“Confidence doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s a result of something… hours and days and weeks and years of constant work and dedication”—-Roger Staubach

Confidence is the belief of an athlete in his ability to achieve his goals.

The real test of confidence is how you respond when things are not going your way. It’s easy to stay confident when you are performing well, when the conditions are ideal, and when you are competing against someone whom you are better than.

Most athletes when they perform poorly lose their confidence and get caught in the vicious cycle of low confidence and poor performance.

Once they slip into that downward spiral, they rarely can get out of it. In contrast, athletes with high levels of confidence maintain their confidence and seek out ways to return to their previous level immediately.

The challenge is not getting caught in the vicious cycle and being able to get out of the down periods quickly.

Negative thinking is one of the bad habits that ruins athlete’s football confidence. Bad confidence habits are just like bad technical habits; the more they practice them, the more ingrained these habits become and the better athletes get at being negative. And that negativity is what will cause poor performance.

Also like a bad technical habit, negative thinking can be retrained with awareness, control, and repetition. The goal is to engage in enough positive-thinking practice so that a new mental habit of positive thinking becomes embedded into your football mind and replaces the negative thinking.

There is several football mental toughness strategies athletes can use to help them build confidence.

As with any kind of habit, the only way to correct negative thinking is to practice being positive over and over and over again.

A useful way to build your confidence is to use keywords which remind you to be positive and confident.

You can make a list of words or phrases that make you feel positive and good, for example, believe, positive, strive, or yes I can. Then, write them on your equipment where they’re visible during practice and competitions. Every time you see it, it will sink in further until you truly believe it.

To build your confidence you must change the way you think.

A 100% of the time it is 90% mental.

Confidence is a mind-set skill that doesn’t just happen by chance. You must work at it. To build your confidence, specific strategies are required. These strategies can be found in my workbook – An Athlete’s Guide to Peak Performance Series– Building Confidence

Go to sportspsychologyfootball.com. Click products and get started on Building Your Confidence with Sports Performance Top Mental Game Coach.

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