Confidence Isn't a Feeling. It's a Trust You Build.

Some thoughts based solely on my experience — nothing more, nothing less

Of all the topics I have worked with as a performance coach in professional esports, confidence is the one that has never left the agenda. Not in any team, not at any level, and not within myself either.

It is a complex subject. Something I have personally struggled with, and have seen countless players wrestle with at different stages of their careers. Building self-confidence that actually lasts has proven to be one of the most difficult parts of my job — and honestly, it still is.

In my past I centred my work around methods like mental preparation routines, in-game support routines, and awareness of the feeling of confidence itself — learning to harness that feeling on demand and fortify a player's self-esteem to create a stable core that could withstand the ups and downs of professional esports.

I don't think there is anything wrong with any of these methods. But lately I have begun to think more about the part trust plays in building self-confidence, and the ability to manage fear that comes with it.

It starts with how we define self-confidence. The definition that makes most sense to me is:

Confidence is the belief in yourself that you can handle what's in front of you. This doesn't mean you will always succeed, but you have a fundamental trust in yourself that you will be able to cope, act and adapt regardless of the outcome.

What I like about this definition is what it leaves out. It doesn't require you to be a perfect human being who never makes mistakes. It doesn't ask you to ignore the things beyond your control. Instead it is built on raw honesty — an understanding that you will make mistakes, that outcomes are uncertain, and that real confidence comes from having proven to yourself, over time, that you can get through it anyway.

All professional esports players have it in them to perform at high levels when the circumstances are right. In those moments, players with high self-confidence and players with low self-confidence often look the same. They operate intuitively, take bold actions, stay intensely focused yet somehow relaxed, and move fluidly between conscious planning and subconscious mechanical execution.

As soon as circumstances shift, however, the difference becomes clear.

The moment a player starts making enough mistakes to land outside their comfort zone — or finds themselves in a high-stakes situation like a playoff or final — you can separate the confident from the less confident almost immediately.

The Confident Player

This is where trust comes into the picture.

Self-confidence is essentially about the trust a player has in themselves to not change their in-game identity — regardless of how they feel, how many mistakes they have made, or how big the occasion is. The player with strong self-confidence is not immune to doubt, frustration or fear. But they systematically choose to trust themselves even when that natural feeling of confidence is absent.

That trust is what prevents the downward spiral.

Instead of altering their behaviour step by step — one hesitant, half-ass action at a time — until the player we saw last game, when everything was flowing, has completely vanished, the confident player keeps making the same bold decisions. They force the same duels, take the same initiatives, handle everything within their control in the same way. They play as if the confidence were still there.

When a confident player struggles, they stay disciplined enough to keep trusting themselves — which gives them the chance to find their flow again much faster, and over time makes them someone they can genuinely rely on when things are tough.

But this requires managing fear.

When mistakes pile up or a game is on the line, fear of failure becomes real for most players — including, I would argue, even the most confident ones at certain points. At those crossroads, a player can either keep trusting themselves and act accordingly, or the fear takes over.

And fear has a very specific voice. It sounds like: what if I keep making the same mistakes and my teammates lose faith in me? Or: what if I take a bold action in a life-changing game and we lose because of me?

Fear is a constant presence in professional esports. The act of trusting yourself in official games is not a passive thing — it demands the active bravery of setting those fears aside so that your decisions stay clean and your actions remain intuitive.

The Player with Low Self-Confidence

The less confident player is a fragile player.

They can appear confident when things go their way, and they are certainly capable of showing genuine moments of quality. But there is very little stability underneath. When circumstances shift, that surface confidence disappears quickly.

They can perform well — but usually only if they get a good start, or if things flow in a way that never challenges them beyond mild, easily-managed discomfort.

When they hit real adversity — multiple mistakes in a row, genuine pressure, high-stakes moments — something breaks. It looks like they lose trust in themselves. But I would argue it is something different.

They never built that trust in the first place.

The moments of great play from this type of player are not evidence of real self-confidence. They are a display of pure mechanical skill and game sense that, in the right circumstances, gets to roam freely. The moment conditions stop being ideal, that conditional confidence vanishes — because there is nothing underneath it holding it in place.

Building trust in yourself is a slow process. It happens step by step, year by year, through repeatedly showing up for yourself in difficult moments — taking actions that defy fear, frustration and pressure — until eventually that accumulated proof becomes what we call confidence.

The player with low self-confidence has simply not gone through that process consistently. And so they are now the product of that gap.

That process, it should be said, is genuinely easier for some than others. I am not here to assign blame — I have been there myself. In my experience, the reason players don't address confidence issues earlier is usually a lack of awareness, a lack of proper guidance, or simply the difficulty of actually doing the mental work required. It is not easy.

The Path to Building Self-Confidence via Building Trust in Yourself

I want to be upfront: I still have many open questions around this topic and I am not the author of any kind of complete solution. So many variables differ on an individual level — personality, triggers, the willingness to even accept help — that this work always has to be deeply personal.

What I have come to believe is this: building confidence is less about techniques and tools, and more about helping a player build trust in themselves to take the right actions even when the feeling of confidence is not there.

The feeling will come and go. That part is not fully in their control. But what they can learn to do is use the absence of that feeling as a trigger — a signal that it is now time to actively push, to resist changing their in-game identity, and to choose to face their fears anyway. Over time, those choices are what build the trust. And the trust is what builds the confidence.

My practical approach to this process today looks something like this:

Step 1 — Understand the player

Gather key information through observing practice sessions, official games and behaviour around the game, alongside 1-on-1 dialogue. The goal is to build a general picture of personality type, the scope of the confidence issues, and get a sense of how willing the player is to do the work.

Step 2 — Define the destination

Work together with the player to define what self-confidence actually means to them — and then have them describe the version of themselves they are trying to become. This becomes a compass. It gives the player a clear sense of where they are going before the work begins.

Step 3 — Build awareness and understanding

Draw on the player's own experiences of playing with confidence versus without it to illustrate how much the feeling can vary. From there, begin introducing the fragility of their current mental state, the role trust plays in getting through difficult moments, and how fear management connects to all of it.

Step 4 — Develop metacognition

Help the player understand that the thoughts and feelings that enter their mind are not facts. They do not have to define how the player acts. They can be seen as suggestions instead.

The specific goal here is getting the player to stop treating low confidence as the beginning of a spiral. Instead of getting stuck on the feeling, they learn to use it as a trigger for new behaviour — making decisions in the same way they would if that bold, confident feeling were present.

Step 5 — Prepare and evaluate

Build a small mental preparation routine. Help the player prepare in advance for what they will do when the low-confidence feeling arrives during a game. Then always evaluate outcomes together afterwards and adjust the approach as you go.

Thanks for reading. This is my first piece on here and I hope it gave you something worth thinking about.

If you want to know a bit more about who I am and what this newsletter is about, you can find my introduction here.

Jens

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