High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 571: The Science and Practice of Confidence with Dr. Robin Vealey, Professor, Mental Performance Consultant and Researcher

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Dr. Robin Vealey is a Professor in the Department of Sport Leadership & Management at Miami University in Ohio (USA). Her research has focused on self-confidence, burnout, mental skills training, and coaching effectiveness. She has authored five books, Coaching for the Inner Edge (2005, 2022), Best Practice for Youth Sport, Competitive Anxiety in Sport, and Successful Coaching (2024). She has also published over 60 journal articles/book chapters in sport psychology and has made over 200 presentations to national and international audiences.    Dr. Vealey is a Certified Mental Performance Consultant (CMPC), a nationally accredited certification in North America. She has worked as a consultant for the U.S. Nordic Ski Team, U.S. Field Hockey, elite golfers, and is involved in mental training with athletes and teams at Miami University. In 2022, she received the Kate Hays Distinguished Mentor Award from the Association for Applied Sport Psychology. In 2023, Dr. Vealey received the Benjamin Harrison Medallion Award from Miami University, the highest honor given to a faculty member for significant accomplishments in scholarship, teaching and advising, and professional service across a career. A former college basketball player and coach, she now enjoys the mental challenge of golf.   In this podcast, Robin and Cindra talk: The difference between confidence as a belief and a feeling Examples of confidence hijacks  Why confidence is a job 4 research-backed ways to grow confidence Advice for coaches, leaders and parents on how to build confidence    HIGH PERFORMANCE MINDSET SHOWNOTES FOR THIS EPISODE: www.cindrakamphoff.com/571 FOLLOW CINDRA ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/cindrakamphoff/ FOLLOW CINDRA ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/mentally_strong Love the show? Rate and review the show for Cindra to mention you on the next episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/high-performance-mindset-learn-from-world-class-leaders/id1034819901      

Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Cindra Kampoff, and thank you so much for joining me here today for episode 571 with Dr. Robin Vealy. I have to tell you, this interview is incredible. It exceeded my expectations with a pioneer in sports psychology, and you can tell that she's a pioneer because of the value that's provided in this podcast episode. I can't wait to hear what you think and what you get from today's episode with Dr. Robin Vealy. Let me tell you a little bit about Robin Vealy. We focus today on the science and practice of confidence. And she is a professor in the Department of Sport Leadership and Management at Miami University in Ohio. Her research has focused on self-confidence,

burnout, mental skills training, and coaching effectiveness. She's authored five books. One of my favorite books called The Coaching for the Inner Edge, which I use actually in my coaching psychology class that I teach at the university. She's also written other books, including Best Practice for Youth Sport, Competitive Anxiety in Sport, and Successful Coaching. She's published over 60 journal articles and book chapters in sports psychology and has made over 200 presentations at national international audiences. She's worked as a consultant with USA Nordic Ski Team, USA Field Hockey Elite Golfers, and she is a former college basketball player and coach, and now enjoys the mental challenge of golf, which you'll hear in today's episode.

In this interview, Robin and I talk about the difference between confidence as a feeling and a belief, examples of confidence hijacks for you to consider what are your confidence hijacks, why confidence is a job, four research-backed ways to grow confidence, and advice for coaches, leaders, and parents on how to build confidence. If you'd like to see the full show notes and a description of this podcast,

you can head over to cindracampoff.com slash 571. And if you haven't already, please leave us a rating and a review. You can just scroll up to provide that rating and review and we'd be so grateful. It just helps us reach more and more people each and every week and helps us grow the influence of the podcast so more people can learn about mental training and performance psychology. All right, I know you're going to love this one. Without further ado, let's bring on Robin. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm so excited to be talking to Robin Vealy today.

Robin, you've just had such a major impact on this field. I've read so many of your research. I use your coaching for the Inner Edge book in one of my classes. I think it's the best book in coaching psychology out there. And as I was thinking about interviewing you today, like there's, you know, I think the first time I went to ASP and I saw you and I didn't even want to introduce myself, I was so intimidated. Oh my gosh, there's Robin Vealy. So here I get to interview you. I just think what you've done is just outstanding. And I think you're one of the legends in sports psychology. That's what I would say. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So let's get started and maybe tell me a little bit about or tell those who are listening

a little bit about your passion and what you're doing right now. Yeah. Well, I've got a lot of passion for the field of sports psychology. And so I guess I would say to you, my passion is what I call the achieving mentality. I've always, when I was a kid and I would go watch sporting events, I mean, I noticed the best players, but I was always drawn to the players that work the hardest or were the mentally toughest or, I mean, I just, I'm so interested in that, not only in sport, but it kind of in all areas. So, so yeah, and I play golf. And so I try to apply that all of this to my golf game, which maybe doesn't always work, but, but anyway, my research has taken me from the negative side, maybe of that achieving mentality in terms of anxiety and burnout, to the side looking at confidence, mental skills, how can coaches be better? I'm really interested

in coaching behavior because I come from a coaching and playing background. So yeah, so that has dovetailed my passion for sport and performance and how can we help people be better in both of those. When you think about what made you decide to, you know, get a PhD in this area, and I know you studied with Rainer Martins at the University of Illinois, and there's some other people that were your classmates that were some of my mentors. But tell us a little bit about just your journey to studying this and what it was even like to, you know, be with Rainer Martins there at Illinois? Well, I tell my students today, I said, imagine going to grad school and there are no textbooks on sports psychology. Nobody that I knew of was doing applied work. It was very lab-based research. And I was recruited by Rainer, I think I became interested in sports psychology because I was a coach, because I was a college basketball player. And so I was really interested in the applied stuff. So when I got there, he and Damon Burton were starting to work

on that. And he worked with the US ski team and got me hooked in with them and US field hockey. So it was a really exciting time we were doing work in competitive anxiety so i was learning about the research and all of that but we also were like writing things about the the applied aspects and imagery and self-talk and things there again there were no textbooks there were maybe maybe two books, Journal of Sports Psychology began in 1979. So it was really exciting to be when you said, not because I've done it, but just because I entered at the right time. And I feel so blessed to have seen sports psychology grow as it has. So it was a very heady time. I give Reiner a lot of credit for teaching me how to work hard,

teaching, you know, and helping me love it as much as I do, because he really instilled that. I'm curious what you've seen just in your career at the growth of sports psychology. You know, I think about, I entered the fields, trying to think of like 20 some years ago. And like, gosh, that makes me feel really old. Because I say that, because it seems like yesterday, but I've also seen just this exponential growth in the last five years, and more people talking about it and being open to it and the stigma going away in terms of, hey, you know, it's more of like an edge to train the mental game, then there's something wrong with you.

And I think that's really freeing because we've all known that, that it's about what you just said about the achieving mentality and being the best you can be. But what have you seen from your perspective about the growth? Oh, it's incredible. I think for me, the motivation was, again, when I got to Illinois, we were doing this applied work. And you know what, Sandra, the field didn't accept a lot of it early on. We presented at a NASPA conference in 84, I think. And there were people that were not happy that we were doing applied work because you see the field at that time was still lab oriented and they wanted the science to be really respected.

And they thought that would take away from that. But of course we plowed on. And I think for me, my motivation behind my work and the book that you mentioned, the coaching psychology book is to make it practical, to make it useful, to help people for the reasons that you said. And I lately, just last semester, I taught a class in mental health for athletes and not in clinical mental health, but mental health and the idea of thriving and, you know,

using these skills for personal development and personal growth. And I've just included that in my mental skills model. I put mental health right in there along with mental skills. So yes, I think we've really come a long way. I think we're still working on that stigma. We have a study going on right now where we're looking at that. We're looking at college athletes and college students in terms of their perceptions of, of stigma related to mental health counseling, seeking that. And we're looking at athlete identity kind of in stress related to that. So I'm excited to move my work into that area more, really embrace it. Absolutely. So I think your book, Coaching for the Inner Edge, and I do

actually think it's the best book out there on coaching psychology. And I would say that not to you, but to everyone, you know, who's listening, but I think it's what I love about it is it is really practical. Even some of the worksheets in the back I've used with some of the athletes I work with, just because it's, it is really easy to read, it's under easy to understand. And I think the mental game for coaches can be really hard to implement. So what made you decide to write that particular book many years ago about coaching psychology? Because I wanted to take all of our ideas in sports psychology and be an integrator

of knowledge, write it for coaches and try to make it as practical as I could. And you know, the other thing, I read a lot of books written by coaches. And I put in the preface of that, I learned a lot from coaches, I learned a lot from coaches here that I work with. In fact, we acknowledge much I acknowledge the coaches I've worked with here for 40 years. And so yes, I wanted to make sure early on, we used to say, Oh, people aren't using this, people don't believe in sports psychology. And I think they did, but I don't think they knew how. And so I wanted to try to start helping them with the how. Here's ways that you can implement some of these ideas. Is there a particular section in that book that you're really proud of, or as people learn more about it who are listening and you'd say, hey,

you know, definitely read this section. I'm curious about that. Well, I agree with you in that I like the appendices because I tried to put a lot of practical exercises back there. And so the book from chapter seven on back, it's all about mental training. So I would probably start like in chapter seven, and then you get into goals, the self-talk, imagery. So it's just the basics of kind of mental training. And I try to, in each chapter, give them ideas about how they could implement it. Probably my favorite chapter would be the self-talk. I call it P3 thinking, the idea that you're being very productive, you're thinking on purpose and you're thinking very present moment. We know that's how athletes need to think. So I kind of conjured it up as three P's, if you will. And these are kind of the months. So I, that's

the chapter that I, that I probably is my favorite for, you know, I think it's something that you can plug right into. Yeah. And really useful and practical and maybe is consistent with, you know, the, the research you've done about confidence. Yeah, and I really like that because I like the P3 thinking, I like the imagery chapters and the mental tools chapters, I just think it makes it really digestible. And when I think about my experience as an athlete, when I first learned about sports psychology, the struggle I had was actually how to implement it. And I, you know, I read a lot of the theories and I even talked to a sports psychologist, but it was too theoretical for me. I needed like the how. And I

think that's one of the, you know, strengths of your work is that it's informed by theory and research, but it's how. Great. Yes. Thank you. That's what we're trying for, right? Yeah. Yeah. So let's dive into confidence and maybe first, why don't you define, we're going basic level here, but I think like we need to do that because, you know, get them to really understand your perspective. So tell us a bit about how you define confidence and in your opinion, why is it really, why is it important? Well, confidence is, is you believe you can do something.

And it's based, typically it's belief in your abilities to do something. Although I like to say it's also your resources. I may not have the ability, I'm not putting well today, but you know what? I can get the ball in the hole. I can be an athlete. So it's belief in my abilities, my resources to succeed at something. So that's kind of it. It's important because I think those beliefs, I think it modifies everything that happens to you.

Where I'm going to use a golf example. When I triple bogey or hit one out of bounds, you know, it's then my belief that I can get out of this. Like I tell my playing partners, I like to scramble. I don't mean scramble in a group, but I like it when I get in trouble because I tell myself, OK, because I'm really good at getting out of trouble. I'm really good at hitting a recovery shot that just deflates my opponents. So it's my belief in my resources not to play perfectly. I think that's where we go wrong.

People think everything's going to go right. And actually, your confidence is more important in terms of how you feel about being adaptive when things go wrong. So I just think it's incredibly important. Yeah. Isn't that so true? And that, you know, one of the things I've observed about confidence is as I think about the people I work with, and that might be athletes, but I also work with a lot of leaders and executives. And it's almost like the older we get, you would think that the more confidence we would have because we have more experience. But what I found is that particularly when people are really pushing themselves out of their comfort zone, trying new things or getting into bigger roles, that their confidence really

can waver. And I think that it just seems like it's a common theme coming up in my work. And I wonder if it's always been that way or if there's something with society and dynamics and people being really critical of each other. I don't know, is there anything that you've seen in terms of the importance of confidence now compared to 10 years ago? Or do you think it's always been this important? Well, I know what you mean. I think it's always been this important. I, you know, to use your example, I was on a panel at an ASP conference a few years ago, and I was with Dan Gould and Justin Sua. They're both major league, big time consultants,

work with professionals, Olympians. And we got a question from the audience. You all know what the imposter syndrome is. And you know, it's when you feel like it. And did you all ever experience, all three of us raised our hands. Exactly. And I mean, I knew I was going to raise my hand, but I didn't expect these guys to raise their hands. And then we all talked about it. But you see, but but it doesn't. I think that's OK. And if you've read Adam Grant's book, Rethinking, he talks about confident humility. And I think that's what I'm trying to get athletes, what I'm trying to get my students to have, where meaning that maybe the imposter syndrome isn't so bad, because I'm always thinking about how I can be better. I'm always in. So I'm afraid that people misunderstand confidence as I'm always

feeling comfortable. See, confidence is a belief. But it's also a feeling. And it's the feeling that gets us in trouble. Because I think younger athletes are they think that and coaches are like you need to be confident and I think then I don't feel confident then I'm like oh heck I don't feel confident I'm in trouble and the feeling is really hard to manufacture because confidence is based upon performance and beliefs I mean in your performance kit so how am I supposed to be confident when I'm not performing well I mean really and then how and beliefs. I mean, in your performance, so how am I supposed to be confident when I'm not performing well? I mean, really.

And then how do I get, I mean, the belief is really hard to just conjure up. So I feel like sometimes you have to act. And so one thing I ask athletes a lot is, have you ever performed well in the short term, at least when you're not confident? And they go, yeah. And I'm so, so, you know, my word now to athletes is act, act when you're feeling uncomfortable,

because they believe, especially high school athletes that I talked to, well, I'm not feeling comfortable. Something's wrong. As you well know, Sandra, I've heard this from Ken Revista, so many consultants, you have to be comfortable with discomfort. You have to. So, and part of that discomfort is I'm not sure how I'm going to do. But you know what? I believe in me. I believe in my adaptability. Sorry, we're having some kind of a tornado thing here. I know. So I just got that on my phone. I don't know if you heard that. I'm not sure what it is. So, oh, it's a national alert. Okay, they're just testing something. Sorry. But anyway, this is an important point because I really think that when I tell athletes, what do I do when I'm not confident?

Focus, perform, just do something in that moment. Because then when you perform and you're okay, then you get back into the task and you become more confident. So I think this belief versus feeling, I think that gets us in trouble sometimes. And in fact, sorry, I'm just going to go on here. Yeah, it's perfect. I have this model of mental skills and I've got it divided into what I call personal foundation skills and performance skills.

So I think at the moment of performance, it's a matter of what you focus on, maybe how you manage your energy, maybe perceptual, cognitive. I mean, I'm thinking about what I'm going to do to hit the six iron, but it's my focus and my swing thought, whether I'm confident or not. I mean, I need to leave that alone. In fact, I would say at the moment of performance, quit talking about and thinking about confidence and just perform, you know, because then you perform.

And then usually if you hit a decent shot, okay, then you, because then you perform. And then, usually, if you hit a decent shot, okay, then you believe you can do it. So I don't know if I'm making sense. But I think sometimes we expect to feel confident and think we have to feel confident to perform well, and read any athlete, Tiger Woods, Serena Williams, all of them will talk about how they have to perform when they're really nervous, or when they're feeling a lack of confidence. And so I think sometimes we can overthink or question those feelings of confidence and then we get in our head and think we're not confident. And then it just becomes a cycle and we're not present in the moment and can't perform

the way we ultimately want to. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not sure if I finished that earlier thought, but to me, confidence is a foundation skill. It's something that I have going in at the moment of performance. I just want to focus and hit my six iron. I'm not going to maybe do something in that moment. I mean, what I would do in that moment would be my pre-shot routine, but I'm not trying to conjure up confidence that came on the range that came in my physical and mental preparation. It came from all of that. And so in what I call execution mode,

I tell coaches don't even talk about confidence. I mean, when we're in the game day hours leading into competition, very simple thoughts. I'm feeling prepared, very clear. What's my job? And I wouldn't walk up to somebody and say, Hey, are you confident? Because they're going to go, I think so, because they're going to start second guessing. Questioning themselves. Yeah. So I really move more to that way. So I think what you're saying in terms of the imposter syndrome, that it's normal for those feelings of confidence can be high and then low. And it's more about focusing on the task at hand, maybe riding that wave, not overthinking it. That means that you lack confidence or you aren't confident as a performer or a person. Correct. Because elite athletes, sports psychology

consultants will tell you confidence is so fragile and it's not easily restored. I mean, it's, it's, it, and so quit waiting for it to emerge and just act. And so what I tell athletes is, you know, something hijacks, I call it a hijack, a confidence hijacked. Okay. So, you know, get control of yourself, you know, breath, et cetera. Think about your next play, what you have to do. One very controllable, manageable thing. Don't try to make the great play. Like when I've had a triple, quadruple bogey, my next focus is to hit a solid drive. Not a great drive, just a solid drive.

That's going to get me back on my horse and going versus, oh, come on, be confident. That's not it. It's like, what do I need to do to hit this next drive in a very solid way? So get right into the task, if you will, because we know, although confidence does predict performance, we know that performance predicts confidence in a much stronger way. So it really helps to just start performing. Then you get into that, then you're feeling better. And to be okay with performing when you're not feeling extremely comfortable. That's okay. You could do it if you've trained it. Yeah, if you've trained it. And so as you think about confidence as a foundational skill, right? Because I appreciate that you just said that as people are thinking

about, gosh, maybe I need to grow my confidence as a foundational skill. What are the ways your research has shown? And, you know, I was, I had, I did some preparation for today. And I, I read your Vita. And I was like, Whoa, I think I counted 34. And it was a couple years old, 34 research articles, most of them about confidence. So what would you say are the research backed ways that people can build confidence as a foundational skill? Well, I like to divide the research into very practical ways that coaches and athletes remember them. So in the book, I have this where I talk about validation, perspiration, regulation, inspiration, right? So you can remember those are kind of fun. And so all the research that's been

done on building confidence could fall in those four areas, but it's an easy way to remember it. And so so let's start with perspiration because that's the best place to start. You have to earn the right to be confident. Confidence is a job, not a gift. It's a job. And you take any shortcuts, you're in trouble. I mean, you have to put in the work because think about it. If I want to believe I have to believe that I've done the work. I mean, we our research has shown that preparation is one of the top sources of confidence, like how I'm prepared to do that. So that's all of the perspiration, if you will, like putting work. And so, of course, what coaches do is they create training situations where they

simulate pressure and they do reps. I mean, all of that's really, really important. And for example, I'm sorry, I keep using golf examples, but they pop into my mind. You know, when you hit a golf shot during a tournament, and when you compare that to hitting a golf shot on the range, those are totally, completely different tasks for your brain and your body. I mean, other than holding, I mean, they're completely different. So, so you have to, as a coach or athlete, you've got to simulate pressure, you know, and so that might be playing different holes that they're, it's just, you have to set things up differently. So you're training yourself in the right ways and creating consequences, et cetera. I mean, you have to do

that because it's what a lot of athletes say about coaches, they really admire is like, well, games are easier, competition's easier than our practice and our training because they've given them, they've gone through the perspiration and that gives them the foundation then to be confident. So that is numero uno, without a doubt, it's a job, you have to earn the right to do it. And that has to come first. So the second one would be the validation. And that was what again, all the research, especially coming out of self efficacy theory is that, you know, the strongest predictor of confidence is your accomplishments. So you've outdated yourself in terms of your performance accomplishments. But that's a little bit of a tricky thing isn't it because well if i haven't won or what if i have it well this is

where you have to define success yourself i always talk about dying at dye define your experience define your experience and um i know i'm working with a team here right now and they're young and so the outcomes aren't as great. They're not winning. And so we have to focus so much on the process and what is successful and the stats. And you know what, Sindra, that's not easy. No, it's not. We've got to define really hard because, and then look at society. You know, we know all the stories, but again, there's, if you go to the Olympics and you win the silver medal, people are like, oh, that's too bad. Right. What do you mean it's too bad? So we have to be really smart and disciplined in terms of how we define our success and not let others do that for us. The regulation is learning, is reading my book, reading, listening to your podcast and learning how to self-regulate,

learning how to find out. I like to work with athletes on what hijacks your confidence. So we all have, we all, we all have hijacks. It could be I get a goal that's rejected or the coach gives me negative feedback. I mean, every athlete is different. And so we try to identify those hijacks and, you know, and they think once they identify it, we talk about it. Oh, okay. I'll fix it. No, you have to train that to train your brain. And so how do you do that? So mental rehearsal, we talk about replacement language, how you're going to think about that,

what you're going to say when the coach gives you feedback. So that's all the ways you self-regulate. That's how you talk to yourself, how you imagine what you see. I ask athletes after this match, we have a match tonight here, when you replay it, do you replay your mistakes or your great plays? They all say, oh, my mistakes. So we have to, okay, you can do that. But I ask them to do when you replay those mistakes. That's fine. But I want you to replay it with how you would have done it correctly, how you would have succeeded if you could go back and do it. So then you're doing something proactive, productive about it.

So just your ability to manage your energy in that moment, right? Just to learn to breathe, just to manage kind of how you are. So that's all the regulation that would be practically our whole field there. And then the final one would be the inspiration. And that would be, of course, all the people around you. We know that social persuasion or, you know, coaches supporting you, teammates supporting you. We know that that's all things that help athletes feel confident. I'll be honest, Sind, I, I know that's important and I work with some athletes who they really get hung up on that. The only reason I hedge a little bit on that,

the research supports that, but you know, that's uncontrollable. I'm sure. Base your confidence on controllable sources. And so you're not always going to control what your coach says to you or your teammates. It's nice to have all of that inspiration around you. And of course, you want to surround yourself with supportive people. But I prefer that athletes focus on the sources they control the most. But overall, if you take those four things, you can really build, you know, a nice program to help athletes feel more confident. Absolutely. So validation, perspiration, regulation, inspiration, and people are

taking notes, which I think they should. I love that you said like confidence is a job, not a gift. And I just think that's really powerful to say, like, it's my job to continue to grow my confidence or nurture my confidence or make sure that, you know, I'm doing the things like the hard work to put in to build the confidence. As I was listening, I had this question and I wondered, like, from your perspective, what, you know, and this is nature nurture kind of question, but like, you know, do you think confidence is innate or trained or I don't know, can we say what percentage comes from, you know, because I'm just thinking about my kids, and I'm thinking about their confidence, or I'm thinking about my sisters and our confidence, and we had similar upbringings, but there are some differences in

confidence. Yes, I don't have a number for you. Research supports that confidence is influenced by genetic factors. It just does, meaning it's partly inborn. And, and, you know, again, I can't even give you a percentage. But of course, if you think about personalities, it's like leadership, you know, leaders are, you know, leaders are not totally born. They learn these skills, same thing with confidence, but there are personalities, people that, that, that lend itself to that. So I think there are personalities that have inborn qualities that allow people to be more confident. So, but the greater bulk of it is trainable.

And I just think for some people, actually, Cinder, I think it's more, we know that occurs, but we can't do a lot to control that. I just think we understand it. But I like to look back, not necessarily on what were you born with, but early messages. Because, you know, when you talk to athletes and performers, as you know, you start listening to them and there's these things that they've heard early in life that they start to believe. I have to do this or my family will be ashamed of me. Or if I don't get my PGA card, I'm going to be a failure. So I think a lot of it is when you think about working with young kids, it's helping them with this whole growth mindset mentality.

I know that's really a big term today, but it's critical where you focus on the process. And I'm a real big believer on the love of the game. So many times I work with an athlete who's lost confidence. I'm like, OK, tell me about when you ran in high school. Tell me, tell me about, you know, how that felt. And then, oh, it was so much fun and it was so free. And then things change when they got to college and they're focusing on all of this versus, wait a minute, tell me why you run. And so can you go for a training run today? And I want you just to think about that and that feeling, because we forget that. And sometimes I go to that on the golf course in a tournament and how much I just love playing golf and I'm outside and isn't this wonderful.

And I think that really helps recenter us. So I got off the track there. But again, part of it is born, but much more of it is trainable. Yeah. And I think that I think that's why our field exists is to help people train things like the mental skill of confidence. And I appreciate what you said about the early messages about confidence and how those might impact you now. Hi, this is Cyndra Campoff, and thanks for listening to the High Performance Mindset. Did you know that the ideas we share in the show are things we actually specialize in implementing?

If you want to become mentally stronger, lead your team more effectively and get to your goals quicker. Visit freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free mental breakthrough call with one of our certified coaches. Again, that's freementalbreakthroughcall.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you soon. And when you see, you know, the barriers to confidence, what would you say are the main barriers you think get in the way of people building confidence as a foundational skill? Well, if you think about, again, you know, you've got to have the skills. So I would say first thing, it would be a lack of skill, but then a fixed mindset about that, like meaning that I don't have the skill yet. And oh, I just stink. And I'm not going to be good versus, hey, I'm learning this. I'm going to get better. So,

you know, this is, you know, we have fast food, we have social media, everybody wants to just start something and get great at it. And it's amazing to me when I, when you watch like elite level athletes, you read about Olympians, nobody just falls off the couch and is a great athlete. And when you read about, and also success and achievement, it isn't this linear line. It's, it's, and we have, we have got to get young athletes to understand that and buy into that. So I think it's that, that, that ability to see that. And then their commitment to build that skill, because that's where the confidence kind of comes from.

And then I think the other things would be these personal hijacks. These are barriers. So I don't spend a lot of time. I mean, I ask about their strengths, because I think we focus too much on what we're not good at. But I always, you know, we play our strengths, we focus on those, and then we train our weaknesses. But part of training that weakness is what gets in the way. And it's what I call the confidence hijacks. And so, um, so for example, work with a swimmer, I've never worked with an athlete before who it all came down to the way that her coach talked to her, which, you know, that was hard for me because at first I was trying

to get her to change. I could not get her to change. And so then we talked about working with her coach. We tried that, but I mean, this was like her major hijack. So I really had to work on it. So we came up with a whole scenario. If your coach does this, this is kind of how you respond. We focused on that. So what is it that keeps you from believing that you can do it? What is it that hijacks? And then we come up with a plan for that. And then we just we rehearse and we rehearse and we rehearse. So they can work through that, but you have to do, you have to do that work.

You can't just talk to Robin Vila or Cinder Kampoff and like, okay, now I got it. You have to do the work. People want you to come into my office and me to do the Spock mind meld and walk out in 30 minutes and they're confident. Yeah. Wouldn't it be great if it was just like a light switch? I'm not Vulcan. I'm not Spock. So yes, they have to kind of do that work. And part of that is just, again, changing maybe the thinking of that. And, you know, a big thing I run into with high school athletes is their ability to respond to mistakes. So, you know, the other

barrier, I think, is that we, we are afraid of that. We're afraid of that. And then we react to that. And, you know, I think in our society where we're specializing, and there's all this pressure on kids, and you get a scholarship, that isn't helping us, because they're not falling in love with this board, they're just kind of playing it. So, you know, you have to be okay with making mistakes. I don't know if you know this example, but it's one of my favorite examples. So if you read Gino Auriemma book, Gino Auriemma is the coach of the UConn women's basketball team. Yeah. Amazing. So he coached Maya Moore, one of the greatest of all times. And when she came in, she was a perfectionist. And so Gino was trying to get her outside her

comfort zone to make mistakes in practice and she wouldn't go there. So he ordered her, he said, you're required every day in practice to make five mistakes. At the end of practice, I want you to tell me what they were. That's awesome. So, so we have to not only tell kids mistakes are okay, we have to do that. Like, and then like, hey, good job. Okay, now what are you going to do based upon that good job extending yourself to make a mistake. The other example I use Wayne Gretzky was known for at the end of practice, he'd be out on the ice doing things and he would fall down. And someone said, What's he doing? And the coach said, he's trying new things. And sometimes he falls down because he's trying something new.

This is Wayne Gretzky. Wow, right? We have young athletes who are afraid to make a mistake. So they have to be OK. And I like mistake rituals, you know, like shake it off, wipe the sweat off your brow, take your hat off. And then as a team, you could have a mistake ritual and you can make it fun. So we're trying to take that sting and that permanency and that fear away from mistakes of, hey, I just made a mistake because I'm trying hard. And of course, I've coached and I know that some athletes that don't make mistakes, the ones that are playing it safe, that aren't in the comfort zone, they're afraid to go into the learning zone to make mistakes. So then I would order them and I would set up a pre-practice routine for them or something to have them make mistakes.

So I think you have to find ways when you're coaching to kind of do that. I'm a basketball coach. There's a difference in missing a shot, you know, or taking a bad shot or passing up an open shot. Those are all things that you can coach. You know, missing a shot isn't a problem with confidence. Passing up a shot is. So in your sports, I think coaches and practitioners can look for ways to do that to help athletes ease out of that a little bit. Another example I can think of outside of sport is a woman named Sarah Blakely. So Sarah Blakely founded a company called Spanx. And she said, so Sarah Blakely became the first self-made female billionaire in the US from this company called Spanx, right? And it's the undergarment women where now they have all these other things that you can get at Spanx. but she credits her success to her dad, who every single night at the dinner table would ask her and her brother the same question.

And the question was, how did you fail today? And she said that if she didn't come home with a big failure, her dad would be disappointed. So she learned that like when she was starting this company, there's lots of times that she could have given up, but it was like this fail forward kind of mentality that it's like, Hey, these failures are leading me to something really powerful. And I'm like, you know, a lot of people love Spanx because of her. That's great. Yeah. I think struggle well, fail well, you know, a coaching, a friend of mine is a college coach when she recruits players, when she goes and watches them, she likes to see how they respond in failing moments. She's not just looking at their successful moments, but how do you respond in failing

moments? And there's all these things you can do back to our regulation. I'm a huge on body language, you know, work and work and work on that. And you could say the old fake it till you make it where there's gonna be holes in that. But I really believe that, you know, when I have a big, big talk or something I need to do, I'm really nervous. But I'm also confident, I believe I can do this. But you know, I my body language is I believe in myself, and I'm putting that out there. And I think this gets back to the inspiration, too, because your team learns that we talk about taking that taking over the floor and our warm ups, winning the warm ups, all of these things that you do. And I think a lot of athletes get confidence from that as well. You know, we talk about self-confidence, but confidence is nested.

Right. So there's self-confidence. There confidence is nested, right? So there's self-confidence, there's cohort confidence, the pitcher and the catcher, you know, the linebackers, all of that. There's the coach's confidence, there's the team confidence, all of that. And our research shows that those things are related, even organizational confidence. If you play within a great organization, that gives you something. So you want all those layers to be positive, you know, and as a coach, we know that your confidence, not only your confidence in your players, your athletes, but your confidence in yourself influences their self-confidence as well. Yeah, so helpful. So as I think about different confidence hijacks, you know, other confidence

hijacks I see in people, but not just athletes, but in people are like, um, comparison where they might, you know, well, so she has so much more success or he has so much more success than I do. There's no way that I could actually do that. Right. So some self-doubt, some judgment of self, are there any other big confidence hijacks you see? Yeah. Comparison is a big one. I would say, um, of course, you know, uh, in sport, there are, especially in youth sport, when I work with kids, it would be the unrealistic, uh, goals and expectations. And, And yeah, we like this whole way of focusing on or pressuring kids to specialize. It's created this idea where you have to then perform really well when you're nine or ten in one sport. And what happens is they become very self-conscious because they're the ice skater. You know, they're the basketball player and that becomes pressure.

And so this kids need to sample a lot of things. And in fact, it helps them if they're doing multiple activities. Then when they're in their favorite sport, if they then my favorite sport is, say, volleyball. But then I run track in the spring. That gives me a time just to like perform and not have to be a leader or not have to be the best. It really helps them. When I talk to college coaches and athletes, they all tell me that. So the other big one, of course, is the wrong goals. Yeah, sure.

And just, and when I talk to teams on campus and athletes, you know, to be their goal is to be a conference champion, or I just work with a team here and we were doing an exercise and the guy wouldn't be player of the year. And, you know, all American. And, and so, okay, those aren't necessarily a bad thing to have those goals, but your goals have to give you something to hang your hat on. And so what else, what can I do to help me get there? It's, it's, you know, those are just, again, another book, I really like is Atomic Habits by James Clear. And he talks about, you know, goals are okay to set your direction, but what's more important is your system. And so your system is how you're going to get there. And so I feel like athletes today, because they look at the Michael Phelps and these highly level successful athletes, and they think that, well, I'm just going to have to have this goal. No, focus on the process, the next performance step, or just playing because you enjoy it. I think goals are a major hijack. And then one more, I would just say are performance errors. And so I feel like sometimes people think

that sports psychology, you know, we use imagery, we use visualization. And I think what I find is a lot of my undergraduate students think that, oh, I know I'm supposed to visualize everything going perfect. I'm like, absolutely not. Because how many times in your life does everything go perfect? And so it's fine to see yourself, to visualize, to have a personal highlight reel and to visualize past successful performances. But what's more helpful is to visualize performing and something going wrong. And so I'm really big on being adaptive. In fact, my little mantra, my little tagline is, I want you to have an agile mindset.

And so to be confident, people think that means I'm confident and then everything's going to go perfectly. Nothing ever goes perfectly. So something's going to go wrong. And so you want to think about what are my typical confidence hijacks, but also what is a confidence hijack that I haven't even thought about? And I am going to have, Sindra, the toughest, the best agile mindset that whatever you throw at me,

I'm going to adapt to that. So that's what I work with in teams and athletes that whatever happens and I always like to say we respond we don't react react is emotion it's hot respond is cool thoughts I'm going to respond I'm going to take a breath okay I just I just hit a shank I just hit a bad performance I just you know pass the serve out of bounds I know they're going to serve to me now take a breath say serve me I mean something I have to respond to that know they're going to serve to me now. Take a breath, say, serve me. I mean, something I have to respond to that. So I'm going to respond, not react. We have to train that, right? We have to train that because our amygdala, our emotion center in our brain wants to really hijack us. And we've got to just breathe and tell myself next play, next shot. I've got this. I'm good at this and remind myself I can do it.

Absolutely. And those are definitely like skills we have to practice, I think, daily, as we think about not taking a day off of training our mind. Robin, you were talking about coaches, and I love the examples you gave of coaches, really helpful as people are listening. What do you think coaches and parents can do to really build confidence? Yeah. Well, I mean, I would be very careful about talking about confidence. I think we know it's important. I think it's become a buzzword. And so I think coaches will say, okay, I want you to be confident or don't. So I think you should be careful about that. And, and what I've done is I've gone to use the term belief and like, I did it with the team. And, um, so, and I'll even do this with individual

athletes where I'll start with, tell me one of the most deep seated beliefs you have about yourself. I mean, just whatever. Mine might be the lessons I learned from my parents that I'm a good person. I mean that, you know, I believe that in my core of my being. So, but I'll start with one or two of those because I think sometimes in the heat of competition or when life challenges us, I know I go back to my core beliefs. And so then we'll go to what's the belief you have as an athlete that can help you. So for example, one of mine on the golf course is I might not be putting well, but you know what? I'm an athlete and I go to that. I'm an athlete. You know what? I'm the best athlete out here. And so I try to

help them. And we take like, I use little racquetballs. And I have them write like one or two keywords on the racquetball. And the ball represents their bounce, right? Their bounce, their roll. And this is you, and you're going to bounce. And so what is it? And so like my ball says athlete, it says patient, and it says next shot. And that reminds me I'm patient, I'm an athlete and next shot. So I think, yes, I'm going to, you know, be ready for that. So I think the other thing would be, for some reason, I think we have to make mistakes. Okay, we talked about earlier. So besides not talking about confidence, I think you talk about beliefs. And you know, you try to get them Oh, excuse me, let me get back to beliefs. One other thing I'll do, I'll say in a team is, tell me one belief or one thing on this team that when we do as a team that really increases your belief.

I have them work in small groups. They write that down and we come back and we talk about that. So you're working on individual beliefs and then team beliefs. And so they really like that. I never even bring up the word confidence, but we know it's the same thing. So what helps us believe? And then maybe what helps us believe, you know, a pregame in the locker room and what things that you're doing. And then we'll do little things like I'll give a little handout and what's, it really helps me when coaches do this. And then I'll kind of give that feedback to coaches. Coaches could ask their athletes, what kind of things help you? What kind of things take away? What kind of feedback would you like for me to give you during and I don't mean everything's according to athletes preferences but it just gave me an idea so that's that's a I think a big part of it would be I mean the other

thing with with coaches of course I mean train be an excellent teacher you're training these skills I mean lots of times they don't even talk about the mental aspect, but, but they're talking about it all the time, even though they're not saying the mental game, because that's true. And the way they're setting up pressure and simulation and just training and attention to detail, because then in competition, those things don't fall apart. So I think there's those things. I know that athletes always tell me that it gives them confidence when their coaches believe in them. I think you got to be careful with that because coaches will say to me, okay, I don't want to be saying false things. I'm like, I agree. But I think, but you check in with them and, hey, what's your job tonight? So let's say that our starting point guard got hurt. So I got a young point guard. Okay. Tell me what your job is tonight. And we might go through it. I want you to get the ball off the floor, set the offense, play good defense, forget about scoring or forget about this. I want you to run through your mind. What happens if you make a turnover? Okay. Run through in your mind, how are you going to respond to that? What your body language is

going to look like? It's just one turnover and you're handling the ball a lot. So of course, you're going to turn the ball over. It's okay. You know, and then my feedback to them is it's okay, because that's a mistake and we have a mistake ritual and it's okay. And I'm going to touch the floor and kind of get rid of that. So all of the ways that I think that you train people in those, in those ways can help them. That's wonderful. I mean, such practical tools and strategies. Do you have any advice for parents?

As I think there's lots of parents who listen and I know you're a parent yourself. Yes, yes. Well, I can tell you, boy, you really need to train this growth mindset. And what we know, and a growth mindset means, again, that I perceive that my ability, my skills are, are malleable, I can, they're buildable, I can work on those, I can, it's not like I have this fixed ability, and I'm never going to get good. And so what the research is Carol Dweck's research, and other people, the most important thing you can do is to give process praise praise not just the outcome and it's so if my son wins his heat at a swim meet I'm really excited but instead of going up say way to win your heat I can say hey great job on your heat your your work on your flip terms have

really paid off you work so hard and cinderella I know this because I have two children and my first child, when she was five, she'd score a lot of goals in bitty soccer. And we'd get real excited about the goals, created a monster. And so then a few years later, there was a fun run in town. It was a mile fun run. I'm like, hey, why don't you run in this? She goes, no, I'm afraid I won't win. I created this because I praise the outcomes. The research is really clear on this. If you praise that, and it's really hard not to do. It's hard not to do.

If you're listening, just trust me on this because it really, really works. So be excited about the outcomes, you know, the straight A's or that you've done this, but you've been working so hard, you know, or just great decision making out there tonight, you know, things you want to praise things that they can control. And that really because if you only praise the outcomes, that does two things. One is they feel pressure to do that. And then sometimes, like my daughter, she didn't want to engage in the behavior because she was afraid she would change my approval of her. So praise the process. That is just so very important. And that would be then, the second thing would be all the stuff

we've talked about with mistakes. Mistakes are okay. And I make mistakes. And I think you model that growth mindset. You model your acceptance of mistakes. You model what you learn from that and how I do that. Yeah, this really hurt, you know, and I got an article rejected today and I was really mad at the editor, but then I looked at it and I realized, you know what, I can do this better. And even if I disagree with him or her, then I can still learn from this. So you have to model that all the time. I'm curious, what did you do with your daughter? Because I know that there's people who are in the same boat or that you were, right? Because I actually think we did this with my oldest son. We didn't mean to. And it's like,

well, how do you now undo that? Yeah, great question. Well, my partner and I realized it. And so then we talked about it. And we just went, we just started process, process, process. And it took, it took a lot of time. And actually, interestingly, she's in graduate school now, arts very good. But even when she was in undergraduate, she was like, Well, I don't think my portfolio is good enough yet. I'm going to wait. I would say, you know, it doesn't matter. I don't think other people in your, you know, go ahead and put your portfolio out there. And so now she's in graduate school at an art school and she had professionals come in to look at her portfolio and they said it was okay. I'm like, see, so we've just keep focusing on it. Of course, then she got older and we talked to her about it. But what's funny is

that our son who was two years younger than her, we just praised the heck out of his process because we learned from our firstborn. And I can remember still, I remember when they won the eighth grade cross country championship. Can you believe that? And he ran so hard, he was dry heaving. And I was excited they won. But I, and I remember I was like, okay, process, process. I'm like, Jackson, that is so great. You have trained so hard. And I remember the exact moment focusing on how hard he trained and how much he worked. And I can't believe you put in all that effort. Your team should thank you so much. So you can, you can do it. You can go back. It just takes a little bit of time to kind of redo that. Yeah, that's beautiful. I appreciate this, the personal example and how, you know, I think that personal example also shows you that Dr. Vealy is not perfect either. She might know all this research. You know, man, this interview just exceeded my expectations. I was so excited to talk to you because I knew it would be just what I just heard

in the last 50 minutes, so many practical ways. I mean, I just am so grateful for you that you spent time helping thousands of people who are listening to really like be able to implement and not only grow in their own confidence as a foundational skill, but help others. So I'm going to do my best to summarize what we talked about. I don't know how I'll do, but I love that we talked about that there's this feeling of confidence and this belief of confidence and those are different. And we talked about how confidence is a foundational skill. You shared how performance predicts confidence and confidence predicts performance, but that performance predicts confidence stronger. And you shared your four ways of growing confidence, validation, perspiration, regulation, inspiration. And we were just also talking about having an agile mindset, how you deal with mistakes, this idea of like confidence hijacks and the ways to grow in that. And I would encourage everyone to think about what are your confidence hijacks. I think that that's a really a great way

to kind of talk about it. At the end, this idea of like praising the process versus the outcome. So Coaching for the Inner Edge, that's the book I know everyone needs to pick up, even if they're not a coach, because everyone who's listening is a leader in some way, and it will continue to help you understand the just performance psychology principles. How can people reach out to you? Or is there how else can people follow along with your work, Dr. Vealy? Yes, I like anybody can email me, that's probably the best way. And I, you know, I teach at Miami University in Ohio, they could just go to that website and find me and I would love to hear from people. I always like to respond to emails, parents, coaches, anyone, feel free to do that. Excellent. Well, do you have any final thoughts or advice that people know? Oh, well, thank you. I just wanted to thank you, Sandra. And again, I like your energy. I

think we kind of feed off each other. And I really appreciate that you do this program with the whole practical tips. I just think it's so important. So I really, really enjoy it. Again, that's my passion. Talk to practitioners and try to help take the sports psychology to give to them. So I hope if anybody got one tip today they can use, that would make my day.

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for the impact that you've had on the field for spending time with us. I think we could have talked for 10 hours and I could have kept on writing notes. I did take some pages of notes, by the way, for everyone who's listening. If you didn't take notes, you should. Thank you so much, Robin. I'm so grateful and we're grateful that you spent some time with us today. Thank you. mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each

week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.