-talk lack confidence. This is ultimately why confidence is a habit. This is also why some athletes have a bad performance and lose confidence and some athletes don’t.

It’s not how an athlete performs that dictates the confidence, it’s what they say to themselves about that performance. It’s perception. If an athlete’s perception of themselves orients from an optimistic mindset confidence grows. On the other hand, if an athlete’s perception orients from a pessimistic mindset confidence rescinds.

As Dr. Gervais warns in the same video, lying to yourself to create confidence doesn’t work either. For positive self-talk to work it must come from facts not fiction. For example, it’s not as simple as missing a shot then lying to yourself to say that you made it so you can have confidence for the next shot. That is not optimism, that’s being delusional.

Instead, optimistic self-talk is considering all the factors in why you didn’t make the shot and focusing on the factors you can control to make the shot next time. Optimistic self-talk is also remembering as well as building upon all the other good things you did and not ruminating on the one shot you missed.

Old Habits Die Hard New Habits Form Fast

As I teach my clients, old bad habits die hard but good new habits form fast. So, the only way to break an old bad habit of negative self-talk is to replace it with a good new habit of positive self-talk. This takes a process, and a process is executed in steps.

Here are the 4 steps to build confidence using self-talk:

1. 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.
2. Create a daily routine of saying positive affirmations to yourself throughout the day. Use the advice of Dr. Gervais and make these affirmations using real experiences of past success. He also suggests writing them on index cards so you can repeat them verbatim. Say these affirmations in the morning as you look in the mirror while brushing your teeth, during your commute, and before bed as you fall asleep. Consistency is key.
3. 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.
4. 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.