Self Confidence – Psychological Skills Training

This is part of a five part series on Psychological Skills Training, covering the education, acquisition and practice of psychological skills.

Other posts in this series include:

  • Arousal Regulation – Psychological Skills Training
  • Imagery – Psychological Skills Training
  • Goal Setting – Psychological Skills Training
  • Concentration – Psychological Skills Training

Education:

Self-confidence is the belief that you can successfully perform a desired behaviour.

Low self-confidence is a self-fulfilling prophecy, where each point leads to the next.

  • Expectation of failure.
  • Actual failure.
  • Lowers self image.
  • Increases expectation of future failure.

Benefits of self-confidence:

  • Arouses positive emotions that increase success.
  • Increases concentration.
  • Increases magnitude of goals and their completion.
  • Increases effort levels.
  • Affects game strategies (‘playing to win’ rather than ‘playing not to lose’).
  • Increased ability to rebound from adversity.

Low or high levels of self confidence negatively impact performance.

Coaches’ expectations influence performance:
Coaches/teacher who believed their athletes/students had higher potential treated them differently, and therefore their performance was higher, a self-fulfilling prophecy. This process occurs in the following steps:

  1. Coaches’ form expectations.
  2. Coaches’ expectations influence their behaviors.
  3. Coaches’ behaviours affect athletes’ performance.
  4. Athletes’ performance reinforce coaches’ expectations.

Acquisition:

You can acquire self-confidence through the following sources:

  • Performance accomplishments: Prior success increases confidence in future success.
  • Vicarious experiences: Watching our peers successfully perform a task increases self-confidence.
  • Verbal persuasion: Encouraging verbal feedback.
  • Imagery: Using imagery to picture success.
  • Physiological states: Perceived associations between arousal level and performance.
  • Emotional states: Perceived associations between emotional state and performance.
    Practice:

How to build self-confidence:

  • Successful performance accomplishments: Manipulate or create situations that allow you to experience success.
  • Act confidently: Verbal (what you say) and non-verbal (body language).
  • Think confidently: Positive self talk.
  • Imagery: Imagine positive performance.
  • Physical conditioning:
  • Preparation: Have a plan/strategy going in.
Dan Williams

Dan Williams

Founder/Director

Dan Williams is the Director of Range of Motion and leads a team of Exercise Physiologists, Sports Scientists, Physiotherapists and Coaches. He has a Bachelor of Science (Exercise and Health Science) and a Postgraduate Bachelor of Exercise Rehabilitation Science from The University of Western Australia, with minors in Biomechanics and Sport Psychology.

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