Advice from a Certified Mental Performance Coach

Dr. Lauren Tashman answers your questions!

There are three things I would recommend here: 1. performance routines - creating (and adapting when needed) intentional routines (pre-practice, pre-game, refocusing routines, post-game, post-practice, etc.) will help you set yourself up for success, 2. a clear picture for yourself of what you want it to look and feel like when you are at your best (i.e., your core values) - have 2-3 things in mind about how you want to think and play so that those are your compass to avoid having expectations for yourself but not meeting them consistently and to guard against perfectionism and holding yourself to unrealistic standards, and 3. focus on giving the best of what you have on any given day - we are not always going to be at our very best so the more we can focus on the "right" things when we aren't instead of focusing on the fact that we aren't at our best, the more we can ensure we are giving our best effort no matter what

Prepare for the things you are worried about. In practice, in your mental preparation, etc. prepare for stress, pressure, challenge so you are training yourself to feel confident in the face of stress and pressure and developing confidence in your ability to respond resiliently. I would also recommend working on your self-talk and ability to reframe your interpretation of situations and events. Our body reacts the same way to things we are nervous and excited about, so practice being able to change your perspective so that you are excited about the challenge ahead of you rather than worried about what might happen. If you have very high anxiety, then I would recommend incorporating some useful distractions into your pre-game routine so you are taking your mind off things (i.e., keeping it busy on something else). 

Two things that come to mind immediately here - 1. Take more of a growth mindset and deliberate practice approach to your game. The whole point of practicing and playing is to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones, develop and refine our skills, and use every experience good and bad to become better versions of ourselves each and every day. 2. Relatedly - train your decision making. Become a student of the game before the game by thinking about what decisions you might have to make during the game and what the best decisions might be in those situations. And then post-game incorporate reflective practice into your post-competition routine so you are thinking about how you can approach situations you encountered differently in the future (notice I said "differently" there...yes sometimes it is about doing things better, but in most sports and most situations it is about thinking about the different options we have and how we can use those to our advantage). 

The two things I recommend here are pressure training (the more you train yourself to play under pressure in practice the more confident you will feel doing so in game situations) and visualization (our brain doesn't know the difference between what we imagine and what happens in real life so we can use that to our advantage in imagining ourselves in pressure situations, sometimes seeing ourselves being successful and sometimes seeing ourselves responding resiliently when we aren't successful). And, similar to a comment above for another question - manage your expectations of yourself to avoid holding yourself to perfectionistic standards (the greatest goalies in the world have had shots scored on them so you will too, that doesn't mean you aren't a good player). 

The answer here also applies to the question about building confidence for risky plays. Prepare yourself in practice and using visualization to practice this and build confidence doing so. 

  I never come off the field satisfied/If you screwed up how do you get your mind off of it/My biggest fear is disappointing my teammates:

All of these make me think that you might be focusing on striving for perfection rather than striving for excellence and giving your best effort which isn't always going to mean that you are successful. What I recommend here is clarifying your core values so that you know the few things that you want to represent when you are out there on the field. Use that as your compass thinking about who you want to be out there on the field instead of reinforcing to yourself that you are only successful if you get everything right. And remember, one of the beautiful things about soccer is that you get many chances in a practice or game to focus on the next play. That is what we should be striving for in ourselves and thinking makes a great teammate....someone who brings a great mindset, gives the best effort they can, and keeps trying until time is up. And then we come back the next time and just try again. What we really want out of ourselves is to feel congruent with what matters most to us (our core values) and to be able to trust ourselves, be trusted, and trust others. A great teammate and team is one that holds everyone accountable to effort, mindset, and a great team environment - not just results. 

The challenge with confidence related to injury or concerns about reinjury is that it makes us hesitant or avoidant or we try too hard to not get hurt which all makes us more susceptible rather than less susceptible. We know injury is an inevitable part of sport so part of what we have to do here is accept the risk and build robust confidence in our abilities not confidence that we can protect ourselves from getting injured. So when we can accept this risk, it frees us up to focus on preparing ourselves to play freely. And each time we encounter some adversity, including injury, we have to use it to build our confidence in our ability to overcome that challenge and become better for it. That is actually what resilience is - we can't build resilience if we don't experience adversity and being resilient doesn't mean bouncing back it actually means bouncing forward. Ultimately we have to put our focus on the things we can control (i.e., our mindset, our preparation) and the things we can influence (ex: our team culture) rather than the things we can't control. 

Regardless of what caused our confidence to decrease, what I always recommend here is making sure you are using diverse sources to build or rebuild your confidence. The successes you have had, the skills you have mastered, your self talk, your preparation, visualizing yourself being successful (and watching past performances of you being successful), times you have demonstrated your ability, performance routines, etc. I bet if you sit down right now you could list at least 10 reasons why you should/could be confident in yourself - start a list and keep adding to it so that you have evidence to look to when you doubt yourself. That coach was just one data point, use multiple data points to build and rebuild your confidence. 

The number one thing I recommend here is mindfulness training. You don't have to sit down and meditate for 10 minutes each day necessarily (though research has shown that about 10 minutes at least a few times a week actually changes our brains!), the goal here is to spend some time practicing putting our focus on something (for example our breath) and then noticing when our mind inevitable wanders and starts thinking gently refocusing it back on the intended target of our focus (ex: your breath). This practice of setting our focus and non-judgmentally noticing we need to refocus our mind trains our ability to do that even in the most challenging situations. It helps us create some distance with our minds so that we aren't always caught up in them or thinking they are the source of truth. I think about it like training ourselves to watch ourselves on the rollercoaster rather than always be riding on it. The key here is consistency...same like consistency in physical training. Even if you do this for 30 seconds a few times a day or one minute as part of your morning or pre-practice/game routine the consistency of training your mind in this way will set you up to be able to get out of your head.