Lessons from Sport
Psychology:
How to be confident and
achieve your goals!
Dr. Caroline Heaney
These slides are available to download from www.open.ac.uk/blogs/OU-sport
Session overview
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What is confidence?

Where does confidence come from?
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Performance profiling activity
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Goal setting
What is self-confidence?

What is confidence? What does confidence mean to you?
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Self-belief / belief that you can achieve your goals
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Positive attitude
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Definition: Self-efficacy is “the belief that a person has in their capability of performing a
particular task”(Bandura, 1986) I.e. Situation or task specific self-confidence
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How do you know when someone is confident (or lacking confidence)?
Think of an example of an extremely confident person – what signals do they give off?
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Actions, behaviours, body language
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E.g. walking tall, calm and focussed appearance, eye contact
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Interesting video:
http://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are
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How can you use this to improve your self-confidence?

Fake it until you make it!
Sources of self-efficacy
According to Bandura’s theory self-efficacy comes from a range of sources,
including:

PERFORMANCE ACCOMPLISHMENTS – Previous mastery experiences (“Last time
I was successful”)

VICARIOUS EXPERIENCE – Information derived from seeing others perform the
task/activity (role models – “if she can do it so can I”!)

VERBAL PERSUASION – The persuasive techniques used by self or others (“I can
do this!”)

EMOTIONAL AROUSAL – The performers appraisal of their emotional arousal
e.g. their cognitive interpretation of their physiological arousal (“My nerves
are a sign of readiness!”)
How can you use these to boost your confidence?
Performance profiling activity

Strategy to improve confidence and aid goal-setting
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PROCESS:


Identify the qualities of the ‘perfect’ performer in your role (could be skill, attitude,
psychological, physical, technical etc related)
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Give yourself a score out of 10 on each of these

Identify your strengths & areas for development
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Variations: (a) can ask a colleague or line manger to score you as well
(b) can identify a target score
TASK:

Working with people who do a similar job to you identify at least 8 qualities and then
rate yourself against each of these (out of ten).
QUALITY
CURRENT RATING
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Make a list of your strengths (be proud!)

If you have time set yourself some goals for development
IDEAL RATING
Goal setting
A few notes on effective goal-setting:

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Types of goals
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Outcome goals = Outcome of a particular event e.g. to win a race (externally
referenced, less control)

Performance goals = Internally referenced end product of performance e.g. to run a race
in a particular time

Process goals = The processes to be engaged in e.g. to drive low out of the starting
blocks
Set both short term and long term goals (stepping stones to ultimate goal)

What are your short term and long term career aspirations?
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What do you need to do to achieve these?
SMART / SMARTER goals
That’s all from me…
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Thanks for listening!

These slides and supporting resources will be available on
the Sport and Fitness team blog:
www.open.ac.uk/blogs/OU-sport