Hi, I’m Rick Sessinghaus. One of the number one skills that you can have for performance is confidence. And yes, confidence is a skill. Most people just believe that confidence just happens if they do something well, “Oh, I feel confident.” Think about this, confidence is your belief in your ability, not mine, not your spouse’s, not your coworker. You’re the one who has to take the action towards a goal.
So, where does confidence come from? Well, unfortunately, a lot of people just rely on current results, “Oh, I just did a good sales meeting,” or, “I just had a great round of golf. And thus, I can feel confident.”
Well, as we know, results go up and down throughout the week, throughout the month, throughout the year and that would become a very fragile sense of confidence if you just relied on what just happened. Certainly, that’s very powerful. Believe that you can do it because you just did it. That’s fantastic. But we also have to have other elements involved.
One is past results. I call it a confidence resume. What have a done in the past that is similar to what I’m just about to do right now? And when I can think about those times, I can go, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got this.” And then, those past results can help fortify that confidence as you move forward.
Now, that’s results. What happens if I really haven’t done this yet? That’s a little bit more challenging. So, think about visualizing success in the future. What is going to happen? “Oh, yeah. I can do that.” And then, you’re actually planning for challenges. You’re planning for obstacles, but you’re actually seeing success before it happens. So, visualization is a huge key tool for you to develop confidence.
The most underused confidence tool is self-talk. What are you saying to yourself? Because what you say to yourself, over and over again, becomes your belief, so we wanna start to reframe things. Like, “Well, I’ve done it before I can do it again.” That would a nice phrase that you could utilize. Or, “I’ve got this.” It doesn’t have to be RA-RA all the time, but you certainly wanna know what are you saying to yourself over, and over and over again?
So, if we start to develop confidence from current results, past results, visualization, self-talk, those are all gonna help you at the core. But the last question I have for you is, though, what would trigger doubt? “Okay, I’m confident, Rick, however, I have doubt when …” Fill in that blank for me. Sometimes it’s just a different situation, a different environment, maybe you’re playing at a higher game now. I have plenty of athletes that they know how to do it, but now they’re on a bigger stage, and then the doubt creeps in.
So, understand your triggers for what creates doubt for you and then go back to developing core skills of a confidence resume of past results, visualize success, positive self-talk that puts you in the frame of mind that I can do this. Because when you believe you can, you can and then we can perform for success.