Does your confidence rise and fall with the result of every shot you hit?  Do you find yourself spending more time in despair on the golf course then in celebration?  If you do then you are riding an emotional rollercoaster.

You could probably nominate a number of people who seem to have confidence in anything they do.  Even if they are doing something they have rarely attempted, they still have a belief about being able to do it well.  Most people are quite different; they require constant reinforcement and evidence to support their confidence.

Athletes who require constant reinforcement generally have base levels of self-confidence which are not very robust.  There is plenty of debate about whether this can be changed, but the main thing is for the athlete to understand what they need to do to ensure they have high levels of confidence.

Beliefs

A lot of your core beliefs were formed during the first 10 years of your life.  They came from your parents, friends, school, and the meaning you gave to events which occurred during those formative years.  During that time you also developed most of your core values.  Whenever you are living according to those values you will feel good about yourself.  So knowing what those values are is an important starting point when you are searching for ways to develop strong self-belief and confidence.

Evidence

Create an environment in training where you can catch yourself demonstrating improvement.  That could be using a number of different drills which have a scoring system attached to them and doing them on a regular basis.  Make it a weekly goal to improve your personal best score with the drills.  If you are in the gym, then complete your workout plan strictly according to your coach’s instructions.  Believe me, if you stick to the short rest periods on your programme, it makes the workout much harder.

If negative self-talk has been something that you are struggling to overcome, then give yourself a rating out of 10 (1 = constant and negative self-talk, 10 = no negative self-talk at all) for the quality of your speech during the day.  It will make you much more aware of your habitual self-talk.  Once you are aware of it, then you can go about changing it.

Reinforcement

Record your progress, especially anything that indicates positive progress.  I ask golfers to write down three things they did well during the day.  These could be times they showed courage, commitment, determination, certainty, perseverance, living in alignment with their values or anything else which reinforces strong self-belief.  After a few weeks you will have over 100 positive messages.  Imagine how you’ll feel reading back through those?  Oh, keep adding to them until you have thousands.  Don’t stop after 100.

There is nothing that will build your confidence more than winning.  Winning isn’t just taking out the first prize in an important event; it is just as important to list the small successes: completing a difficult training day, maintaining a sharp focus in your practice when the weather is poor, having a personal best in a challenging putting drill.

When you do have these successes, get excited about their achievement.  Our brains are attracted to things that have a strong emotional attachment.  The only strong emotional attachment that most golfers demonstrate is to poor shots.  The response to good shots is often not much more than a shrug of the shoulders.  That is as good as dismissing the good shot.  How about turning that around?  Have a neutral response to poor shots and a strong emotional response to good shots.  Celebrate and encourage yourself just as you would a child who takes their first few steps.