aHEAD IN THE GAME

I don’t practice what I preach… I’ve talked about the importance of self efficacy and confidence in general. I’ve made some pretty bold statements about how, without them, you cannot be successful. It might surprise you then to know that I literally don’t have them, at least not always. That’s the thing about belief in yourself, it’s tricky. For me, it’s wildly erratic and fleeting. One day I feel like Messi, and the next I feel as if I don’t deserve to be on the field. This constant battle between knowing the importance of efficacy and knowing that I lack it is exhausting. For a while, I tried to gain efficacy from those around me. However, when that stopped working, I was forced to recognize my own shortcomings. Sometimes I really believed that I sucked at my sport, and that’s normal. Once I stopped fighting myself, I realized the fluctuations in how I felt were human, and there were solutions to help me maintain consistency.

At this point, if you’re reading this and you know me, you may be confused. On the surface, I am the epitome of confidence. In the words of 16-year-old Kimberly’s Instagram caption, “I spell confidence with 8 letters…, K.I.M.B.E.R.L.Y” (Don’t try to look it up now, it took me almost 10 years, but I finally archived that post). No one would have ever assumed that I would struggle with something as simple as believing in myself. But, that aura of confidence leaves as soon as I step between those white lines. There’s a duality that exists in me that, on paper, is truly perplexing. I think, however, that it makes perfect sense. I’ve talked about this before, but confidence and efficacy are not the same thing. As a refresher, confidence is an overall positive or negative belief in yourself. Self efficacy, is the belief in your capabilities to perform a certain task. Confidence is a more global, steady personality trait. Self efficacy is much more situational and dynamic. All of a sudden, I kinda make way more sense. Off the field, there’s not a person who believes in me more than myself. On the field, there’s not a person who believes in me less.

How I got to this point is a little bit of a mystery to me. Some days, I think I’m just wired differently. Other days, I think it’s an anxiety thing. If I had to take my best guess at it, I’d say that maybe I’m over reliant on the people around me. We know that self efficacy is affected by how we interpret those around us. Whether it be through our thoughts about their abilities (other efficacy), or how we think they view us (relation-inferred self efficacy; RISE), our views of ourselves are not entirely our own. I’d like to issue an apology for sprinkling in sports psych terms; I literally could NOT resist. In my case, I think that through some mechanism I learned that I couldn’t completely trust my own opinions about my experiences, thereby, blocking the main source of self efficacy (previous accomplishments). Instead, I relied on my coaches to tell me if I was doing well or not. For a while, this type of thinking worked perfectly for me. It was basically rewarded. I was always praised for my coachability, and had pretty good relationships with the coaching staff which enabled me to trust their ideas even more. Now this could be a really great thing… in moderation. Of course, you should listen to your coaches. It’s literally their job to develop your talent. However, your coaches can’t play for you; they’re not there for every training session and, moreover, you don’t have the same coaches for your entire life. You must develop some sort of instinct, some way of judging your ability for yourself.

I struggled the most with this in university. My sophomore year we got a new coach. He was way more demanding than our previous, but our team needed it. The issue was I had a hard time connecting with him. I couldn’t create the relationship that I had with past coaches, which severely damaged the feedback loop I was used to. I felt lost. My already fragile efficacy continued to decline. I remember after one game against NC State, we tied. I felt like I hadn’t played well. I didn’t say anything to anybody, but I just didn’t feel good about the performance. I tried to make myself feel better; I told myself, “If you really did THAT bad. He [my coach] would’ve said something; you would’ve sat the bench.” For a little, that worked and made me feel better. I was just too in my head, or so I thought. Like a day later, my coach asked to see me in his office to talk about my performance. I sat down and, honestly, I don’t remember much except for holding back tears as I heard the word “liability” in description of my play lately. Truthfully, I don’t remember whether he called me a liability, or said he didn’t want me to be a liability to our defense. I don’t know. I just remember at that moment admitting that I was struggling (to say the least) with my confidence and that it may be the reason for my poor performances. The next game I did start, but I sat the start of the second half, for the first time in my career. (I did go in when we were down a goal to score, have an assist, and we won the game… but that’s not the point. The story was just getting more depressing than I meant for, and I needed to up the mood).

All I know is, that situation broke me. I cemented in my brain that I couldn’t trust myself anymore. So, I went to the extreme. If a coach wasn’t around for feedback, I jumped to thinking the absolute worst. I learned that if I always thought I wasn’t doing something well enough then, when I did get feedback, I could never be blindsided or disappointed again. And this way of thinking kind of just stuck. I’d like to take a moment to say that I am in no way blaming my coach for my low self efficacy. It was something I had problems with before college; however, that interaction was just what brought it to the surface. I couldn’t avoid it anymore. I had to face it. After the meeting, I immediately walked downstairs, talked to my athletic trainer, and set up an appointment with our sports psychologist, which turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Now let’s not get confused; going to a psychologist was super helpful for me, but it wasn’t a miracle cure-all for changing my mentality. Through processes I truly don’t understand, this sort of negative feedback loop was engrained in my head. Day after day, play after play I had learned that if I was always my worst critic no one else’s feedback could hurt me. I genuinely believed it was a good thing; it kept me “hungry.” I always chased progress but never let myself believe I was making any. I say this so maybe you will understand how much WORK I had to do with the psychologist. Even though I immediately sought help after that meeting, the changes I wanted to see in myself weren’t going to happen that quickly. It took time. Even then, I didn’t magically go out on the field every day and think I’m the BEST player in the world, but I also didn’t actively think I was the WORST player either.

My psychologist and I knew that I had an issue trusting my own thoughts; so, what we did was give my brain something concrete that I could use to evaluate my performance. She introduced goal setting. Each week, I would write out 5-7 categories that I felt were most important to my play. I would rate myself in each category on a scale of 1-10. At the end of the week, I would grade myself again and mark any improvements. I would also give myself tangible, measurable goals for the week. Now, I know what you’re thinking, “Kim, isn’t that still kind of subjective given that you are rating yourself, not based on any standardized tool?” You would be 100% correct, but the exercise was more about separating my feelings from what was actually true. This allowed me to take more control over my thoughts, and often replace them with more productive ones. The truth is I was never the worst player on the field. I just felt like I was because I was only focusing on my mistakes, which were highlighted because I am a defender, (when we mess up goals are scored…kind of a big deal). One thing my psychologist kept stressing for me was that my thoughts and feelings are not always facts. These types of exercises exemplified that and allowed me to look at my performance more wholly and appreciate the positive things I was able to accomplish.

The following year, I didn’t really change any of my physical preparation, but I did alter my mentality. I saw a huge difference not only in my play but in my overall attitude; I just felt like I deserved to be on the field again. I had a little bit of my confidence back, and while I was at ECU, I felt it slowly growing. I started to become a player I had never been before. I stopped having to do the exercises that I had worked on in my sessions; that type of thinking had become automatic for me. However, now, being overseas I’m starting to see the same patterns develop as I did in university. The different environment, playing style, and communication difficulties have resorted in me falling back into my old ways. I felt lost, not able to draw on anything familiar with so much change. I find myself doubting my abilities and I struggle to ask coaches for guidance. The difference is, thanks to sports psych (s/o Julianne, my first psychologist), I can recognize these patterns and I already have some strategies to help reduce its effects.

I’m still not the most confident player but maybe one day my soccer self-efficacy will match my confidence, or maybe not. I still struggle with finding that sweet spot between relying on my own thoughts, and the thoughts of the people around me. Some days, I don’t know if I even believe in myself or not. Some days I don’t even know what I am feeling. What I’ve come to learn is… it doesn’t matter. Our views about self efficacy, other efficacy, or RISE aren’t permanent and our thoughts about them aren’t always fact. All these things are completely normal. I see so many motivational videos and I’ve heard many mental performance consultants talk to athletes like we’re robots, capable of having the “right” mentality. And I used to believe them. I would beat myself up knowing I lacked self efficacy, knowing it was important, and knowing not having it hurt my performance. A lot of really successful athletes are that way they just know they are the best. I know I might never be that player. I’m ok with that. I’m aware of what I lack and work to make up for it. I can’t be perfect in every category, nor can I do it every single day, and that’s totally ok. We can only ever strive to make progress. So, to any athletes struggling the way I did (and still do) I know you’re exhausted. I know it’s tiring being your biggest hater not because you want to but because you feel like you must. I can’t change that, at least not through one little blog post. All I ask is that you take a moment to appreciate where you are and what you’ve accomplished because there isn’t anyone else. There’s only one of you who got to where you are today living your exact life, facing those exact situations, and those exact obstacles. YOU did that and you did a good job. Be proud of it, you deserve it.