Loss of Confidence

Losing confidence in your own ability short term, long
term “am I really good enough to make it”, at competition
or post injury can be crippling. It doesnt even have to be at competing level - some pople lose confidence and momentul before they even atttempt to compete.

We all know someone that says they are going to compete,
 work up to it and then quit weeks away from competition or
always have "a problem" which prevents them from
competing.

When we experience a loss of confidnce this it can feel
as though you entire training or competing is over and
it can be hard to see a
way out of it. Sometimes it looks like there is no point in
continuing if your doubt you can reach the level you want
to. Some people have this running in the background all
the time and at a time used it for motivation - but with all
 negitive based motivation, this eventially becomes destructive and actually eats into what confidence you do have left even more. There is then the knock on effect of loss of motivation and also then being susceptible to injury etc.

With a loss of confidence this can be from a long term
issue where there has always been a doubt or
generally low self esteem. You may have used this
for motivation in the past to prove everyone else and
maybe yourself wrong. With this type of issue, when
you succeed to a certain level then the momentum
drops away and the use of the negative motivation
no longer seems to work. This is straight forward
to deal with but hard to identify sometimes for yourself.
There are some very simple techniques and
management skills to regain or build confidence and a
lot of it is understanding what the fears are which hold
you back.

It can sometimes be a lot more terrifying to deal with a problem and move forward into the unknownof your real capabilities than to stay in the same place even though you know you could do so much more, but ts the "devil you know" syndrome.