Elite sport psychology/self confidence/boosting self confidence

Once self-confidence declines, it can be a real challenge to get it back. There is a five-step strategy that can help, encapsulated in the apt acronym UPWARD:

1. Understand exactly what caused your loss of confidence.
2. Personal images of confidence. Clarify exactly what confidence means to you.
3. Winning feeling. Rediscover what it feels like to be confident by mentally recreating the winning feeling.
4. Action steps. Identify the barriers to renewed confidence.
5. Route planner Establish exactly how you will overcome each barrier and where it will take you.
6. Decide on the specific techniques for achieving these improvements to self-confidence.

Follow the slideshow below to explore further:

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• ==== Understand the cause ==== Understanding the causes of low confidence is the first step in rebuilding it. A self-exploration exercise in which the athlete sits down and considers a recent sporting experience can be a helpful way in making a start. A template called a self-confidence analysis record can be filled out and includes the following questions:
  1. Describe a sporting situation which caused your confidence to decline.
  2. Write down any specific details about the situation which seemed especially important.
  3. What did you imagine the significance to be?
  4. How did that make you feel?
  5. Note down any other negative thoughts which passed through your mind. Express them any way you like. Use a single word, or a detailed description, or even a picture if you prefer. If for some reason the athlete is unable to recall the exact details of how confidence was lost, then they should attune to their feelings the next time they are in competition, and fill in their analysis record as soon as possible afterwards.
• ==== Personal images of confidence ==== The second step in boosting confidence is to get a clear grasp on what confidence means to the individual. A helpful exercise in creating this picture is to list some personal images of confidence. This can be a person, animal, object, or word that the athlete associates with confidence. From these choices the athlete must select the image that they most identify with and then attribute the qualities of confidence to that image using brief descriptive words. Imagine the athlete chooses a bull terrier. It's qualities include being fearless, decisive, small but brave, cool, muscular, and so on.
• ==== Winning feeling ==== The next step in building self-confidence is to relive experiences of supreme confidence in sporting competition. This involves replaying in the mind the last time you felt really confident and describe the winning feeling in great detail. Imagery techniques, which allow the athlete to visualise these feeling of confidence in vivid detail, can help to relive experiences. Imagery will be explored later in the course.
• ==== Action steps ==== The next stage involves identifying barriers to renewed confidence that are under the control of the athlete. These can later be turned into positives using the route planner technique (described next) which breaks down the barriers into manageable action steps.
• ==== Route planner ==== The route planner builds on the action steps identified earlier. You may recall using the route planner to improve motivation. This technique is also useful for building self-confidence, by creating a road map to overcome specific issues that are undermining self-confidence.

  Route Planner Plan what needs to be done to overcome each barrier, making use of some of the personal images of confidence that were identified earlier.

• ==== Decide on the specific techniques ==== The final step is where the athlete increases personal control over the proceedings. By this stage the athlete should understand more clearly what is causing the loss of confidence, should have identified some personal images of confidence, recalled what it feels like to be a winner, and decided on specific techniques to overcome barriers to self-confidence using the route planner technique as a guide.

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Your personal images of confidence

One of the first steps in boosting self-confidence is to identify you own personal image of confidence. Try the exercise below:

1. Write down a list of images that you associate with confidence. These can be animals, people, objects, or words.
2. From your list, select the one image that best fits the version of you that you are aspiring to become.
3. Describe some of those qualities.
4. Think of an athlete that you associate with this image?

• Share the image, its qualities and the name of the athlete, on the forum and comment on at least one other posting.

Here's an example:.

Image: Lion. Qualities: Strong, fearless, proud, demands respect. Sport: Rugby. Athlete: Lawrence Dallaglio (England Rugby World Cup 2003 winner).

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