Creating Confidence Before You’re Confident

One of the toughest things to do in sports is to create confidence before you feel confident in your ability. There are couple ways to accomplish this, but I want to focus on just one area here.

First, good mental baseball teaching will tell you to break the game into the choices instead of the results. It’s easy to take a look at a game and say, “I went 0 for 4”, or “I gave up 5 runs”. Both of those examples are results-based and don’t take into account the choices you made during the game. Instead, break your at bats into right and wrong decisions. This will help you identify what it is that you need to improve upon. For example, ask yourself some of the following questions: Did you swing at pitches that were in the strike zone? Were you aggressive on pitches in the zone early in the count or did you watch a pitch or two that you should have swung at? Those are examples of evaluating your performance based on the choices you made. The goal is to end up making far more positive choices during a game than negative choices. If you can accomplish this, then regardless of your results, you'll begin to become more profecient at the mental game of baseball.

The problem is when athletes don’t reflect on the process of playing and they just go about their movements. Remember, it’s a choice to hustle onto the field and down to first, ALWAYS. It’s a choice to communicate to your teammates how many outs there are every time an out is made. It’s a choice to be aggressive at the plate even though you may not have had many successful results that game. It’s a choice to be involved with your team in the dugout even though you don’t feel like it. Sports are full of choices, and those athletes who begin to recognize the choices they make, separate themselves from the pack.