The way you talk to yourself has a major impact on your confidence as an athlete. When your self-talk becomes overly negative or judgmental, it becomes much more difficult to stay focused, manage your emotions, and continue playing confidently.
Using positive self-talk doesn’t mean pretending everything is okay or trying to convince yourself that you’re the best. It means using your thoughts more encouragingly and productively so they help you perform better.
Here are five self-talk tips you can use to increase your confidence in sports.
1. Talk to Yourself Like You Would Talk to a Teammate
This is probably the most common advice athletes receive about how they think and talk to themselves. The reason this advice is so common is that when we examine how we talk to our teammates, it’s usually vastly different from how we talk to ourselves.
Whenever I’m working with an athlete in 1-on-1 coaching and we begin discussing their self-talk, I have them go through two different examples. The first example is how they tend to talk to themselves, and the second is imagining that they talked to one of their teammates in that same way.
Most of the time, athletes laugh when they imagine talking to their teammates the way they talk to themselves. They know that if they constantly criticized a teammate, questioned everything they did, or told them how terrible they were playing, that teammate probably wouldn’t feel very good.
But when it comes to ourselves, it’s easier to feel like being overly critical isn’t a big deal. You may feel like it’s okay to be hard on yourself because you’re always going to be with yourself no matter how negatively you think.
When you imagine that you’re talking to a teammate, it naturally puts you into a more encouraging mindset.
If there’s one word I like to use when it comes to self-talk, it’s encouraging.
This doesn’t mean you have to be positive about everything, tell yourself everything is okay, or constantly say that you’re the best. It means talking to yourself in a way that helps you move past a mistake and reset for whatever is about to happen next.
Imagine that one of your teammates makes a mistake. You probably wouldn’t turn toward them and say, “Why did you do that? That was horrible.”
You would hopefully recognize that talking to your teammate that way wouldn’t help them feel better or perform better. Instead, you would talk to them in a way that helps them reset and prepare for the next play.
That’s the same way you want to begin talking to yourself. Instead of constantly beating yourself up and thinking, “I suck,” “That was horrible,” or “Why did I do that?” work on responding in a more encouraging way.
2. Replace Judgment With Instruction
Most negative self-talk tends to show up immediately after a mistake. You miss a shot, turn the ball over, make a bad decision, or fail to execute a skill, and your first thought might be, “I suck,” or “That was horrible.”
Those thoughts are judgments, and they aren’t productive. They don’t help you understand what happened, make an adjustment, or perform better moving forward.
Another way I like to think about positive self-talk is productive self-talk. Your thoughts should help you feel more confident, become more focused, and play better as you move forward.
Instead of judging yourself after a mistake, begin giving yourself instructions. You might tell yourself:
- “Next time, stay down on the ball.”
- “Follow through on my shot.”
- “Make sure I stay in front of the defender.”
These thoughts give you something useful to focus on. They shift your attention away from simply feeling bad about the mistake and toward what you can do differently the next time you have the opportunity.
Replacing judgment with instruction also helps you learn from mistakes more effectively. It’s difficult to make adjustments when you’re trapped in a loop of anger, frustration, and negative self-talk.
Anger can block you from clearly thinking about what you actually need to work on. Instead of identifying the adjustment you need to make, you become stuck judging yourself for what already happened.
Get into the habit of giving yourself instructions instead of immediately judging yourself whenever something doesn’t go the way you want it to.
3. Use Believable Self-Talk
I was recently on a coaching call with a high school basketball player who has been working on becoming more aggressive. Because of fear and anxiety, he tends to be passive when he plays.
He told me that during a recent tournament, he didn’t feel as confident when he was playing against a team he knew was very good.
One of the self-talk statements he had been using was, “I am the best out here.”
The problem was that when he looked at the other team and saw how good they were, he didn’t believe that statement. He could repeat “I am the best” as many times as he wanted, but it wasn’t creating the confidence or aggressive emotional state he needed.
That creates a difficult situation. You know you need confidence because you need to play aggressively and give yourself and your team the best chance to succeed, but you’re also trying to convince yourself of something you don’t truly believe.
This is why your self-talk needs to be believable.
I view self-talk through the lens of understanding that our thoughts and the way we view ourselves during a game help shape our emotional state. We can use our thoughts to generate or create a certain feeling.
But we also have to be realistic with ourselves. If you repeat a statement you don’t believe, it probably won’t create the emotional response you want.
For this basketball player, I asked him what emotional state he wanted to create. He wanted to feel confident, but more specifically, he wanted to play aggressively.
We reframed his self-talk so it was no longer focused entirely on convincing himself that he was already the best player on the court. Instead, he could tell himself:
- “I’m going to go out there and dominate.”
- “I don’t care how good the other team is; I’m going to be the best today.”
- “I’m going to play the hardest today.”
- “I’m going to show them what I can do.”
This kind of self-talk is especially helpful during big games, difficult matchups, or pressure situations.
You may not always be able to convince yourself that you’re the best player out there, particularly when you don’t feel that way in the moment. However, you can tell yourself that you’re going to play aggressively, play hard, work to dominate, and see what happens.
You aren’t trying to convince yourself that you already feel a certain way that you don’t feel or believe.
You’re focusing on the way you want to go out there and play.
4. Prepare Phrases Before Competition
Preparing self-talk phrases before competition gives you simple mantras you can use while you’re playing. When you’re in the middle of a competition and your emotions are running high, it can be difficult to stop and decide what you should say to yourself.
That’s why you want to think about these phrases ahead of time. You can then use them during games instead of trying to come up with the perfect thought in the middle of a stressful moment.
I recently worked with a track athlete who had a simple mantra she repeated while she ran. The phrase helped her remain present, but it also helped her maintain her confidence.
There are different types of phrases you can prepare. You might use confidence-building statements such as:
- “I believe in myself.”
- “I am prepared.”
- “I trust my training.”
- “I trust my skills.”
You could also prepare a thought-stopping phrase that helps you move on after a mistake, a bad call, or another frustrating moment. It could be something as simple as, “Forget it. Reset. Play hard.”
The goal isn’t to come up with complicated or overly detailed statements. These should be simple phrases that are easy to remember and repeat when you’re under pressure.
You can use these statements to generate a certain emotional state and help yourself become more focused.
Think about the phrases before competition, prepare them, and then apply them during games.
5. Use Self-Talk to Respond to Mistakes
Mistakes can hurt your confidence more than almost anything else during competition. When you make a mistake and immediately begin beating yourself up, your confidence can quickly go downhill.
That’s why it’s so common for one mistake to snowball into several more mistakes. You’re no longer as focused on the game in front of you because part of your attention is still replaying, judging, and reacting emotionally to what already happened.
You want to use your self-talk after mistakes to refocus yourself on what happens next.
The goal isn’t to pretend the mistake didn’t matter or convince yourself that it was actually a good play.
Instead, remember that it’s not about continuing to care about the mistake that just happened. It’s about caring about what is about to happen.
After a mistake, your main responsibility is putting yourself into the mental and emotional state you need to make the next play.
That might mean encouraging yourself, giving yourself an instruction, or using one of the reset phrases you prepared ahead of time.
It doesn’t matter if you believe the previous play was the worst mistake you could have made. That play is over, and continuing to judge yourself won’t change it.
After a mistake, your focus needs to shift away from what already happened and toward preparing yourself for the next play. Use your self-talk to reset, refocus, and get yourself ready for what is about to happen.
Final Thoughts
The way you talk to yourself can either help you build confidence or cause your confidence to drop throughout a game. The difference often comes down to whether your thoughts are encouraging, believable, and productive.
Work on talking to yourself like you would talk to a teammate, replacing judgment with instruction, preparing phrases that help you create the emotional state you need, and using your self-talk to move forward after mistakes instead of remaining emotionally stuck on what already happened.
Changing your self-talk can be difficult because every athlete has different negative thoughts, emotional reactions, and situations that affect their confidence.
If this is something you’re dealing with consistently, this is exactly what I help athletes work through in 1-on-1 coaching.
Through coaching, we can develop self-talk that fits the way you think, the challenges you experience, and the emotional state you need to perform your best.
The goal is to help you respond to mistakes more effectively, manage negative thinking, build greater confidence, and improve your performance.
Click here to learn more about 1-on-1 coaching, or fill out the form below to reach out to me directly.
