What Is The Most Important Mental Skill For Performers?

There are various mental skills that can help an athlete enhance and maintain optimal performance and  facilitate mental well-being. Coaches, players, and other stakeholders may believe that one mental skill is more important than the other. It would be interesting to find out what you believe is the mot important mental skill (e.g. confidence, motivation, attention, arousal, assertiveness) for your sport or athletes you know of a particular sport to have in the comments below. Feel free to debate your view points in the comments.

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My viewpoint

I personally believe confidence is key to everything in sport whether you are a newbie or an expert. Being able to have confidence in your skill, ability to get the job done, and also the confidence in your ability to cope with the stressful demands of a competition can help differentiate between successful and unsuccessful performance. This is personally evident in me as a rugby player. When I first started playing I had little confidence in my ability to perform which was reflected by my performance, specifically in a sport where I had little experience in the sport. However, through continued practice and increase in ability my confidence grew, and along with it my performance. In addition to an increase in ability, I become more aware of the different sources in which I based my confidence on, i.e. how physically prepared I felt, and how psyched I was. Through this I manipulated my physical preparation and arousal through developing a routine that enhanced both of these components, which to this day I use in sport to help increase my sport confidence and my specific sporting ability to help aid my performance, and subsequent psychological well-being (e.g. self-esteem).

Article by Edgar Chekera