“I volunteered to take the penalty because I felt pretty confident about scoring” – David O’Leary – scorer of the winning penalty for Ireland against Romania in the 1990 World Cup.

Confidence is a belief that you have the ability to meet the demands placed upon you in the situation you face. When you feel confidence there is a sense of optimism, positivity, control and a trust in yourself and your team around you while a low sense of confidence creates pessimism, anxiety and doubt.

Traits of Confident Athletes

Belief and trust that they have the fitness and skills to perform well. Stick to task even when the competition is going against them. Take full responsibility for their actions and decisions. Challenge themselves to perform slightly above their comfort zone. Have a positive approach to their training and competition.

Traits of Athlete Lower in Confidence

Have doubts about their level of ability Lose interest and give up easily when the competition is not going the way they hoped. Makes excuses or blames others and factors not within their control Don’t push outside the comfort zone and set challenges that are really easy or way above their ability. Have a negative approach to training and competition.

The key to confidence is moving from doubt to trust. When you feel doubt in yourself and your ability you actually try harder to do well. This trying creates extra tension and too much tension leads to a drop in performance. This drop in performance creates more doubt and so you can find yourself of this circle of doom.

When you trust yourself and your ability you can go with the flow and this leads to a relaxed tension. You are not completely relaxed but more in control of tension. This leads to greater performance and so can lead to more trust and now you are on the circle of success. “Success begets Success”. You can’t go into the zone without trust and confidence.

Confidence is not something we are born with. It is developed over time through our experiences and is influenced by the people we hang out with as well as our coaches, teachers and our parents. The good news is that it can be developed and strengthened.

Our level of confidence is always changing. You can feel confident in an event one week and the next week feel a loss in confidence due to weather changes, the venue looks different and the competitors look tougher and so can create some doubts.

The best athletes in the world get doubts sometimes and their confidence level drops but what makes them different is not that they keep their confidence high but rather how quickly they can make it bounce back up when it dips.

Self-Talk – A simple technique you can use to build confidence

I often think how many friends people would lose if they spoke to others in the same way they speak to themselves. Brad Gibert, the well-known American tennis coach puts it well when he says “when you beat yourself up during a match, you double the amount of opponents on the court”.

Self-talk is that internal dialogue we hear as we react to situations and interpret events. Lots of times when we experience pressure it is due in part to that little voice in our heads that has become negative. We hear things like “I better not mess this up, what if I fail, and I’ve blown it now!”

Internal voices can be a distraction. Being ‘in the zone’ tends to be a quiet place. If there is to be an internal voice always choose a productive voice, which helps to create a positive emotional state. It is a choice. Compassionate awareness of the negative self talk is key. It’s in your control, and you can choose how you ‘speak to yourself’ every minute of the day.

Practical Exercise – Understanding Your Internal Voice

With negative self-talk – a natural enemy of going in the zone – it is worth understanding when it happens, how to recognise it and what you want to have instead. Use the following exercise to identify negative self-talk and write down what you want to hear instead.

It is best to do this exercise after a tough workout or competition:

Write down what part of the event the negative comments occurred

Identify the negative thoughts or comments you said to yourself

Identify positive words or thoughts you can use instead of these negative comments

Practice the new positive comments and thoughts replacing the old negative ones in training and competition