Confidence, Anxiety, and Stress

     In the book On Top Of Your Game, by Carrie Cheadle who is a Mental Skills Coach and a Certified Consultant through the Association for Applied Sport Psychology, she takes you on a journey through specific topics that have a significant impact on whether you feel anxiety and doubt or feel resilient and confident when it comes to your sport. Carrie notes that if you really want to improve your mental game and strengthen your mental fitness, you need to decide it is a priority and then dedicate the time to work on it.

     "During my last game there were college coaches watching from the stands and I knew that I had to perform well. I want to play in college so badly that every time the college coaches come to watch I put so much pressure on myself that I play horribly. I know it's my head that gets in my way. It's like I'm not even the same player when they come to watch." (Cheadle 2) The author gives examples of how she meets with players who have come to "get over" their anxiety. She says many of these athletes have begun to lose hope. She also says that,"If competition were a walk in the park, your triumphs wouldn't mean anything." (3) Many athletes struggle with confidence and anxiety and don't understand how to get over it. It is really different for everybody. Stress is an integral art of the human condition, every person in the world struggles with it, but they all have ways of getting through it.

     During my eighth grade season for basketball, I was probably the worst player on the team. It was my first year playing and I had no idea what I was doing. I had worked hard leading up to the season, but my mentality towards basketball was so weak that I would break down during games and I never knew what to do. I now realize that to be more confident, you have to work harder. "You should never be confident in something you don't work hard enough in."(Cheadle 12) If you studied 10 minutes for an exam, you shouldn't be confident in taking the test, or if you've only practiced dribbling with your right hand, you shouldn't be confident in your left. I also have been working on telling myself to stop saying saying "what if". "What if I turn the ball over again?" or "What if I miss all of my shots?" Telling myself all of these things usually results in them happening and until now I haven't really realized that I should just focus on all of the good things I have done in the game. This will probably help me eliminate my thoughts of all the bad things I have done and stop the "What ifs". I really wish I had read something like this book earlier because it would've helped me realize what I was struggling with at the time and what I needed help with back then and (not as much) today. I am still learning a lot from this book and hope to become a more confident player.

     Many players can be beaten by anxiety or nervousness before they even start playing. It is very normal to feel pressure before competition. It is apart of sports. Anxiety isn't bad. It is an emotion that you feel that is designed to get you to act or to prepare for what is coming next. You should never want to erase your anxiety, the goal is to give you tools to manage it. If you never learn how to control your anxiety, you can't ever perform to your potential. I know that whenever I used to get pulled out of the game, I would always think of all the terrible things I did and eventually thinking about them so much would make me repeat them over and over again. She mentions that if you think about all of the good things instead of the bad, that you will boost your confidence and most likely make good decisions throughout the game.

     Pretend you are on a basketball team who has lost five games straight and you guys are about to play an undefeated team. Athlete 1 is checking out the competition during your warm ups and already feels like you guys have lost before the game starts. Athlete 2 focuses on getting mentally and physically prepared and imagines how good it would feel to make this the game that turns around you team's losing streak. Which would you rather have as a teammate? Are you more like Athlete 1 or Athlete 2 and what characteristics do you think someone like them would have as teammates?



Citation: Cheadle, Carrie. On Top Of Your Game. Petaluma: Feed The Athlete, 2013. Print.