“Confidence is going after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you.” - Zig Ziglar

In a nutshell, this quote perfectly sums up how being confident is about having the conviction that whatever you are setting out to achieve or to be is inevitably going to happen. It’s in having this level of trust in yourself that the desired outcome is non-negotiable and you disarm any doubts from getting in your way.

Think about someone you know who you consider to be very confident. How do they carry themselves and how do they talk? Now think about how you hold yourself, do you stand tall, breathe deeply and talk with a strong, clear voice? Just by making these small changes in your physiological states can quickly start to change the way you feel.

Adopt an air of expectation in all that you do and focus on the best possible outcome. For example, imagine you are due to do a presentation but you’re nervous just thinking about it. You keep dwelling on how nervous you are and think about what could go wrong which in turn impacts on your performance and you end up not delivering the presentation as well as you could have. As a result, you think you’re no good at doing presentations and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for you.

So change your thought process. Imagine yourself confidently giving presentations instead, adopt the behaviours of someone you consider to be brilliant at presenting and visualise your presentation as going perfectly. Think of how it feels when the audience praise and congratulate you for it afterwards and fill yourself with a feeling of certainty that your presentation is going to be brilliant. Keep rehearsing this in your mind with that confident assurance of it going better than you expected then see how much difference it makes.

Going out after Moby Dick in a rowboat and taking tartar sauce with you is all about having that feeling of certainty within yourself which you can apply to anything you do. Just as when you order and pay for something online, you have an unquestionable expectation that it is going to arrive. Apply the same undeniable trust in the outcome you want and with that indomitable thought, assume that there is no question that what you want will arrive.