Confidence is the Culmination of Multiple Mental Skills
One of the biggest mistakes parents and coaches make when trying to help an athlete build their confidence is to treat confidence as a single skill. However, confidence is not a single skill, it’s the culmination of multiple mental skills.
Specifically, there are six mental skills that form the building blocks of confidence.
1. Goal Orientation: The skill of focusing on your own personal improvement instead of comparisons to others.
- To change how one views past accomplishments from an ego focus to task focus, from outcome to process focus.
- To focus how one prepares by breaking down goals into a progression.
2. Reframing: The skill of changing one’s perception of a situation so it doesn’t debilitate performance.
- To change how one views their competitive advantages, pressure, and strengths and weaknesses.
- To change how one views the factors impacting their physical skills, preparation, teammates, coaches, or parents.
3. Self-Talk: The skill of controlling one’s thoughts so those thoughts are not negative or hurtful.
- To change how one talks to themselves about feelings of uncertainty that leads to anxiety.
- To change how one talks to themselves about the innate abilities and talents they were born with as well as the social support they get from family, friends, and teammates.
4. Emotional Intelligence: The skill of using self-awareness to enhance performance and life satisfaction.
- To build self-awareness around what one wants and how to best go after it using their personality strengths.
- To improve all aspects of how one controls their body language and emotions in public and in private.
5. Growth Mindset: The skill of giving one’s best effort to improve when they are not good at something or when others are far better.
- To change one’s mindset to believe that the innate abilities and talents they were born with are just the starting point, and that with hard work and effort they will get better.
- To put one’s experience in the context of growth so they can better learn from successes and failures.
6. Locus of Control: The skill of using cause and effect to enhance performance and control one’s destiny.
- To orient one’s mind to focus more on those things under one’s control.
- To allow one to view the cause and effect of performances through the lens of effort, strategy, and resilience instead of fairness, luck, genetics, or chance.