The Em Matrix: Building Confidence From Previous Results

This one is dedicated to my wonderful wife and two daughters. They didn’t necessarily ask for my help but in allowing me to do so, gave me the opportunity to develop a model that I’ve since used to build confidence in anxious and nervous climbers: The Em Matrix.

A lack of confidence in one’s own abilities can be utterly debilitating. At it’s most extreme, a lack of self-confidence can be linked to a phenomena in sport psychology known as ‘choking‘; something that has been known to completely derail even the very best.

Yet self-confidence isn’t merely for the elite. In another article, I discuss something called the DCBA Scale and how subtle changes in mentality can be closely linked to performance levels. Put simply, we need some level of self-confidence in order to perform at any level.

Which leads us to the obvious question: if we’re struggling with a lack of confidence, what can we do about it? How can we build confidence in our own ability?

In her book, Climb Smarter, Dr Rebecca Williams outlines her five “Components of Confidence”, while sports coach Brain Mac provides six. They are largely the same, with subtle differences, but I’m going with professional sports psychologists Madeleine Crane and Carina Jungblut of Climbing Psychology who provided five sources of self-confidence.

• Previous Experience/Accomplishments. If we’ve done something well once, it can help us the next time we wish to try the same task. It may sound obvious but it’s something we can lean on later quite easily when trying to build our confidence in the moment.
• Social Support. This can come from a friend, coach, Facebook group, anything really that is external and helps to support us
• Preparation. Rituals, routines, mantras, sequencing, visualisation, the list is long and extensive and not something we have time enough to
• Vicarious Experience. Another fairly obvious one but another incredibly useful one. If we see someone else complete a task, often it can help to bring us confidence that we can do the same. For example, that guy did it, so can I.
• Innate factors. Think of things like chemical imbalances and mental health struggles (either long or short term) which we can do nothing about and therefore, disregard in this context

We can’t maximise all of these at the same time. Instead, I’m going to focus on one specifically: building confidence from previous experience.

But it gets more complicated. Sometimes, as with my wife in her studies, simply saying “think about how well the last assignment went!” simply didn’t cut it. It was too easy to catastrophise, to claim “yeah but this is different”.

What we needed was something irrefutable; not necessarily to build confidence now but to start to build confidence for later.

The Em Matrix

And so to my form.

Allow me to provide some background. My wife was studying for her degree and while I could clearly see how brilliant she was performing, she lacked confidence in her own abilities. Before every test, she would be nervous that she would underperform; this despite achieving excellent results in the last test.

In order to build on her previous experiences, I drew up a table for her (hence the name). After some formatting and a couple of adjustments, it looked pretty much the same as this:

Each row on the form relates to a different task. Meanwhile, let’s go through the columns to explain.

Note: The columns on the left can either be completed before you commence the task or can be filled in retrospectively (but ONLY if you’re truly honest with yourself).

This box is simply a place to describe the Task you are setting/have set out to do. Typically – being as this is a climbing coaching website – this will be a project route, competition, trip or some other such. However, as is clear from the background to this Chart, the ‘task’ could relate to anything at all.

Not so much how hard the task is going to be but how hard you think the task is going to be. There’s a big difference and while the numbers are often the same, ask yourself the question as to whether they are actually the same or if you’re really expecting something you think will be simple to be much harder than it should. Actual difficulty is largely irrelevant compared to the perception.

This is less quantitative and more qualitative (or less numbers and more a description). All we’re looking for here are words that describe either how you feel before undertaking this task or how you did feel before you started. Again, be honest, there’s no reason anyone other than you needs to read this and if you’re not honest, you won’t get the true value of this model.

Very simply: do/did you expect to be able to complete the task or not?

Now complete the task OR think about after you’d completed the task

This is pretty straightforward: did you succeed or fail? That being said, sometimes success exists on a spectrum and it would be certainly very easy to have a more complicated answer in here. Nevertheless, keep this one simple: did you achieve what you set out to or not?

Note: there’s a very clear issue that may arise if you fail at a ‘task’ and the affect that can have on self-confidence. We will address this lower down the page.

We know how hard we thought it was going to be but how hard did the task actually turn out to be?

You can view this in terms or physical effort (a Borg RPE Scale), mental effort, overall effort but however you view it, this is a measure of hard how you tried.

Similar to Effort Level but subtly different. The Commit Level is how long you kept trying for. Did you give it max effort briefly before just sacking it off? Did you fail to try hard at first and when that didn’t work, walk away? Did you try a little bit over and over, giving a high commit but low effort level? There’s no wrong answers if they’re honest.

The BIG question. There are no wrong answers here and it can simply be a case of listing feelings, emotions, thoughts, whatever you felt in the aftermath of the event. To lay this out really clearly: however you feel is okay. I know that’s only me saying it but hopefully that’s enough. You CANNOT control the thoughts in your mind. But you can control whether you listen to them.

This section is potentially the most important. Use as much or as little detail as you like really but as with everything on here, be honest with yourself.

Analysing the Results

There’s a lot of variables in there and I can’t go through every single eventuality. However, it would be remiss of me to simply go “here you go, good luck!” and leave it at that.

When working with clients/family members on this in person, I can guide the conversation as needed but being as this is a website, I’ll outline some potential outcomes.

1. I Did Better Than I Thought I Would

This is the classic outcome I’m always hoping for: the person in question lacked confidence, tried anyway and succeeded despite their initial scepticism.

The result of that means that next time, when there is that element of doubt, it may not entirely derail our attempt in the way we fear.

2. I Did Worse Than I Was Expecting

This outcome becomes more complicated. However, it can still lead to greater confidence in the future. The key is why did you do worse than you were expecting.

Let’s have a look at some scenarios. This is definitely not an exhaustive list and it can be MUCH more complicated. What we’re doing here are throwing out some potential analyses with some questions to explore.

2.1 Underestimating the Task

One reason we failed may be that we underestimated the task at hand. Did it turn out to be harder than we were expecting? Our expected and actual difficulty scores will guide us here.

2.2 Lack of Effort or Committment

Again, we’ve got scores here to guide us. If we failed to hit the target, how hard were we actually trying?

Be warned, though, there are many reasons we may not have been trying hard enough; many reasons that something was holding us back. Were we scared of what might happen if we failed? Were we scared of failing itself? Were we actually motivated for the task laid out for us? Especially if we didn’t choose the task at hand and had to do it for another reason.

Equally, there may have been other life factors involved too. In my book on goal setting, in the feedback section is a small part entitled “Mitigating Circumstances”. Sometimes life gets in the way and we need to give ourselves a break if this is the case, without using it as an excuse.

Finally, the obvious conclusion: without going into the task with conviction, did we actually sabotage our own efforts? Ask yourself, if you’d actually given it your all, would the outcome have been different?

Summary

The Em Matrix was designed specifically to help a select few individuals who clearly lacked confidence. They were achieving good results but failed to build on that in the future.

The Matrix is only really used by myself when I’m fairly certain that the candidate will at least get close to the required result; usually when I’m very sure this will be the case. If this is the case, it can be a powerful tool to build on previous experiences to develop self-confidence on similar tasks in the future.

The questions come when we try it and don’t hit the result we were hoping for. The danger when this happens is that it can reinforce the idea that we’re not good enough and if the issue was a lack of confidence, it becomes a vicious cycle.

In that case, often there is data here to help to unpack such a cycle. The columns are designed to prompt as to some of the issues, although I will offer some caution that this won’t suddenly unlock some secret potential every time.

What it can do is to demonstrate what may have been possible with some subtle changes. But remember: win, lose or draw, it’s all irrelevant if we don’t try again. At least now we’re armed with more information ready for next time.