Week 5: Training Programme - Improving self-confidence through self-talk

Post title: Training Programme: Improving self-confidence through self-talk  
Week no. 5
Date: 19/04/14

Aim of week: to decrease anxiety levels by increasing self-confidence through self-talk to improve performance

Hi Performer X, thank you for completing last week’s tasks, after completing them you should have felt that performance had further increased in both training and competition as your anxiety levels were lower and looking at your results that is what has happened.

Why I have chosen improve your self-confidence.

This week we are going to improve your self-confidence, this is because when I was looking at your results for the CSAI-2 questionnaire that you filled in, it shows that your self-confidence level is low, you only achieved 16 which is a low score and you should be scoring between 27 and 36 for self-confidence, so due to you having a low score in self-confidence this will be something that we will work on so that it can increase making your performance better. Having a low self-confidence level will automatically make you performance decrease because you don’t believe in yourself and you don’t believe that you can win when competing but having more self-confidence will help you will performance because the more you believe in yourself then the better you will perform because you believe that you can win therefore you want to push yourself so that you come in first place.

What is self-confidence and self-talk?

At some point in life, all performers/athletes will experience doubts about their ability to perform, these doubts are normally due to negative self-talk undermining feeling of self-confidence and self-esteem and interfering with performance.

Self-confidence is a feeling of trust in a person’s abilities, qualities, and judgement.

Many sports persons need help with their self-confidence as this is something that lacks in many athletes and is a key thing and is the difference between winning and losing a competition because if you don’t believe in yourself when performing then the judges that you are performing for also aren’t going to believe in you because you aren’t putting across a performance whereas if you have good self-confidence then the judges are more likely to give you a higher score because you are making them watch you whilst you are performing.

Self-talk is where you are convincing yourself that you are good enough to perform by changing negative thoughts into positive thoughts.

Self-talk is something that many athletes do in both training and in competition because it changes all their negative thoughts into positive ones therefore reducing their anxiety levels and increasing their self-confidence level.

Technique – what it involves.

To increase your self-confidence we are going to use something called self-talk and as explained above, self-talk is where you change all your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. An example of using self-talk to increase performance is just before you go on the dance floor to perform whether it be for you solo or for the team performance, instead of thinking, “what if…..” and thinking of all the things that could go wrong think to yourself, “come on, you can do this” this will be very effective because you are giving yourself more confidence instead of self-doubt. This is something many performers will do just before they are about to perform to help with their confidence levels.

Tasks: Below are 2 tasks that I would like you to complete this week these tasks should be carried out in a quiet place when you are relaxed and they shouldn’t be rushed but do not over think them. Please complete these tasks and send them back to me.  

Task 1; below is a table that I would like you fill out and send it back to me. Within this table I would like you to think of a situation, e.g. the past few competitions I haven’t made it into the second round. Once you have thought of the situation I then want you to think about the thoughts that were going through your mind at the time, or if it is a made up situation what you would be saying to yourself. I would then like you to state whether you thought what was going through your mind was a positive or negative self-talk.

Situation	Self-talk (what you were thinking at the time)	+ / -

 

Task 2; now that you have established whether or not your self-talk was positive or negative, I would like you to replace the negative thoughts with positive ones, this is because most of your thoughts that you were thinking about during competition were probably the reason why you didn’t make into the second round because you doubted yourself therefore reducing your self-confidence.  

Negative self-talk	Positive self-talk

Good luck with this weeks tasks and I am looking forward to seeing your results.