Returning, deliberately.
Dr Harvey Smith | Sport and Exercise Psychologist | Glasgow
There is a concept in psychology called self-efficacy: the belief in your own capacity to follow through on something you have set out to do. It is not confidence in the outcome. It is confidence in the process.
I have been away from this space for a while, but the summer has offered plenty of valuable experiences, both personally and professionally. Time in Canada around the World Cup, watching the Commonwealth Games unfold in my home city, and working with clients and teams from all walks of life have all shaped my thinking in ways that quiet time at a desk rarely does. Professional development is not always a course or a certificate. Sometimes it is proximity to different environments, different pressures, and conversations with different people navigating performance in their own way.
But I have been thinking about return, not as a dramatic reinvention- I only took the Summer off, but as a quiet act of consistency. The kind of behaviour change that tends to last is rarely built solely on motivation. It is built on structure, repetition, and showing up even when the moment does not feel significant.
So I am starting again here. Not with a grand plan, but with an intention: to write about the psychology of performance, pressure, identity, and the internal processes that shape how people cope, adapt, and grow, whether that is on a pitch, in a workplace, or in the quieter moments of everyday life.
I am looking forward to sharing these reflections, alongside the reading, research, and conversations that continue to shape how I understand people, pressure, and the ways we navigate challenge.
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This post draws on peer-reviewed research. Key sources are listed below.
Bandura, A. (1977). Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review, 84(2), 191–215.
Gardner, B., Lally, P., & Wardle, J. (2012). Making health habitual: The psychology of 'habit-formation' and general practice. British Journal of General Practice, 62(605), 664–666.
Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009.
Mattson, M., et al. (2024). Time to form a habit: A systematic review and meta-analysis.