Sport is not just about winning or losing, but sometimes coaches get lost in this trap. The trap of allowing results determine their self worth, just as players allow their performance to determine how they feel about themselves. Yesterday, I listened to Baroness Sue Campbell at the Global Coach House conference, and she emphasized "Good coaches make good athletes, whereas great coaches make great people". This is everything I believe, and is in line with my philosophy used within my applied psychology work. I had the privledge to listen to many inspiring leaders over the past couple of days who have reinforced my beliefs and also what I teach in my performance psychology practice.

Self esteem is how you value yourself and your evaluation of self worth. I see it frequently, when a young person's self worth is based on their sporting ability. They feel good when they have played well, and feel bad when things haven't went their way. And for maladaptive perfectionists, they probably rarely feel good because of the unattainable expectations they put on themselves.

So what are we doing as coaches and leaders? Are you instilling perfectionist tendencies in your athletes? Are you task focused and your main drive is to teach people to be good people rather than a coach who is focused on winning games? How can you produce good people with morals and values, rather than just have an successful team based on results and outcomes?

Society often puts us into boxes, and even in the sports field. I have seen it many times, where an athlete is in a sport for a reason other than enjoyment. Whether it be that their parents like the sport, maybe the parent either succeeded or failed in the sport, or because they feel pressure to play that sport. By allowing young people to make their own choices on their sport, will enhance their intrinsic motivation, and in turn, keep more young people participating.

Allow people to participate in various sports and allow them to make the choice of what sport they, first of all, enjoy the most, and secondly, which makes them feel good about themselves. We have to empower young people to make their own decisions and to feel free to be who they want to be.

This goes in line with teaching individuality. Teaching young people to be themselves. I continue to emphasise uniqueness and ways to feel good about being different. To embrace who you are, and be okay to stand out and go against the grain. As athletes, we do that and also as coaches. We may not always conform to the societal norm...work a 9-5 job, go home, make dinner, watch some tv. As athletes, and coaches, we put in time and effort, we miss social engagements, and family events. We get up early to train, we stay up late. We spend money and time trying to be the best we can be. We spend many hours training and competing. We are evaluated constantly and probably constantly evaluate self. So with all of this, the most important thing that will keep us striving for excellence, is to enjoy. To enjoy what we do. To love what we do. To have passion. To feel good as a person. To value self and have confidence, not only in ability, but in ourselves as people. As coaches and leaders, I feel it's our duty to promote good people and I am glad that this is also what the pioneers of sporting change believe too. What action can you take today to promote good people in sport?

I recently attended the "Appearance Matters" Conference at the University of Bristol, which heightened my knowledge of the research behind self confidence and physical appearance. Within my role at Edinburgh Leisure, I feel we do a great job targeting teenage girls, and vulnerable young people to help them improve confidence within the realm of health and physical activity, but also to teach understanding of general confidence and build self esteem.

The Health 4U Program targets third year girls and teaches various components of health and wellbeing as well as communication, dealing with stress, mental health, photoshopping, energy balance etc. I believe its a great tool for young people to have a better understanding of these components and learn in an interactive way. During the lessons, we use some videos created by the Dove Self Esteem Project.

Thirteen million young people reached through the Dove Self Esteem program, with providing education to help build self esteem. I also use the videos for psychology particulary when working with coaches on building self confidence and helping them understand some of the issues that young people may face. The presenter from the Dove Project noted:
Only 4% of women consider themselves beautiful.
9/10 would change something about themselves
6/10 opt out of activity because of body image

These startling figures makes me even more keen to try to teach young people about self acceptance and feeling good about themselves. In a world were society defines what is beautiful, and what is normal, its even more important to teach young people to love themselves for being themselves. The thin ideal is hard to obtain and can lead to maladaptive perfectionism as these ideals are unrealistic, and when people cannot obtain them, and their self confidence comes from their appearance, then they will rarely have the feeling of self satisfaction.  The Dove Project use fortune cookies with self esteem messages in them, and I received one of my favorite quotes.Check out their website for more information and great resources for working with young people about self esteem and body image.

Most of the time, we think about negative body image, and how people feel negatively about themselves. How can we encourage a positive body image rather just eradicating the negative? When a person has positive body image, they have an appreciation for their body which led to health related behaviours. I find that with my psychology I try to promote individuals strengths, rather than just working on how we can improve their weaknesses. Therefore, by knowing what a positive body image, we can find ways to teach young people how to have confidence and have positive body image, rather than just helping those with severe negative body image.

Promote a positive body image by:

1. Appreciate what your body can do. Celebrate all of the amazing things your body does for you—running, dancing, breathing, laughing, dreaming.
2. Remind yourself that “true beauty” is not simply skin deep.  When you feel good about yourself and who you are, you carry yourself with a sense of confidence, self-acceptance, and openness that makes you beautiful regardless of whether you physically look like a supermodel.  Beauty is a state of mind, not a state of your body (NEDA, 2014)
3. View yourself as a whole person.  When you see yourself in a mirror or in your mind, choose not to focus on specific body parts.  See yourself as you want others to see you–as a whole person. (NEDA, 2014).
   

Also, in line with my approach to psychology, would be looking at body image in line with goal setting, One study examined the motivation and goals for body image, and compared the differences between those with health goals and those with appearance goals. Those who had appearance goals had a feeling of "have to" and a feeling of pressure to look a certain way. This promoted guilt and shame, and could become maladaptive. This is my fear for those purely wanting to lose weight to look a certain way. What happens when you weigh what you want to weigh? Will you feel good about yourself? Will that make you a better person? Will it be healthy?

Those who have health goals feel like they 'want' to be healthy, and health is a personal importance to them rather than a need. They are motivated internally, and living a healthy life is just part of their every day. Having the 'want to' feeling is more adaptive and can result in more self satisfaction. Those with "health goals" were more likely to engage in healthy eating, and decreased binge-eating, whereas those with "appearance goals" were motivated by drive for thinness and engaged in binge eating.

I really enjoyed delivering to a great bunch of participants at my most recent performance psychology workshop. I recieved a lot of positive feedback which you can see on my testimonial page.

The participants said by the end of the workshop they were able to: "recognize different levels of confidence and esteem";  "how different factors can effect confidence" and "how to deal with anxiety by turning it into a positive"

It also allowed for participants to "understand their self more, learn new skills and adapt current abilities"

I want to say a huge thank you to all participants and their input and inspiration to each other. Group discussions, and learning from each other was noted as a positive as well it being a laid back and interactive environment. Please see the above photo for participants ideas on building confidence.

I am also thankful for Kate Cooper and the Herballife team being very cooperative with the venue, and providing a great learning environment. I apologise for the little technical glitch, and will have that resolved for the next workshop! Lets continue to work together to ensure people are confident in, not only the things they do, but for who they are.