That belief is wrong. And it held me back until I learned better.
Confidence is not a gift. It is a skill. And like every skill, it is built through repetition, tested by adversity, and never truly finished.
Confidence Is a Construction Project
The word “confidence” comes from the Latin confidere, which means to trust fully. And that’s exactly what it is: trust in yourself. Not a feeling that arrives one day and stays forever, but something you build, brick by brick, through accumulated evidence that you can do what you’re setting out to do.
Psychologists call this self-efficacy, your belief in your ability to execute specific tasks. And the leading researcher on the subject, Albert Bandura of Stanford University, identified the single most powerful way to build it: mastery experiences. In other words, repetition. Doing the thing, succeeding at the thing, and letting your brain register that success as evidence of capability.
Every time you repeat a skill and execute it well, you are laying another brick. Miss enough reps, take enough time away, or suffer a significant setback, and some of those bricks come loose. That’s not a weakness. That’s how the brain works.
Even Champions Have to Rebuild
In 2016, I won the Olympic gold medal in BMX racing. By most measures, I was at the top of the sport. Confidence should not have been a problem.
Then, in 2018, I crashed. I took five months off to recover. And when I came back, something felt different. The physical ability was returning, but the confidence was not keeping pace. I didn’t feel sharp. I didn’t feel competitive. I didn’t feel like myself.
Here’s what I had to accept: the title didn’t protect me from doubt. The gold medal didn’t make me immune to the mental rebuilding process. I was the Olympic champion, and I still had to start over mentally.
So that’s exactly what I did. I swallowed my ego and stepped back. I started racing lower-level events, ones that were well below where I had been competing. Events that, from the outside, probably looked like a step backward for someone with my resume. I entered into “pro-am” competitions.
But here’s what I knew: you cannot shortcut the process of building evidence. My brain needed to experience success again before it would trust me to compete at the highest level. I needed to lay new bricks. One step back to take two steps forward.
That decision was one of the most important of my career. Not because it was comfortable, but because it worked. I rebuild my confidence brick by brick.
What the Research Says
My experience isn’t unique. The science on confidence and performance has been building for decades, and two studies stand out.
In a landmark study by Dr. Gabriele Wulf at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (my alma mater, go Rebs!), researchers found that athletes who were given autonomy and positive feedback during training showed significantly greater confidence and performance improvements than those who received neutral instruction. The conclusion was clear: confidence grows in environments that provide consistent, positive reinforcement of progress, no matter how small.
A second study published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology examined athletes returning from injury and found that perceived competence, not physical readiness, was the primary predictor of successful return to competition. In other words, athletes who felt confident came back stronger, regardless of whether they were physically more or less recovered than their peers. The mental rebuild is not a soft add-on. It is the foundation.
Both studies point to the same truth: confidence follows evidence, and evidence is built through repetition and small wins.
The Work Is Never Done
This is the part nobody wants to hear. There is no finish line with confidence.
Even after I rebuilt mine following the 2018 crash, I still had to maintain it. Still had to train it. Still had to be intentional about the mental habits that keep self-belief from eroding. High-pressure moments, bad training days, and public failures will always test it. The question is whether you have built enough of a foundation to absorb those hits and rebuild.
The most confident people in any field are not the ones who never doubt themselves. They are the ones who have developed a system for rebuilding when doubt creeps in. They know that confidence is not a destination. It is a practice.
For athletes, that means deliberate repetition, incremental challenges, and the humility to sometimes compete below your level to get your footing back. For professionals, it means the same thing: seeking small wins, stacking evidence, and resisting the urge to perform at a level your current mindset cannot support.
Build the Evidence
If you are struggling with confidence right now, the answer is not to think more positively or wait until you feel ready. The answer is to act. Start smaller than your ego wants to. Succeed at that level. Then move up.
Check your ego at the door. Take a step back. Trust the process.
The bricks you lay today are the foundation you stand on tomorrow.
– Connor Fields
