Athletes Must Understand Why Confidence Comes from Perception
Confidence is the fundamental building block for every aspect of performance, mental toughness, and resilience in sports. For those who lack confidence, it’s critical to understand that confidence is a product of preparation.
However, not all preparation leads to confidence. Only preparation that leads to success produces confidence. Moreover, success is a matter of perception. Perception is one of the 5 elements that define one’s mindset. It’s how we uniquely process our thoughts to create our reality.
For example, two athletes could prepare and win in the same way, and one will gain confidence an another may lose confidence. This is because one’s perception of a situation is unique to them based on years of conditioning from their environment.
Therefore, in some cases, some athletes perceive their success as failure and their failure as success. Indeed, being 2nd in the county, state, nation, or world may be success for some, and a complete failure for others. Therefore, if an athlete loses control of their perception of a situation or outcome, they lose control of their confidence.
With this in mind, when an athlete is working to build their confidence, it comes down to properly planning goals that dictate how they perceive success. To do this, athletes must work on becoming better at two things.
1) Breaking Down Goals
First, athletes must get better at breaking down goals. Every athlete’s goal must have three parts to be effective.
- First, there is the outcome part of the goal. This is the part the athlete’s ego wants to achieve at the end.
- Second, there is the performance part of the goal. This is the part that defines how the athlete will measure and track the skill level they must reach to achieve the outcome they want.
- Third and finally, there is the process part of the goal. This is the daily / weekly tasks the athlete must complete to execute the process of improving performance.
#1 is important but can’t be achieved without #2 and #3. Therefore, to shape the perception of success to build confidence, the two most important parts of an athlete’s goal is #2, the performance part of the goal and #3, the process part of the goal. This is where an athlete must put all of their focus.
2) Measuring Progress
Second, athletes must get better at using tools to measure progress as they prepare. The tool could be as simple as a checklist or as complex as an app that automates tracking. What’s more, when there is not an easy way to measure progress, athletes can instead track progress using the elements of discovery. For example, discovering what works and what doesn’t, discovering processes that deliver repeatable results, or even discovering strengths that come naturally.
Once an athlete gets better with 1) breaking down goals and 2) measuring progress, more specific confidence coaching can then shape their mindset so they have the confidence to perform their best when it matters most.