Lack of confidence is something that can easily put a ceiling on your performance. Confidence is a quality found in many different aspects of life and not only sports. With sports, so obviously what you do in a sports field. Grit, belief, courage, mental toughness, and heart are qualities, that are descriptive verbs that are constantly used when describing someone who is successful. Success and confidence are two things that have a major impact on each other, your success affects your confidence and confidence can also affect your success.
With doing my research I found out the 3 major things that affect your confidence.
Self Beliefs:
Commonly people think that the sky's the limit, they have so much self believe that they think they can reach any limits, then something happens even something as small as a comment from a teammate or your coach can affect you, at that point, you have lost a lot of your confidence and then you start doubting yourself, which stops you from performing in the best way you can.
Believing yourself is also really important, it can benefit you in so many ways. You recognise goals and you become optimistic. You start thinking that you can achieve what you want and most importantly you can increase your confidence.
As I have spoken already about a few ways Self-beliefs can boost up your confidence or even decrease your confidence. As said, doubting yourself can stop you from doing your best but also when you believe in yourself you can realise so much stress and focus on what you want to do during a game and even be successful.
Imposter Syndrome:
Imposter Syndrome is not a very rare problem in humans these days, imposter syndrome creates a lot of self-doubt in human brains. Slowly this becomes a psychological pattern in the human brain and can cause a lot of problems in anyone’s daily life including sports. At times people with imposter syndrome have problems with internalising their accomplishments which could also always lead into underperforming.
Imposter Syndrome does not really pass on genetically but you develop it through growing up, for example as a sportsman if there is no one showing support or not motivating you this or if your captain is not showing support. Starting from these small things, your brain starts creating a psychological pattern and that can starts affecting your performance.
The best way to overcome this is speaking for yourself, or maybe even just being around a certain group of people that will always support you to do well. This will have immediate effect to your brian and could also help you perform to your potential.
Perfectionism:
Perfectionism is a belief that makes you think that you are the best and perfect. This can really lead into 2 different things, it can help a normal to get more motivated which could lead into really great success but can also lead into negative outcomes. A perfectionist normally sets a really high expectation for themselves and that makes them really critical about their performance.
There are a lot of negative side effects of perfectionism, it can lead to a sportsman or anyone being really obsessive about their work and inefficiency. This normally leads into depressive symptoms once you are not performing close to the standards you have set. This can then really affect your performance even more and than you are stuck in a loop which can be really hard to get off.
There are also a lot of positive effects of perfectionism, as perfectionism really gets you motivated and you always keep a standard for your self. As s perfectionist wants to meet the standard they have set for themselves, they generally work really hard to get their and this can really help as a sportsmen. This mainly leads to you improving your game and can really help in reaching the next level.
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The next thing to look at how they deal with lack of confidence and use it to their advantage. I started this part of my research with looking at videos from different cricketers
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The picture on the left is of the current Indian Cricket captain, Virat Kohli. He is one of the greatest batsmen of the modern era. and this is why I was interested to look into the psychology aspect of his game. Kohli is also really known for his aggression and confidence on the field and he says this is what has really helped him to reach to the highest level. I was able to find out tricks and the mindset Kohli has which has allowed him to become the best in the world. Firstly, since the start he believed that he did not want to become average and he always wanted to be the best and that believe is what helped him to become what he is. The second thing he discusses about psychology is the subconscious mind, this part is really important according to him . Training your subconscious mind and thinking the way you want it to is really important and this is why he suggests to cut off negative things around you such as negative people.
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I will now look into one of the all time legends of Cricket, Shane Warne. He is an Australian cricketer, really well known for his Spin bowling and he is also a great mentor to every youngster. A lot of Warne's team mates say that he always liked appreciation and wanted reassurance from the team that he was the best. This connects with what I discussed earlier about Imposter-Syndrone this shows that even such great players really need help and want people to boost their confidence and help them perform much better.