Some of the questions regarding self-confidence for all sportspeople are:
Do I feel true self-confidence deep inside, or is it just a front?
Do I share my confidence in order to help others?
Do I have a realistic self-image, i.e. do I know myself well?
Do I make things happen, or do I wait for them to happen?
Do I know my goals, achieve them, upgrade them, and enhance my sense of self-worth through them?
Do I see things through to the end?
Do I notice what other self-confident people do?
Within sports psychology there are a number of models of self-confidence. For those who wish to pursue these further, the best-known ones are Bandura's theory of self-efficacy, Harter's competence-motivation theories, Nicholls' developmentally-based theory of perceived ability and Vealey's sport-specific model of sport confidence. All of these are explained in Sports Psychology, Concept And Applications by Richard Cox. The two threads that run through the research are that realistic self-expectation and confidence are vital for achieving high levels of sports performance, and that helping young children to develop self-confidence is highly effective in achieving satisfaction and success in their sport.
Another key factor in developing self-confidence is the issue of how failure is dealt with. Everyone, at all levels of sport, knows someone who is never wrong: their equipment lets them down, the referee was against them, or their opponent just got lucky. In addition to avoiding responsibility for their own performance, this allows them to retain their self-image and confidence about how good they believe they are. The thought pattern is, "I'm as good as I thought I was, but due to factor A, B, C, etc. it didn't happen." This of course may be partially true, but it is unlikely to be as true as they believe it to be. Truly self-confident sportspeople are aware of factors over which they have no control, but they also take responsibility for their own performance,
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