Welcome back to the raising unstoppable girl athletes podcast. I'm coach Bri. And elite competitor coach for girl athletes. Welcome to today's episode. This is a special athlete tip episode two. If you are an athlete. This is for you. We are talking about something that you can do. To be more confident in your next competition. Now, before we get into that, I want to give a shout out to an athlete inside our mental training program called the Elite Competitor Program. Her name is Brianna. So this is what she said. She's a tennis player. And she says before ECP, I would get really frustrated on the court and it made me play poorly and lose my love of the game. I also have very low confidence in myself. The program has helped me work through these things and mostly just enjoy the sport more. I am also seeing significant improvement in my play. My favorite part was seeing the results. It did take work and commitment, but I got rewarded and I feel like I am such a better player and person in general. It's also just very rewarding to finally see your hard work, pay off. Just wanted to thank you for helping me and other athletes. My mental state is so much better now and it's making me a better tennis player and a better person in general. So thank you. So, thank you, Brianna. I am so proud of the progress that you have made in the elite competitor program. This is all a Testament to your hard work to your commitment. And to recognizing that your mental game plays a big role, not just in the results that you're getting on the tennis court, but also just in your life and in your enjoyment of what you're doing. So athletes. That is the main goal here that you were enjoying your sport. And I'm not saying that it's going to be rainbows and butterflies all the time. But enjoyment in the hard work, in the sacrifice and in the grit, knowing, and seeing that you are getting better, that your hard work is paying off. That is enjoyment. And that is what Brianna has found in ECP. Okay, we're going to get into today's episode. Like I said, we're talking about how to be more confident in your next competition. So, this is for you. If you were looking for a strategy to use, maybe you have a big competition coming up, maybe you just haven't been feeling super confident lately, or maybe you're just looking for that edge, that too, you need to compete at another level. So. Here's what I'm going to talk about. First. I want you to know this is really important. Two things and two feelings can exist at the same time. You can feel nervous before you compete and likely you do, and you can be confident at the same time. You can feel worried. About your competition, you can feel a little unsure of what's about to happen. And be confident at the same time. You can also not feel a hundred percent ready. And choose to be ready in step. What am I talking about here? You feel a lot of things in your sport. Right. You likely feel frustrated at times you maybe feel sad or unmotivated or you feel nervous. And that is all part of being an athlete. Those are not signs that you are not confident. Those are not signs that you're actually not going to play or perform well. But when the time comes, you get to choose to be ready to compete. And being ready is not a feeling. It is a choice. And so don't wait for a feeling. To come to make you be confident. You'll be waiting forever. You quite literally will be waiting forever because feelings come and go and do not let negative feelings. So feelings like, Ooh, I don't know if I'm ready for this feelings of nervousness feelings of, oh, I'm not sure how I'm going to play. Don't let those feelings convince you that you can't choose to be ready to go out and compete and do your best. You can choose right now. That you will be confident. You can choose right now that I can feel nervous. I can feel excited. I can feel anxious and be ready. And you can boil it down to just this simple statement. I am ready. When you're about to get out there and compete, you're about to do the thing. Maybe it's even just a tough training session and you've got all these feelings and emotions that are. You know, swirling around inside of you. And you're like being pulled one direction and another. And he was like, oh my gosh, I don't feel confident. You can choose to tell yourself I can feel all those feelings. And choose to be ready. I am ready. And it's almost like, you know, if you ever as a kid were laying down in the grass, looking up at the sky, maybe it's a blue sky and you see some clouds. And, you know, you see those clouds kind of passing by all of those feelings that you're feeling before you compete. What I just talked about, right? The nervousness, the anxiousness, the wondering what's going to happen. And want you to just imagine that those are like clouds in the sky and they're, they're passing by. They come. And they go, and they're not going to determine they're not going to dictate how you go out and how you compete and how you perform. You can feel nervous. It's going to come and it's going to go. You can feel excited. It's going to come. It's going to go. You can feel a little worried. Got feelings gonna come and it's also going to go. You don't need to hang on to that feeling and use it as an excuse for why you're not ready to compete. You can feel all those feelings and choose to be ready. Being ready is not a feeling. It's a choice. Being competent is not a feeling. It's a choice. And so that's what I want you to shift your mindset about. And this is something that we talk about inside the elite competitor program, that we are not going to attach our performance to our feelings. We are going to choose to be ready out there. And a lot of times, a lot of athletes fall apart under pressure because they're so worried about the outcome. You're so worried about what's going to happen out there. You're still worried about the score about losing or winning or what people are going to think. And I want you right now to release control of the outcome. That is one easy strategy. That you can do. That will actually help you play better and be confident going into your next competition is to release control of the outcome. But it doesn't mean that you don't care about the outcome. Obviously we all like the feeling of winning and doing well more than the feeling of losing and not Dumas. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Releasing control of the outcome means that you are going to, instead of putting all of your energy into the result of the competition. You're going to shift your energy, all of that energy and to what you can control in that competition. So really all that you can control is your effort and your attitude. And your mindset around this whole idea that you're ready and you can adapt to anything. You might not know what's going to happen in your competition. Most don't, you are not a mind reader. You don't have a crystal ball. That's going to tell you exactly how this competition is going to go. So stop wasting your time, worrying about it. And said, put all of that energy and to focusing on what you know, to be true. And that is, you know, how to work hard. You know that you're adaptable. You do that every single day in training you work hard. And you're adaptable and that's all you need. If you go in with that mindset of, I don't know what's going to happen, but whatever happens I can adjust to. And all I need to do is show up and work my hardest. Maybe even throwing you a good teammate. If you play a team sport and you just focus all of your energy on that, instead of wasting energy on things that you don't know, what. The outcome. You don't know how to control. You're going to play better. And you're actually gonna be more confident because you can control those things. You can't control the rafts, you can't control the other players. You can't control your teammates, can't control your coach and their decisions and all that energy that you waste thinking about those things is taking away from you being able to go out and play your best. So focus your energy on what you can control out there and allow yourself to be confident and be ready, knowing that you can control how hard you work. You can control your response to things like mistakes or bad calls or things like that. You can be a good teammate and those things actually make the biggest difference in the outcome than anything else. Okay. So I'll leave you with that couple of things to recap. Remember being ready? And being confident is not a feeling. It's a choice. So stop waiting for a feeling and stop being carried away by some of these negative feelings that you experienced by being an athlete just happens. Watch them come, watch them go and choose to be ready and choose to be confident instead and released control of that outcome. Focus more on what you can control in this next competition. Alright athletes. I hope this was helpful. Remember, I'm coach Bree and I will see you in the next athlete tip episode of the raising unstoppable girl athletes podcast.