In my opinion, self-confidence is one of the most important things you can possess. Self-confidence reflects your overall self-worth. It will play a large part in determining your happiness through life and your success in fencing.
Fencing can be both extremely effective in improving self-worth and highly destructive in damaging self-worth. When fencing is used creatively with an emphasis on enjoyment, effective goal setting and monitoring of achievement of goals, it can build self-confidence as goals are reached and improvement in performance is experienced.
When people are compelled to participate in a sport for which they have minimal aptitude, this can be very destructive to self-confidence, as failure and lack of self-worth are consistently reinforced. Coaches should ask themselves whether they are prepared to take moral responsibility for inflicting this damage, even if numbers are needed to make up a team.
Self-confidence allows you to take risks, as you have enough confidence in your own abilities to be sure that if things do go wrong, you can put things right.
The way in which you are self-confident is important: if you are under-confidant, then you will refrain from taking risks that need to be taken. If you are overconfident, you will lack the desire to work hard.
Confidence should be based on observed reality. It should be based on the achievement of performance goals: you should be confident that you will perform up to your current abilities. Good self-confidence comes from a realistic expectation of success based on well practiced physical skills, a good knowledge of the skills of fencing, respect for your own competence, adequate preparation and good physical conditioning. The success attained should be measured in terms of achievement of personal performance goals as opposed to achievement goals such as winning.
When you are under-confident, you will suffer from fear of failure, which will prevent you from taking risks effectively, self-doubt, lack of concentration and negative thinking. Often you may find yourself blaming yourself for faults that lie elsewhere. These will damage your flow and disrupt your enjoyment of fencing. To turn things around, you may want to use suggestion, visualization and effective goal setting to improve your self-confidence and self-image.
Overconfidence is dangerous; it can lead you into situations in which you lack the ability to overcome the negative situations. It can set you up for serious failure that can devastate the self-confidence you should have. Overconfidence is confidence that is based on something other than ability. It may be a result of misleading or pushy parents or coaches trying to help you without understanding your abilities. It may be caused by vanity, ego or may be caused by positive thinking or imagery which lacks the ability.
Goal setting is probably the most effective way of building self-confidence. By setting small and measurable goals, achieving them, setting new goals, achieving them, and so on you prove your ability to yourself. You are able to prove to yourself that you are able to perform and achieve effectively. You can see and recognize and enjoy your achievement and feel real self-worth.
By knowing what you are able to achieve you will prepare yourself for a surprise failure. You almost always have a reasonably accurate assessment of what your abilities really are, which is unclouded by ego or vanity.
Imagery is useful in building self-confidence, but only if properly applied.
Imagery should be used to imagine achievement of a goal that is being worked towards in order to help you to believe that that goal is attainable. It should only be used when you are rationally aware that you have the raw ability to achieve a goal if you stretch yourself.
You may find it useful to counter negative thoughts with positive affirmations. You can use affirmations to build confidence and change negative behaviour and thought patterns into positive ones. You can base affirmations on clear, rational assessments of fact and use them to undo the damage that negative thinking may have done to your self-confidence.
Suggestions can be simple affirmations that undo the damage done by negative thinking or can be used to make psychological adjustments or reinforce confidence to help to achieve goals that you have set.
If you have a subject that you would like covered or comments, please e-mail me at gord@scarboroughfencing.on.ca.
"All For One And One For All"
Gordon Fong, Head Coach
Scarborough Fencing Club