Day 3 of Mental Excellence – Self-Belief
A link to the complete 7-day series on mental excellence is here …
Mental Excellence 101: Develop the Mental Skills of Elite Performers
“Anything is possible. You can be told that you have a 90-percent chance or a 50-percent chance or a 1-percent chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.”
- Lance Armstrong
The focus of today’s Watt Works mental excellence blog is self-belief (or confidence).
Yesterday we discussed the importance of committing to your chosen goals. Alongside this you must also believe that you are able to achieve them and that they are worthwhile. When you set your goals, how many of them do you really believe you will achieve? If you don’t believe you can and will achieve them, then how likely are you to fight for them? If you manage a team, does your team believe that the shared goals are achievable so that they are willing able to commit time and energy to reaching them?
A number of other factors also nurture self-confidence. Within an organisational setting, it is important that individuals work in an environment in which they feel valued, trusted and respected. Individuals will not commit to organisational goals if they do not feel valued by the organisation they work for.
Alongside this, confidence is built by experiencing success and feeling competent. Whilst setting stretching goals is important, consistently setting yourself goals that you are not able to achieve will mean that your self-confidence suffers. Yesterday we discussed the importance of setting short-term goals. The achievement of these goals over time will build confidence and belief that the long term goal is possible. Hence, you can build an incredible feeling of momentum by consistently achieving the short-term goals you set for yourself.
Feedback, encouragement and support are also crucial to building your confidence. When you suffer a setback in achieving your goals, for example, how positive is the feedback and encouragement and support you give yourself? How critical is that inner voice? (We’ll be exploring a variety of ways to deal with your inner critic in later blogs.)
If you manage a team, then the feedback, encouragement and support you provide is crucial to building their confidence too.
Spend a few moments reflecting on the following:
What can you do to nurture your own self-confidence and self-belief?
How can you improve the confidence of those you work with?
Making small changes in these areas can have a big impact. From a systems-thinking perspective, this also helps create a positive, reinforcing loop – or “virtuous circle” – leading to an ever-increasing sense of self-belief and self-confidence. (You might also want to check out our 7-day series on systems-thinking we ran last week, in order to find out what a significant and important statement this is.)
“Belief is a two-way phenomenon. It opens the door to higher levels of excellence, and higher levels of excellence open the door to higher levels of belief. You may occasionally perform well without fully believing in yourself, but to excel to your potential your sense of trust in yourself must reach a high level.”
- Terry Orlick, 2005
There are a range of other mental skills that need to be in place for mental excellence to develop (such as focus and mental readiness). We’ll be exploring the rest of these skills over the next few days.
Tags: belief, encouragement, feedback, momentum, respect, self-belief, self-confidence, support, trust
Share