Understanding Confidence: Where It Actually Comes From

Heeyyyyy gaels, this is Emily.

Today’s topic is one I think a lot of players get wrong. Not because they’re not smart, but because the way confidence is talked about in sport is mostly nonsense.

You’ve heard the lines. “Just back yourself.” “Be more confident.” “Believe in yourself.”

If that worked, nobody would lose confidence. The problem is that confidence is treated like a personality trait. Either you have it or you don’t. The big-game players have it. The quiet ones don’t.

That’s not how confidence works.

Confidence is a skill

The research is pretty clear on this. Bandura (1997) defined what he called self-efficacy: your belief in your ability to do a specific task, in a specific situation. Note the words. Specific task. Specific situation. Not “I am a confident person”. More like “I trust I can take this free under this pressure”.

Self-efficacy is built up over time through four things:

Mastery experiences. Doing the thing successfully. The most powerful source.
Vicarious learning. Watching someone like you do it.
Verbal persuasion. A coach, teammate, or your own self-talk.
Physiological signals. How your body feels when you do it.

Confidence isn’t a switch. It’s a build-up of evidence.

[TO FILL IN — A CONFIDENCE BUILD]

A specific moment in your career where you felt your confidence grow. Could be a drill you nailed for the first time, a season where you found your form, a coach who said the right thing. What actually made you trust yourself?

Why confidence drops

When confidence drops, it’s not because you suddenly became a worse player. It’s because something disrupted the evidence pile.

A few common ones:

One bad game lingers. Your brain weights losses heavier than wins. One bad performance counts for about three good ones in your mental ledger.
Comparison. You see another player doing well and read it as “I’m not enough”. Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954) explains why this is automatic.
Critical feedback. Especially if it comes from someone whose opinion you respect, and especially if it lands when you’re already vulnerable.
Body sending the wrong signals. Tiredness, period, lack of sleep, illness. You feel off, your brain reads it as “I’m off”, confidence drops.

What this means

If confidence is built from evidence, then losing confidence isn’t a character flaw. It’s a maths problem. The evidence has shifted. The job is to rebuild it.

That sounds simple. It’s not always easy. The hardest part is that when confidence is low, your brain stops noticing the wins. You only see the misses. The pile of evidence you actually have is still there. You just can’t see it.

[TO FILL IN — A CONFIDENCE DROP]

A time you lost confidence. What triggered it? What did you tell yourself about why? Looking back, was it actually a loss of skill, or a loss of belief in the skill you already had?

Internal vs external sources

This is the part that matters most.

External confidence comes from outside you. Good performances. Coach praise. Stats. Selection. Compliments. When these are flowing, you feel great. When they stop, you crash.

Internal confidence comes from inside. Your trust in your process, your prep, your work. Your sense that you’ve earned the right to be on the pitch. This is harder to build but much more durable.

The big-game players you admire? They aren’t immune to losing form. They’re better at not letting external dips destroy their internal base.

What you can do this week

Make a confidence ledger. Write down 10 specific things you do well in your position. Not “I’m a good player”. Specific things. “I read short kickouts well.” “I never give up on a 50-50.”
Notice when you discount evidence. When you score and tell yourself “anyone could have done that”, catch it. Count the score.
Stop comparing to specific players. Track YOUR progress against YOUR last 6 months, not against the player who’s been at it 10 years longer.
Build the internal side. What process are you proud of, regardless of the outcome? That’s the foundation.

Practical tools in the Self-Talk and Confidence Toolkit.

References

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W.H. Freeman.
Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140.
Vealey, R. S. (2001). Understanding and enhancing self-confidence in athletes. In R. N. Singer, H. A. Hausenblas, & C. M. Janelle (Eds.), Handbook of Sport Psychology (2nd ed.).
Hays, K., Maynard, I., Thomas, O., & Bawden, M. (2007). Sources and types of confidence identified by world class sport performers. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 19(4), 434-456.

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