15 Ways To Improve Your Confidence

Your confidence will go up and down throughout your training. Understand that this is normal and is part of the growing process. At times, you’ll feel like you’re improving at a rapid speed. At other times, you’ll feel like you just aren’t getting much better at all. Many different variables in your life can impact your athletic confidence.

My favorite definition is: Confidence is a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.

This helps us realize that we must constantly practice appreciating ourselves and what we are capable of, which will help build our confidence.

Regardless of where you are in your journey, you can work on your confidence by

• Having proper sleep, nutrition and stress management aka take care of yourself
• Getting encouraging feedback from others
• Using positive self-talk
• Regularly practicing gratitude by appreciating your abilities, qualities, environment, past, and support team
• Using strong body language
• Overcoming barriers and regularly facing challenges
• Reaching personal goals or exceeding expectations
• Preparing yourself as much as you can
• Embracing your imperfections and vulnerabilities – Yes, this can actually help your confidence. Many people feel inadequate or that their flaws are holding them back. We can all work on accepting that we are imperfect and focusing on progress instead.
• Spending your time with people who lift you up
• Focusing on solutions (instead of problems)
• Helping others – yea, it might sound cheesy but you will feel better about yourself by volunteering, or spending time making others better
• Believing that you are loved and worthy
• Maintaining consistency with practice and routines
• Redefining “failure” and your response to it
• Studying other people, similar to you, who are successful aka “vicarious experience”  Ex: An example of this is after Roger Bannister became the first person to break the 4-minute mile, it was broken many times, and now all top milers break this mark routinely. The ability of one person to break this “insurmountable” limit gave others the confidence that it could be done and that they could also do it.

You can continue to work on your confidence with any of the above practices, or with something else that helps you. Regularly appreciate yourself and your abilities and you’ll feel more at ease and ready to take on anything. When you believe that you’re strong and capable, you will be more capable.

Which of these do you want to work on? Comment below with the top 3 that you’re going to put time and effort in.