Motivation

I found this nice little tidbit of info while researching for a paper. I found it quite relevant to sports, and especially coaching. Made me wonder what kind of interaction there is between confidence and desire. Will the desire to improve performance toss out the fear and lack of confidence, or does the level of confidence dictate the amount of improvement?

Motivation and Arousal

The concept of setting a proper task difficulty leads to the
consideration of additional factors that could potentially influence
the outcome of training: motivation and arousal. Whereas motiva-
tion and arousal have been largely (if not completely) ignored in
the field of skill learning (but see Ackerman & Cianciolo, 2000;
Ackerman, Kanfer, & Goff, 1995), these factors have been and
continue to be actively considered in social psychology, education,
and many other fields concerned with learning. For instance,
motivation is a critical component of most major theories of
learning in these fields, with motivation level being posited to
depend highly on the individual’s internal belief about his or her
ability to meet the current challenge. Vygotsky’s (1978) “zone of
proximal development” corresponds well with the skill learning
literature discussed above. According to this theory, motivation is
highest and learning is most efficient when tasks are made just
slightly more difficult than can be matched by the individual’s
current ability. Tasks that are much too difficult or much too easy
will lead to lower levels of motivation and thus substantially
reduced learning. This is not to say that no learning will ever occur
if the task is too difficult or too easy (Amitay, Irwin, & Moore,
2006; Seitz & Watanabe, 2003; Watanabe, Nanez, & Sasaki,
2001), but learning rate should be at a maximum when the task is
challenging, yet still doable.

Taken from Psychology and Aging, Exercising your brain... By C.S. Green et. al.