Switch On Your Confidence
August 21, 2008
Who controls your thoughts? You guessed it - YOU DO! Do you believe in your abilities or do you doubt them? Think about it a bit.
How can you expect to succeed if you don’t believe in yourself? Having confidence in your own abilities plays a major role in your ability to succeed. So, what is confidence really?
Confidence
Confidence – is your personal belief in your ability to do something, your emotional state of mind.
What confidence looks like?
If you think you cannot do something chances are you won’t. If you think you can do something chances are you can. If you do not believe in your own ability to achieve a goal you are creating your own competition. Why would you do that?
If you have to play against an opponent you must know that you will out compete them. Once you allow doubt into your mind you give your opponent a teammate and now you are playing against them and yourself. Now, the probability of success when you play 2 against 1 are that you will lose most of the time. It sounds so simple right? Believe it or not, it is that simple.
Make Up Your Mind To Achieve
Once you make your mind up that you have the ability to achieve something you will. Maybe it takes a few times but, if you do not believe in yourself, achieving success is much harder than it needs to be.
Confidence is a mindset. Think of it as a light switch that you have the power to turn on or off. If you are not confident in your own ability - ask yourself why? What makes you unequipped to achieve success? How can you change the elements in your thoughts that create timidness?
Professor Raj Persaud said, “true self-confidence comes from an attitude where you “promise yourself, no matter how difficult the problem life throws at you, that you will try as hard as you can to help yourself. You acknowledge that sometimes your efforts to help yourself may not result in success, as often being properly rewarded is not in your control.”
“If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won before you have started.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero. (Quotes Sourced from Wikipedia)
Ideas for Action:
- Start every activity by believing in your ability to succeed.
- Spend time visualizing what your success looks like. Then BE Successful.
- Make up your Mind and understand that BEING SUCCESSFUL IS A STATE OF MIND.
- Hang out with positive people and ignore negative people.
- Read about confident athletes and practice their strategies to maintain confidence.
What ideas, input, experiences or resources can you share about confidence?
As part of FFC’s series on, “24 Key Elements To Being A Great Footballer” we are discussing each key element in 24 successive blog posts every Monday, Wednesday & Friday over an 8 week period inside the respective Game, Body and Mind sections. For more information about the 24 Key Elements get our Players Assessment Kit here. Be sure to also subscribe to FFC by email or RSS - just visit the subscribe button in the top right corner of the page.
How Tough Are You Mentally?
August 11, 2008
It’s a challenging question isn’t it? Yet, it’s what separates the men from the boys and the women from the girls. Your mental toughness is as important as your physical conditioning and technical skill and in the big games - it’s often what makes champions. Looking at it closely, what makes up Your Mind? As a player let’s take a look.
Your Mind Consists Of:
- Communication – how well you listen to, instruct, guide and help teammates verbally.
- Confidence – your personal belief in your abilities.
- Aggression – your attitude and competitive nature.
- Understanding – how well you know and study the game.
- Reading the Game – your thought process and ability to impact the game tactically.
- Awareness – your vision and foresight to capitalize or reduce pressure in the game.
- Preparation – your ability to concentrate and perform consistently at high levels.
- Composure – your capability to recover mentally from performance lapses or manage high stress situations.
Get Stuck In & Share Your Thoughts
Now, while we work to lead the discussion we need your participation and open mind. What do you think about these key elements? Where do you think you stack up? If you’d like to find out where you stand click here. Share your thoughts below and make sure to subscribe to the blog so you get everything right in your inbox or RSS feed reader.
