Welcome back to the raising unstoppable girl athletes podcast. I'm coach Bri, a mental performance coach for a girl athletes. And I'm so happy you're here. Whether you were just getting started on this journey with your daughter, or you have a lot of seasons under your belt. This podcast is for you to help know how to raise a self confident, mentally tough athlete, and also for you to enjoy this Burt's journey. Now we're going to get into exactly that today's episode is about keys to raising a confident athlete. And we're going to talk just specifically about some strategies that you can start. Now. This will be a little. A bit of a cookie episode, because I want you to just really get some hard hitting strategies that you can start implementing. Now, before I do, I want to give a shout out to a mom and an athlete in our community. So Jen recently went through the elite defender program and she had this to say recently, she actually posted this year. She sent this to me. She sent me a picture of her daughter, just. Laughing after a swim competition. Okay. And you maybe don't see the significance in that, but if you could see this smile that her daughter has on her face it's just, I mean, just amazing to see. And Jen said, my happy daughter is back. Thank you. She. You're in for PR so far this weekend in her first Ohio junior champion, cut, which, you know, the results are great. The results are there. But the fact that her daughter is happy, she's enjoying her sport. That is what we are all about because we know when athletes are happy, they're enjoying what they're doing. They actually perform and play better and everyone is on a better path. So, so happy to hear this. Keep up the good work. All right. Let's get into today's episode keys to raising self confident athletes. Now, first I want to talk about what we mean when we say self-confident. And we draw and pull on Dr. Becky Kennedy's research in this area of confidence. And we think it applies perfectly to athletes. Confidence comes from trusting ourselves. How Dr. Becky Kennedy puts it is feeling at home within ourselves. And what that means is that our athletes are able to experience a wide range of emotions throughout their athletic experience. Now, obviously we know this also mirrors their real life, but athletics are such a great way for them to experience such a. Wide range of things interact with so many different people. So many different situations where they are feeling a whole gamut of emotions, right? Sad, dejected, angry, frustrated, too happy, elated, you know, joyful all of the, and everywhere in between. And we want athletes to be able to experience a wide range of those emotions and still feel like they can navigate them. When athletes feel alone in their emotions or that they can't actually experience those things. That's when they start to lose confidence, they don't start to, they actually don't play well because they're afraid of feeling out there. They're afraid of feeling like they're not good enough. They're afraid of what's going to happen. If they don't perform, you know, how they should. And they can't process and they can't sit without emotion. So confidence really comes from having the skills to be able to navigate those emotions and fuel those emotions because sport. We will not always go your daughter's way. We just know that for sure. Okay. So knowing that here's what we can do. There's three things we're going to cover that can really that we really know help athletes confidence in the moment. But also if we're thinking long game here, too. The first one is verbal communication. So you have a lot of, of influence whether you believe it or not. And what your daughter hears from day to day. So. Specifically in moments before, during and after she competes, like we know we know that to be true. Okay. And what we are saying to her in those moments and what we are emphasizing can help her build confidence or actually help not help, but take away her confidence. All right. So the first thing that we can do is what I just mentioned about confidence. At the beginning, her emotions, we can normalize a name and validate her emotions that actually builds confidence in our athletes, because we also know that when we name emotions, we actually. Actually help our athletes process them. They see them as normal. Oh, this has a name. Okay. This is normal. And now athletes are not afraid of those emotions. They can actually experience them. They can actually be in them and they can move to the other side of them and just go on with just living and going on with their sport. Instead of getting tied up. In this emotion. So even just normalizing a name and saying, oh, you were so frustrated that that happened. You're disappointed that did not happen, how you want it to happen. You put in so much hard work and it's disappointing to not see the results. Just meaning, like what you're hearing from your daughter. Is powerful. The other thing you can do in your verbal communications is to focus on what is in her control and highlight who she is. As an athlete. I talk about this a lot, but when our athletes are to tie their confidence to external factors like wins stats, other people's validation, they will always be up and down and all over the place. And we do not want that for our athletes. We do not want their confidence high to somebody else's validation. We do not want their confidence tied to their stats. They are not their stats. They are not their wins. They are not their sports, even. It is what they do. It's part of who they are, but it is not who they are. And so athletes who show perfectionism as they move through their sport and through their life. Often we're praised for being really good, having the best grades having the best stats. I will these things because they're easy to praise and we don't want to not praise them. But if we are only focusing on them, that our athletes are getting the message that who they are is what they do. And so they must do do do. And that comes with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of anxiety because they ultimately can't control the outcomes out there. And so we want to shift where we are. Placing our validation and our recognition. Right? So the athlete who is confident has a competitive advantage. That's what we see with athletes coming through our program, but also the athlete who has a mom and a dad and or the athlete who has parents who know what to say and not say who know and are intentional about where they're placing their validation and their praise, who know what to say during that pregame time for their athletes who say post-competition car at home. Like that athlete also has a competitive advantage. And so that's exactly what we teach in our program. We actually go over this in our free training for sports moms. So if you want to get kind of an idea of how you can make sure that your verbal communication is on point for your athlete, go ahead and register for that training. It's at train her game.com. We lay it out for you, and we provide you with very tangible things that you can be saying, and also avoiding saying in those moments to help your daughter with her confidence. Okay, so that's number one is that. Your verbal communication is very, very important in helping your athlete build her. Self-confidence okay. Number two is the opposite of that. Her your non-verbal communication. Is very important to her self-confidence and when we say nonverbal communication, we mean, what are you communicating to your daughter just by how you are living, how you are showing up and what you are doing. You are the closest and most influential example of confidence in your daughter's life right now? Again, whether you see that or not, whether you think that your daughter thinks that about you or not, she is picking up on what you are putting down. Okay. And you're influencing her environment every single day. And so I want you just to take a moment to reflect on, like, how are you modeling confidence for her? How are you doing that? What is your self-talk light? Right. All these things that we want for our daughter, we want her to be strong content. We want her to have positive self-talk. We want her to love her body. We want her to have strong relationships. We want her to stand up for herself, be a leader. Yes, those are all great things. In fact, I want you to write all those things down and all those things that you want for your daughter. And then I want you to look at yourself and I want you to just, you know, in not in a place from a place of guilt, from a place of empowerment, how can I model these for my daughter? How can I show her to stand up for what she believes in? How can I show her how I can get out of my comfort zone and try something new? How can I show her how to chase after my goals and dreams with no guarantee that I'm going to get them? How can I model this for her? Because believe it or not again, and believe me. Trust me. Your daughter is watching. And she is picking up on what cues you're putting out and the confidence that you're modeling for her. So don't overlook that piece of it. Okay. That's number two, number one, verbal communication. What are you saying to her before, during, and after she competes, where do you, where are you placing your praise and recognition? All right. If you want a clear path on what to do for that, make sure you check out that training, train her game.com. We laid out for you. All right. Number two, nonverbal communication. How are you showing up in your life to model confidence for her? And number three. She also needs to have the skills to navigate being an athlete. We think sometimes that, you know, athletes will just pick up these skills with time. They'll get confident with the next team they're on. Right. Or when she, you know, once you kinda like gets on that to that level, then she'll be confident. That's not how it works. In fact, the higher your daughter goes in her sport. The more levels she climbs, the more will be expected of her. Not less. And I speak from experience here as a high level collegiate athlete and a coach. It does not get easier. It gets harder. The pressure gets to be more intense. The expectations are more you know, they're going to your, daughter's going to feel it more, all right. The teammate drama and all of those things, like they just intensify with the with the stages and the more is going to be required of her. So she needs to be equipped with these skills ahead of time. Okay. And most athletes experience the same thing. I would say 99% of athletes experienced the same thing. I don't know why I stopped short of a hundred, because it likely is a hundred because a hundred percent of the athletes that I've ever met or interacted with have dealt with the same things at anything at any level Olympic professional, all the way down to just starting, they deal with nerves, they deal with comparison. They deal with making mistakes and learning how to come back from that they deal with potentially not being aggressive with you know, learning how to be their authentic selves and their sport, all of these things. Like that's why, again, we love sports because they teach athletes these skills. They give them a clear playground to be able to. To, to to navigate this right. But not all athletes have the skills to navigate that successfully. And most athletes think that they're the only ones that experienced that. Right. Let's teach our athletes that they are not alone. And that they can actually have these skills to know what to say to themselves when they feel nervous for a game. To not let that nervousness impact. The rest of the game in a negative way. Right. Let's give our daughter, the skills to be able to show up confidently. Even if she doesn't feel motivated. Right. We can teach her that, you know what. Being ready as a choice. Is that a feeling. All of these things. You're like, ah, I just wish he would believe in herself as much as I believe in her. It is possible for that to happen. But it just doesn't happen overnight and it doesn't happen by you just hoping that it will happen. It happens by being intentional. And so again, If you have not already helped your daughter in this area of how to build her confidence, we can do our part as moms. Right? We can be very intentional with what we say out loud to her. We can be very intentional with. How we show up and I, my model confidence for her and don't overlook that again. That's a huge piece in how your daughter. Navigates her sport and develops confidence. But the other piece of this is that she also needs these skills. She also needs to know how to shift herself. Talk. And again, these are skills that will serve her in her sport and in her life. And these are skills that athletes use. Throughout the highest levels of the sport. Most level, most athletes at the highest level have a mental performance coach who are teaching them these skills. That they have likely learned at a young age, but now are refining. And so give your athlete the gift of this early so that she can have the skills to, you know, go through the ups and downs of her sport. And. A really great way to do that. Like I've said before is to attend that free training that we have for sports moms. So that's at train her game.com. We not only teach you your part of this equation, right. What to say and not say, but also how to help her build these skills as well. All right. Like I said, this is a shorty episode because I want you just to have these skills to start using right away. Number one, be aware of your verbal communication, normalize and validate her emotions. Focus on what's in her control. Make sure that you are validating and recognizing things that are beyond just the, the stats were, you know, the winds, right. Focus on the. The effort and the preparation and what's in her control that led to those things, not just those things. What is your non-verbal communication, communicating to your athlete and make sure that she has the skills to navigate being an athlete. All right, moms, I will see you in the next episode of the raising unstoppable. Athletes podcast.