SELF-CONCEPT

Self-consept is defined as a person’s self-perception, which are formed through experiences with, and interpretations of his or her environment. These perceptions are influenced by the evaluation of significant others, reinforcements and the way people explain their own behaviours to themselves. (i.e. their attributions or reasons for their behaviours).

Self-concept has both a descriptive and an evaluative aspect such that people may describe themself (“I am happy”) and evaluate themself (“I played well in this competition”). Evaluation can be made against some absolute ideal (e.g. qualification into the qarterfinal round), a personal internal standard (e.g. a personal best achievement), a relative standard base on comparision with peers; or the expectations of significant others. People may assign different values; give more or less weight in their hierarchical and multifaceted self-concept.

The conceptualization of self is closely related to individual’s perception of self-image, feeling of self-esteem, self-belief and self-vulnerability.

 

Figure showing Conceptualization of Self 

The coach should be aware that positive self-concept influences many areas of lives, including:

• Motivation i.e. drive to pursue some goal.
• Learning i.e. acquisition of new knowledge or shills.
• Athletic performance i.e. as well as performance in others and acceptance by others.
• Life satisfaction i.e. how a person feels satisfied with personal accomplishment.

Coach can do 4 specific things to help their athletes acquire positive self-concept.

Show Acceptannce

Showan overall warmth and acceptance of your athletes as a problem. Let them know you value them. Show an interest on how your athletes are getting along in situations outside your sport.

Offer Specific Praise

Praise the desirable aspects of your athlete’s behavior more often. Provide more encouragement especially after a mistake. Spend more time looking for what is good in your athlete’s performance.

Give Personal Attention

Take more time to teach, to help, to watch, to support, to encourage and to give more informative feedback on individual basis.

Emphasize Self Responsibility

Give your athlete more time to respond to request, to try things, to practice skills, to demonstrate what he/she does well. Encourage your athlete to ask question and to make suggestions. Listen closely to what he/she says.

SELF-IMAGE

The success we achieve in an event is directly realited to the attitudes and expectations we carry into that event.

Self-Image Cycle

Self image affects our attitudes, expectations, behaviors and performances in all areas of our lives

Figure showing The Self-Image Cycle

Our self-image is like a blueprint that determines our behaviours. If an athlete has a poor self-image or holds negative thoughts and image in his/her mind, the behaviors will supper this negative image and poor perfomances, as well as poor attitude will result. Conversely, an athlete with a positive self-image and positive expectations will support that image with positive performance.

The Seccess Cycle

Figure showing The Success Cycle

When the self-image cycle is positive, we find that positive performances reinforce positive self-image, which helps establish positive attitudes and expectations. These, in turn, result in improved behaviors that lead to improved performances. Eventually this positive cycle of sucsess leads individuals to a new attitude. They expect to win, rather than hope to win.

The Failure Cycle

Conversely, negative self-image contributes to a negative attitude abd negative expectations, which lead to negative behaviors that result in poorer performance. These reinforce the negative self-image, whivh helps the cycle going in a failure mode.

Figure showing The Failure Cycle

Positive Self-Image Athletes

• Athletes with positive self-image have positive feelings about themself, about their capabilities and her clear about the roles that they play.
• Athletes with positive self-image tend to become:

1. More self-control
2. Less reserved and more outgoing
3. More self-assertive
4. More stable
5. More active

• It is important that athletes develop a more positive self-image for this leads to greater self-confidence. A self-confident athlete is sure of himself, his ability and less prone to worry.

SELF-ESTEEM

Self-esteem is defined as the evaluation of self with respect to an ideal vision of self along a dimension (characterstics) used to describe self. Athletes who feel good about them are said to have high self-esteem. They recognize their own strengths and weaknesses and accept their selves for what they are. They like and respect their selves and so are more able to like and respect others. This helps them to relate better to others and tolerate the differences. Having high self-esteem is important in sports as it leads to better social and emotional helth.

Some factors that influence self-esteem in sports are:

• Self-Image
• Relationships
• Social environments
• The media
• Personal achievements

A few ways of improving self-esteem in sports are:

• Increase self-knowledge
• Be more self-accepting
• Set goals

SELF-BELIEF/SELF-CONFIDENCE

Self-belief can be regarded synonymously with confidence. Sport phychologist defines self-confidence as the belief that you can successfully performed a desired behavior.

It is individual’s awareness  of his ability to undertake a task successfully. It may thus be conceptualized as an aspect of self-awareness, which postulates two descriptive and two evaluative facets of self-concept. Confidence athletes believe in him selves. Most importantly, he believes in the ability to acquirenecessary skills and competencies, both physical and mental to reach his optimum potential. Less confident athlete doubt whether he is good enough or has what it takes to be successful.

When you expect something to go wrong, you are creating what is called a self-fulfilling prophecy – which means that expecting something to happen actually helps cause it to happen. Negative self-fulfilling prophecies are psychological barriers that lead to a vicious cycle, the expectation of failure leads to actual failure, which lower self-confidence and increases expectation of future failure.

SELF-VULNERABILITY

Self-vulnerability is the perception of change in self-occurring under stressful circunatances. It is an invaluable way of understanding athlete’s behavior and attitude when they says “the going gets toug”. The coach who is able to spend more time with the athlete and observing his reactions in different situations can play an increasingly significant role in assisting the athlete to perform at his best in these situations.