Self Belief
By Allen Fox, Ph.D.
Most of us lack the self-belief of champions. As competitors we are all told, "It is crucially important to believe in yourself." Our coaches tell us that the great players believe in themselves, and this is what carries them past obstacles to victory in major championships.
We've recently been treated to an amazing example of self belief on the part of two great champions, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal in a marathon final at the 2012 Australian Open.
We are admonished that unless we believe in ourselves in the same way as these champions, all of our work may come to naught. Victory will remain elusive. Worst of all, we fear that if we don't believe in ourselves we have the dreaded "loser's mentality."
So we search the recesses of our hearts for that vital conviction. As we walk on court to face a highly-ranked and fearsome opponent we search for self-belief and are diminished when we come up empty! Despite our efforts, we simply can't bring ourselves to presume, with ample certainty, that we are going to win.
We have been indoctrinated to think that "winners" always believe they will win. Since we don't, we suspect that we lack some crucial mental element and that our match is half-way lost before we even start.
Players try in various ways to increase self-belief. They find coaches that tell them how talented and great they are. They meditate about winning, thinking over and over, "I am going to win. I am going to win." It doesn't help.
They visualize winning, picturing in their mind's eye hitting great shots past helpless opponents. It momentarily feels good, but on court harsh reality sets back in quickly. Or they try positive self talk. "I am powerful. My forehand is great. My serve is devastating." Unfortunately, they still have to perform, and it proves no easier. In the end the highly-ranked, scary opponent remains as scary as ever.
Are those of us not blessed with the champion's certainty doomed to defeat? Not by a long-shot! The fact is you can still win without the confidence of Roger Federer.
Consider the words of Marat Safin after he won the 2005 Australian Open: "This is a huge relief for me, because didn't believe I could win. I've already lost two finals here before and I started to doubt myself. I thought it was going to happen again."
Since Safin won the tournament anyway, it is obviously possible to win without a great deal of self belief. It is easier, of course, if you have it, but if you don't, there are positive of steps you can take to improve your chances.
First, however, let's take a deeper look at what we really mean when we talk about "believing in yourself." What we are really talking about confidence. Self-belief is another way of saying confidence. (Hereafter, I will use the terms "confidence" and "self belief" interchangeably.)
We all know what confidence feels like when we step on court – it's that warm, relaxed, certain, almost subliminal sense that we are going to win the match. And since it is such a great help in winning, it is useful to look at what causes confidence, and more importantly, to try to figure out how to get more of it.
Can we get it out of some psychologist's self-help book or, better yet, is there a pill we can take? (And if so, in which drug stores are they sold?)
Keep your wallet in your pocket, because there is, unfortunately, no intellectual way or over the counter drug that can create confidence out of uncertainty. As they used to say at Smith Barney, it must be obtained the old-fashioned way, you must earn it.
And this is done by winning. Only winning begets true confidence because confidence is a subconscious and emotional "expectation of success," and we develop these expectations, in large part, because of past experience.
Like any expectation, past history plays a powerful part in its generation. Since the sun has, without fail, come up in the morning for the past several billion years we expect it to come up tomorrow morning too.
In fact we are completely confident it will do so. If it had, in the past, come up only nine mornings out of ten we would still be pretty confident of its rising tomorrow, but not absolutely confident, and if its history had been to come up one morning in ten we would be downright dubious.
In the latter case one could line up psychologists from coast to coast telling you to have confidence in tomorrow's sunrise or prescribing visualization exercises where you picture the sun coming up, and you still wouldn't be confident. Reality and history will out.
It is the same with tennis. The more you win the more you subconsciously expect to win, that is, you become more "confident" or have more "self-belief." With this increased self-belief in hand, you become stimulated rather than frightened in the clutch and are, therefore, more likely to produce your best tennis.
On the other hand, if you have been losing, your confidence diminishes. You develop the lurking fear, especially in crucial situations, that something bad is about to happen.
You get shaky and become more likely to perform poorly and lose. Just look at Federer and Nadal. In their Slam encounters in the last few years, Roger simply has been unable to sustain his belief that he can actually win, even when he starts amazingly well.
Winning breeds confidence and confidence breeds more wins, just as losing tends to breed more losses. This has an unfortunate circular ring to it, but without victories, real confidence is an uncommon occurrence. Never fear, we will soon discuss how to break the cycle.
Increases in confidence with victory are cumulative - the more you win, the higher your confidence gets. Moreover, recent victory is another factor.
Winning a match yesterday has more impact on your present level of confidence than winning one last week or last month. This is another way of saying that the increase in confidence caused by a victory gradually decays with the passage of time, although the decay never completely reduces your level of confidence back to where it was before the last victory.
