The Mahomes Magic: Inside the Super Bowl Championship Quarterback's Mind

Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs' championship quarterback, is more than just a highlight reel. He's a champion, leading his team to three Super Bowl victories in just five seasons. But what separates him from other talented signal-callers? It's the fire within, the unwavering belief, and the mental conditioning that fuels his success. Let's delve into the "Mahomes Magic" and unearth the secrets of his champion's mindset.

The Undying Belief:

Mahomes exudes confidence that borders on audacity. "I believe in myself," he simply states. This self-assuredness isn't arrogance; it's a conviction forged in preparation and fueled by a relentless pursuit of improvement. He famously declared, "I'm not going to apologize for my confidence," after a game-winning throw. This unwavering belief permeates the Chiefs' locker room, creating a culture of "we believe" that fuels comebacks and upsets.

Mastering the Moment:

Pressure? Mahomes thrives on it. He shines brightest when the stakes are high, his calm demeanor a stark contrast to the frenetic energy of the game. "I try not to let the moment get too big," he says. "I just focus on what I can control, the next play, the next throw." This ability to stay present and composed under pressure is a hallmark of elite quarterbacks, and Mahomes possesses it in spades.

Building Mental Resilience:

Championships aren't won on positivity alone. Mahomes has faced setbacks, interceptions, and crushing defeats. But he bounces back, his mental resilience a cornerstone of his success. "You learn from every play," he emphasizes. "The good, the bad, the ugly. It's all about taking those experiences and using them to make yourself better." This growth mindset allows him to learn from mistakes and emerge stronger, a testament to his mental fortitude.

The Power of Preparation:

While Mahomes' talent is undeniable, his success is built on meticulous preparation. He meticulously studies film, dissects defensive schemes, and visualizes plays before they even happen. This dedication to preparation translates to confidence on the field, as he knows exactly what to expect and how to react. "The more prepared you are, the less pressure there is," he explains.

Beyond the Statistics:

Leadership is more than throwing touchdowns. Mahomes leads by example, his work ethic and positive attitude inspiring his teammates. He fosters a sense of camaraderie and trust, creating a locker room where everyone believes in each other. "He's not just a great player," says tight end Travis Kelce, "he's a great leader. He's got that fire in him, and he brings it every day."

The Quest Continues:

Patrick Mahomes' story seems far from over. His journey is a testament to the power of a champion's mindset, a unique blend of unwavering belief, mental resilience, and meticulous preparation. He is an inspiration to young athletes and a force to be reckoned with in the NFL. As he himself says, "I'm always striving to be better, to learn more, and to win more championships." And with his mental fortitude and relentless drive, one thing is certain: the magic of Mahomes may be just beginning.

Delving Deeper:

Mental Conditioning Routines:

• Mindfulness: Mahomes uses meditation apps to quiet his mind and clear distractions before games and practices.

• Visualization: He visualizes plays succeeding in every detail, from the snap to the completion.

• Positive self-talk: He uses affirmations and positive self-talk to boost confidence and maintain focus.

Working with a Sports Psychologist:

Mahomes has reportedly worked with a sports psychologist to develop coping mechanisms for dealing with pressure and setbacks. He also uses relaxation techniques like deep breathing to control his emotions in high-pressure situations.

Pre-Game Rituals:

• Listening to music: Mahomes has a specific pre-game playlist that gets him pumped up and focused.

• Spending time with teammates: He avoids isolation and connects with his team to build camaraderie and a positive mindset.

• Visualizing success: He takes a few minutes to visualize himself performing well and leading his team to victory.

Other Strategies:

• Journaling: Mahomes reportedly uses journaling to reflect on his performance and set goals for improvement.

• Seeking feedback: He actively seeks feedback from coaches and teammates to identify areas for improvement.

• Maintaining a healthy lifestyle: He prioritizes sleep, nutrition, and exercise to optimize both physical and mental performance.

By implementing these strategies, Patrick Mahomes has cultivated a champion's mindset that sets him apart.

NOTE: This blogpost was produced with the assistance of AI.  

 

The Temporal Nature of Being Fucked-Up

As a follow-up to my last blogpost “The Ubiquitous, Endless Loop of Suck,” I have some more thoughts about self-talk and our harsh, self-critical inner voice.  

In addition to our excessive usage of the verb "suck," another term that frequently peppers our thoughts is "fucked-up" and its variations.  Though this term comes with its own pitfalls, it also has its relative strengths when compared to "suck."

Future Tense

I think I'm gonna fuck up. 

I think I'm gonna fuck it up. 

Present Tense

Observation:  I'm fucking up.  (This usage may occur during any activity/event/performance)  

Event/Thing/Personal Evaluation:  That's fucked up.

Self-evaluation:  I'm fucked-up (Inebriation).

Past tense

Observation:  Oh, no, I fucked up.  I fucked it up.  I was fucked-up. 

Evaluation:  That was fucked-up. 

Unlike "suck," there is no strong implication of permanence in the term "fucked-up."  It suggests a softer, gentler assessment.  Whatever we have done can be fixed, cnn be improved.  We can certainly start over.  We will eventually sober up (for example, being fuck-up too frequently in 2023 can lead to "Dry January" in 2024).  Essentially, fucking up allows us to go back to the drawing board.  On the other hand, however, if we suck, we fail.  There is no do-over, no work around.  It's in our permanent file.  There is no off-the-record.  It's on social media and we are now a meme.  

Exceptions:  I'm fucked up (mental health).  (Here the implication of permanence returns).

I offer these thoughts as the second step of recovery from the tyranny of the inner harsh critic.  Rather than using the word "suck," try transitioning to the slightly gentler term "fucked-up."  You will be glad you did. 

NOTE:  No part of this blogpost was created with AI. 

The Coronavirus: Our Test of Resilience

Much of our intial response toward the coronavirus pandemic focuses on what we can do or can't do. How do we respond? What are the guidelines? What steps do we take? What are the proper procedures? What resources do we have? Our natural response is to look externally. This external focus tend to include questions about identifying who is to blame. What individual, what country did this to us or didn't do enough for us? Fair enough.

What is equally important is who we are and who we can be in this time of crisis. That requires an internal focus. That requires us to identify our skills of resilience, our mental core. What characteristics do we possess to help us respond best to the crisis?

Perhaps our best internal reflections should consist of a personal and individual inventory of our abilities to withstand ambiquity and uncertainty as well as our ability to be flexible and nimble as our external environment shifts around us and situations change. How do we keep from responding with our lizard brain?

So, what is resilience? How do we assess our mental core?

Resilience refers to the skill and ability to quickly and fully bounce back from setbacks, to deal with adversity, learn from mistakes and effectively put your mistakes behind you. Only recently has resilience been seriously considered as a component of mental toughness. Resilience includes carefully obtaining, valuing, and incorporating constructive feedback and doing what is required with the resources that are available.   It has to do with your emotional strength.

Resilience also requires us to recognize and acknowledge that, now, perhaps more ever, we live in a VUCA world. VUCA is an acronym used by the US Military long ago to describe extreme conditions in combat. It stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

The word "core" in the physical fitness and conditioning world has become a buzzword. Like the physical core, there is also a mental core related to mental conditioning. Physical core training is about increasing power, strength and stabilization. So, is the training of your mental core.

Many fitness buffs often think only of sit-ups and crunches as the secret to strengthening the core. True fitness experts know that there is much more to the core than an impressive six-pack. Similarly, many athletes and coaches think that the mental core is simply just about developing mental toughness (the equivalent of a mental core “six-pack”). The mental core is much more than mental toughness.

The mental core creates a solid, fundamental, and broad base for your overall mental fitness and, thus, your subsequent ability to perform successfully. Resilience requires us to take inventory of our mental core.


So, what does constitute the mental core?


Internal Dialogue/Self-Talk - simply put, these are the things you say to yourself about yourself and the state of world around you. A common problem with our cognitive mindset is that that it is often stuck in evaluation activities when it should be focused on other tasks (such as gathering information, skill acquisition, rehearsal, and execution, for example). Increasing your awareness of your internal dialogue/self-talk and its effect on your behavior have a great influence on your success in dealing with crises. 

Communication Skills- these skills are underrated in our crisis responses. Clear, concrete, specific communication and active listening skills are crucial to our ability to be resilient as well as being effective problem solvers and decision makers.  Paranthetically, this may be the time to embrace technology and our reliance on our electronic devices (computers, phones, tablets, and games) to maintain our connectivity as well deal with the effects of social distance and physical isolation.  We can address our addictions to our devices after we get through this crisis.

Daily Pre- and Post- Recovery Skills - here, emphasis is placed on the importance of developing a set of skills and activities that provide you with an opportunity to fully recover mentally from daily challenges.  These mental skills are as crucial as physical recovery skills. Evidence is mounting that both mental and physical recovery skills (including sleep) are more important than we ever considered in the past.

Systems Thinking - in the case of your mental core, this refers to your awareness and understanding of the matrixed complexity, interrelatedness and connection of multiple factors involved in your behavior and the behavior of others. It also refers to the idea that in order to affect real behavioral change, a system that provides structure and consistency must be put into place. Systems thinking in this context implies that mental conditioning and strengthening of your mental core requires you to become a student of mental conditioning, cognitive processes, and behavioral psychology.  It suggests the importance of interconnectivity of things as well as people.


Anxiety Management - refers to the idea that 1) anxiety is a part of life; 2) mental fitness includes the acknowledgment and management rather than the eradication of anxiety; 2) that excitement and anxiety can be two words for the same thing; and, 3) the goal of mental conditioning can't and shouldn't be to eliminate anxiety but to use it.


Emotional Intelligence - emotional intelligence (and related skills) is an important and necessary component of resilience. Emotional intelligence involves the understanding of the critical role that emotional information and social interactions play in crisis situations and success. Evidence suggests that emotional intelligence is an important characteristic of effective leadership and team development required in crises.


Confidence - this component of your mental core is one of the characteristics that has been long considered critical to success in any endeavor, including sports and the performing arts. In this model of the mental core, confidence is defined as a general sense that one's skills and abilities are capable of achieving one's desired outcomes. Many people include this component in their idea of mental toughness. Confidence is particularly dependent upon a healthy cognitive mindset. Confidence also involves our ability to take inventory of our previous encounters with extreme stress and crisis situations and remind ourselves of our strengths and mastery of previously stressful situations.


Preparation Skills - this factor suggests that 1) success is related to one's understanding and awareness that personal growth occurs through the methodical process of continuous learning and development of skills, rather than inherent, genetically-informed and pre-ordained "talent"; and, 2) is highly influenced by your desire and willingness to consistently spend long-hours of monotonous, focused, disciplined, repetitive activity to improve and perfect your skills and abilities.


Mindfulness - this important factor of the mental core refers to a broad set of skills that include mental imagery and visualization, relaxation and meditation skills, focusing and centering skills.  Research is showing that mindfulness approaches can be very helpful to day-to-day mental and emotional recovery. 

To close, these skills are greatly needed in this time of crisis as we deal with this pandemic in an effective, strategic, cooperative manner without contributing to misinformation, panic and over-reaction.    

Momentum: Game-Changer or Unicorn?

An old baseball coach in Texas once told me "the two most important things in baseball are Mo and Po............Momentum and Potential."

Jill Ellis, the coach of the United States women’s soccer team, also believes strongly in momentum.  She kept and her players discussed it over and over again late Tuesday night after the team’s 13-0 win over Thailand in the opening competition of the 2019 World Cup.

With the win and the domination of their opponent, Ellis and her team ambitions are to win the World Cup, nothing less.  The team understands the importance of maintain a rhythm and flow that fosters confidence.  They wanted to set the right tone and mood.  

To that end, she was delighted to see her team score goals at will; she wanted as many players as possible to experience success.

“Those feelings are what can help you get through the tournament,” Ellis said.

Putting the Pedal to the Metal

“With the score line tonight, we have to look at the group stage as every goal counts,” star team member Alex Morgan said. “It was important for us to continue to go.”

“As a coach, I don’t find it my job to harness my players and rein them in, because this is what they’ve dreamed about, and this is a world championship,” Ellis said. “When you have a deluge of goals like that, it’s important.”

Goal differential in the group stage at any World Cup — the spread between a team’s goals scored and allowed — is the first tiebreaker for placing in groups ahead of the knockout stage.  Team USA's 13 goals were both a statement of intent and skill but also important in getting through the knockout round.

“For us, the goals matter,” said Carli Lloyd, who scored the last one and celebrated with a quick fist pump. “In this tournament, it’s important. So we just have to keep that throttle down.”

But mindset is as important as goals and statistics.  The winning culture and the atmosphere this team has been fostering values momentum, flow and self-esteem. Ellis sees this as a clear competitive advantage. She strives to spread these feelings throughout the team. 

As she prepared to send bench players into the game once the game was seemingly out of hand, Ellis told them specifically not to take their feet off the gas. She wanted more of her attacking players to “get hot,” she said.

At that point that point in the game, there were still several players appearing on the World Cup stage for the first time, and Ellis, wanted them to get comfortable on the World Cup stage as quickly as possible.

Young Rose Lavelle, scored twice in her first World Cup match.  “It’s really about making sure Rose is doing her thing,” Ellis said. “She is unique. She’s obviously a very skillful player, and you don’t ever want to limit that.”

Ellis afterward called the last goal “massive” for Lloyd, the MVP at the 2015 World Cup, as she continues to adjust to playing a supporting role off the bench.

Another young player, Mallory Pugh, who came in late in the second half, was in tears after scoring her first goal in her first World Cup game.

“You forget these moments are massive moments for players,” Ellis said.

Thanks to her aggressive approach to her substitutions, Ellis had three more players on her bench who felt the adrenalin rush of being involved in a World Cup goal.   Collectively, the entire team may feel that they can score again every time they step on the field.

“A lot of this is about building momentum,” Ellis said. “The reality is, we also believe we’ve got more to do, no doubt. We’re going to stay humble, and we’ll go back to work.”

So, Is Momentum a Thing?

Momentum is the feeling that accumulated success will lead to greater success. We want to be able to count on continued success, if at all possible.

Pressure, stress, competition, change, adversity all are a shock to the our systems. Our brains do not like being shocked. We like stability, we like the status quo. If our systems are shocked, we want to return to equilibrium as quickly as possible. 

When we reestablish the status quo again, we hope to stay there. We seek a return to stability and equilibruim. If we sense stability, we do all we can to stay there.  Our brains try to predict and control, for the purpose of returning to a stable place. We look for signal that our environment has returned to status quo, to some sort of stability.

Though the concept is debatable, some people, including sports psychologists argue that momentum is a thing, a literal game-changer, that has the potential to determine future outcomes, as well.  A way to create calmness and confidence.

Terms like momentum, “winning streak,” or “hot hand” (one that’s made many shots in a row) are thrown around casually to describe an experience sports fans and athletes know intuitively: When we feel like we’re winning, winning seems to come easier, whether that’s in the form of sinking multiple buckets in a row or winning a string of important games or even championships.

“What we often observe in athletes is that there are positive and negative changes in their mental states and behaviors when moving toward or away from the desired outcome,” says University of Groningen sports psychologist Ruud J.R. den Hartigh.  

Many scientists studying momentum have cast doubt on whether those changes in mental states are based on any actual statistical patterns of winning — a valid objection.  But den Hartigh and other sports psychologists argue that it’s the feeling that counts, so much that it really can lead to more wins.

Does Momentum Builds Within and Between Games?

Any sequence of positive results or outcomes we achieve, are easy to interpret as evidence of a positive trajectory toward success, suggesting “building momentum.”

Momentum can also be defined as the movement of a team or athlete toward or away from a desired outcome —that can be making a basket, making multiple baskets in a row, winning one game, or winning a crucial game in a playoff series. That means there is positive and negative momentum, both of which can affect the way teams play within a game and across games in a series.

In his research on rowing teams, den Hartigh found that positive momentum (taking the lead in a race) leads to more unified movement within a team, while teams are less coordinated and put in less effort when they have negative momentum (falling behind in a race). Similarly, his research on psychological momentum across rowing matches, published in 2016, showed that athletes with positive momentum were generally less sensitive to negative momentum in later races.

“So, momentum all has to do with that perception of moving toward or away from the desired outcome, and whether that outcome is still reachable,” says den Hartigh.  That perception, as others have shown, has major impacts on how athletes actually play. It is the mindset that counts.

How Momentum Builds

In his research, University of Maryland kinesiology professor and psychological momentum expert Seppo E. Iso-Ahola, Ph.D. has found that teams with momentum perform better because of the confidence that winning brings. Confidence, Iso-Ahola found, plays a critical role in how athletes operate.

“It would be a mistake to think, after winning a game, that we now have a momentum that will carry us through the next game and ultimately, to the championship."

”High-level athletic performance, he says, “occurs at the intersection of neurology and psychology, with specific motor movements (e.g., 3-point throws in basketball) being executed nonconsciously and automatically without any conscious interference (e.g., doubts).”

An athlete performing at their peak are skills at preventing intrusive thoughts from getting in the way, and that’s where momentum comes in.

Momentum, says Iso-Ahola, “facilitates nonconscious processing and automatic execution of athletic (motor) movements that have been rehearsed over thousands and thousands of hours.”  In other words, the confidence that comes with momentum makes it easier for athletes to do what they are trained to do without having to think about it. In his research on momentum, Iso-Ahola has shown that the most successful people are those who have more frequent occurrences of momentum and can make them last longer. In a basketball game, this is the team that has the most and longest scoring runs; in a series, it’s the team that wins many consecutive games often. He points out, crucially, that “between-momentums build on within-momentums” — a reminder to focus on momentum within a game.

A Mindset Leads to Winning

For a player, team, or fan, the feeling of momentum comes down to the belief that there’s been a certain pattern of success, whether in the form of a shooting streak or accumulated wins in a series. Take Steph Curry’s performance in Game 3 of the 2019 Finals against the Toronto Raptors, scoring 12 of the Warriors’ first 14 points, for example: To fans, it appears that a player like Steph Curry can get the “hot hand."

”But a statistician might disagree. Who’s to say that making six, or ten, or 25 shots in a row makes one “hot”? “People have been looking at the hot hand for more than three decades now and there is no clear agreement about whether it actually exists.”

“People have been looking at the hot hand for more than three decades now and there is no clear agreement about whether it actually exists,” psychological scientist Matthew Welsh, Ph.D., says. Welsh, a senior research fellow at the Adelaide Decision Lab, studies heuristics and biases in decision making, and the “hot hand” is a bias he’s spent a lot of time studying.

The hot hand is “the idea that, at certain point in time, players are ‘hot’,” he says. “That is, that their skill level is, temporarily, raised above its normal level.” Though its existence is widely believed by fans, players, and coaches, the numbers remain inconclusive.

The classic paper on momentum, published in 1985 by psychologists at Stanford and Cornell University, dismissed the idea of a “hot hand” in basketball as “a general misconception of chance.”  Their controlled shooting experiments on Cornell basketball players showed no correlation between the outcomes of successive shots.  People who believe the “hot hand” exists, they argued, don’t actually understand what chance means, and so they think they can find patterns in “even short random sequences.”  The way Welsh puts it, there was “no evidence of anything other than random patterns arising from long term shooting patterns."

”There’s some evidence that it may exist in other sports, but basketball, says Welsh, seems particularly ill-suited for it.  Factors like alternating start times, multiple substitutions, defensive changes, many time-outs, and the fact that “hot” players tend to be double-teamed, he says, might obscure the pattern, if it exists at all.  Nevertheless, the conviction in momentum remains, and that’s because “statistical” momentum isn’t equivalent to “psychological” momentum.  Whether a player is numerically “hot” doesn’t matter as long as they think that they’re hot — a feeling that Welsh credits to humans’ “oversensitive pattern sensing mechanisms.”

Teams Can Take Advantage of Momentum

Though the numbers may not support it, momentum is real, at least psychologically, and teams can use it to their advantage. But as den Hartigh warns, “it is important to keep in mind that the relation between momentum and performance is not always straightforward.”

“In the end, it is momentum that makes the difference in who wins and who loses."

”When teams have positive momentum, they tend to relax a little because “the advantage seems to become comfortable,” he says, and this gives the opponent an opportunity to claw back. Negative momentum, meanwhile, can also fire up a team. But reminding us that momentum is all about movement toward or away from a desired outcome, he points out that performance seems to drop once that outcome seems impossible to reach.

Iso-Ahola likewise warns of the dangers of coasting with advice worthy of Steve Kerr: “No backing off, but instead, pouring in as many points as possible, and giving no mercy to the opponent,” he says. “That is capitalizing on momentum. Each competitive situation is its own performance event for which momentum has to be separately created.”

Excerpts from:

https://www.inverse.com/article/56428-raptors-take-lead-in-nba-finals-maybe-it-s-momentum

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/sports/usa-thailand-world-cup.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_190613?campaign_id=2&instance_id=10070&segment_id=14234&user_id=5b07f13b07a1d067ce0262161ce7c9c1&regi_id=279697130613

Confidence: How Lady Gaga Has Become the Most Famous Pop Star of This Century

“I think it’s wonderful to be confident about what you create.  I think you have to be. I say that with the humbleness of the fans being so wonderful, but with the integrity and sureness of my abilities as a musician.”

“Every day, in the mirror, on the stage, in interviews, to go to sleep, to finish that chorus, I’m always in the boxing ring.  But I have a one-two punch: ambition and drive.” 

--Lady Gaga, discussing her confidence and work ethic. 

Lady Gaga’s multimillion-selling album, “The Fame,” was released in 2008, which has sold more than four million copies in the United States alone.  The million-selling EP “The Fame Monster,” released in 2009. Together, they generated seven Top 10 singles.

Her new album, “Born This Way”, was released on May 23 and sold 1,108,000 copies in the United States in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Some 662,000 of those sales, or about 60 percent, were digital downloads, the most any album has ever sold in a week.  

Lady Gaga, was born Stefani Germanotta and was still playing small clubs as late as 2007.  She has become the biggest pop star of the 21st century so far.  She has 10 million Twitter followers.


Excerpts from the New York Times.   

Confidence: How Important Is It?

"I didn't have any doubts, but I wasn't sure I was going to win."  

 --Gabriella Sabatini, a former professional Aregentine tennis player, who was one of the top players on the women's circuit in the late-1980s and early-1990s. She won a women's singles title at the U. S. Open in 1990, the women's doubles title at Wimbledon in 1988, two WTA Tour Championships in 1988 and 1994, and a silver medal at the 1988 Olympic Games. 

Despite considerable athletic talent, strong popularity and the beauty of a screen star, Sabatini seemed to consistently conflicted about her ability to win.  Many critics and experts had expected much more from Sabatini and felt that her overall career performance had left something to be desired.  

"Confidence isn't optimism or pessimism and it's not a character attribute. It's the expectation of a positive outcome. It is essential" - Rosabeth Moss Kanter, author of the book, Confidence.

Framing and optimism are everything, as Andre Agassi demonstrates in this great quote from a panel (with Lance Armstrong) at the Milken conference in April 2006:

After wrist surgery, Agassi was ranked number 141 in the world in 1998. As Agassi said, he tried to look on the bright side, "only 140 people in the world could beat me."

A lack of confidence effects capability and reduces all-round ability. When confidence is high, real breakthroughs are possible.

It's possible to affect and, thus, manufacture confidence. Indeed it is a vital process to avoid the kind of expectation trap described below.

According to psychologist Albert Bandura, performers' situational-specific confidence, or 'self-efficacy', is based on four primary sources of information.

The first and most important factor is past performance accomplishments. What we have achieved in training and competition forms the basis of future expectations of success or failure. Repeated success naturally leads to positive expectations of further success, higher motivation and enhanced self-belief.

Unfortunately, the drawback of this principle is that failure can give rise to a downward performance spiral and a 'snowball effect' whereby a performer starts to believe that success is unattainable.

Of course, such an athlete does not mysteriously lose his or her physical skills and talents, but without confidence in these abilities high-level performance is rarely achieved. This is the 'expectation trap', which has put many a gifted athlete into permanent decline.

In research, confidence has been shown to consistently distinguish between highly successful and less successful athletes. Although many people mistakenly assume that confidence reflects performance - i.e. we become confident once we have performed consistently well - it is becoming increasingly evident that confidence can be established, or 'manufactured' beforehand.


Several assumptions that can interfere with self-confidence and positive ways of thinking are:

ASSUMPTION: I must always be successful at every challenge that I undertake. This assumption is a totally unrealistic assumption. In life each person has his strengths and his weaknesses. While it is important to learn to do the best that one can, it is more important to learn to accept yourself as being human, and deficient. Let yourself feel good about what you are good at, and accept the fact that you don’t know everything and you don’t need to.

ASSUMPTION: I must be perfect, and loved by everyone, and satisfy everyone. Again, this assumption is a totally unrealistic assumption. All human beings are less than perfect. It’s well advised to develop personal standards and values that are not very dependent on the approval of other people.

ASSUMPTION: Everything that happened to me in the past remains in control of my feelings and behaviors in the present.

ALTERNATIVE: While it is true that your confidence was especially vulnerable to external influences when you were a child as you gain maturity appreciation and point of view on what those influences have been. In doing so, you can choose which influences you will continue to allow to have an effect on your life. You don’t have to be helpless based on what happened in the past.

HERE ARE SOME STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING CONFIDENCE 

Emphasize Your Strengths. Grant yourself credit for everything that you can do. And bestow upon yourself credit for every new experience you are willing to try.

Take risks. Adopt the attitude of: I never fail, because there are NO failures. However, sometimes I find out what doesn’t work and once I’ve learned what doesn’t work in a given situation, I can test something else.

Use Self-Talk: Use self-talk as a tool to counter harmful assumptions. Then, tell yourself to stop. Substitute more reasonable assumptions. For example, when you catch yourself expecting yourself to be perfect, remind yourself that it is impossible to do everything perfectly, and that it’s only possible to do things to the best of your ability. This allows you to accept yourself as you are working towards improvement.

VISUALIZATION (Make mental movies): Picture yourself in scenes that you currently have low levels of self confidence in. But see yourself behaving in the way that a person who has tremendous confidence  would. There are powerful Self-hypnosis and NLP processes that you can use to instill a sizable amount of self-confidence from within your subconscious mind. There are even NLP techniques that will let you take confidence that you do have in areas of your life, and then transplant that confidence to areas of your life that require more self-confidence!

Excerpts from Inside Tennis (April 2011) and the Peak Performance eCoach.