confidence

Question
how do I keep my confidence about myself and my team?

Answer
Hello Aidan

This is a frustrating situation because the only person you have control over is you.  What can help is to keep your own confidence up and give yourself a tool to remember the times your team played well.

Here's a mental training tool that can help.  Get relaxed, close your eyes, and take five slow deep breaths.  Then, picture or imagine a time when you played well in a game, when you were focused.  Really use your imagination, focus on everything you saw, heard, felt and experienced.  Notice how confident you feel performing so well in that game.   Now focus even more on that feeling, and as you do, say to yourself GAME.  Now use your imagination and picture or imagine another time you played well in a game, when you felt confident.  Focus on everything you saw, felt, heard and experienced while playing well in that game.  Focus even deeper on that feeling of confidence, as as you do, say to yourself GAME.  What this does is mentally train your mind to associate the word GAME with feeling confident.  This is how our mind works.  Practice this a lot, and when you can bring back that feeling of confidence just by saying the word GAME, then start using this tool in practice, then when playing games.  The more you practice the better it works.

You can do the same thing with feeling confident about your team. Same tool, but picture or imagine a time when your TEAM did great, focus on how YOU felt about that (confident in them) and as you do, say to yourself TEAM.  The goal here is a little different, to let go of negative feelings about your team (lack of confidence, disappointment, anger) and replace them with positive feelings.  You know if someone is happy with you or mad or disappointed with you, they don't even have to say it, sometimes it's like you can even see it or feel it.  Many people have a lot of trouble staying motivated under those circumstances.  By projecting a feeling of confidence in your team (which you train yourself to do), you may well discover that your team performs better.  I've used these types of skills with many different sports - they work!

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

David

David Kenward, The Mental Coach
Sacramento, California
http://www.thementalcoach.com