The Oracle had declared — whoever would undo the knot that tied the chariot of the founder of the city of Gordium (in present-day Turkey) to the pole would be the future conqueror of Asia.

But the knot was so intricate that many had tried and failed.

When 20-year-old Alexander came to Gordium on his way to conquer Asia, he too tried his hand at it. But like others, he couldn’t untie it. When Alexander saw his Generals losing faith in him, he drew his sword and cut the knot in half.

What did it matter how the knot was undone?

Alexander the Great conquered Asia and subsequently the whole world because of his this stellar attitude. Even when the task seemed impossible, his immense confidence in himself made him the winner he was.

The phrase “cutting the Gordian knot” denotes a bold solution to a complicated problem.

Your ‘Gordian Knot’ might be a lack of self-confidence that is not letting you succeed as a writer.

Mine was.

I was trying to find the ends to my Gordian Knot for years, thinking I had to learn more and more about the craft of writing before I could ‘conquer’ the world of writing.

The truth was I lacked confidence.

I am not the only one who feels like this. So many of us lack confidence in ourselves.

Meryl Streep is one of the finest actors the world has seen. She has been nominated for a record 21 Oscars and has won three! And yet, she feels like she is a fraud. Self-doubt plagues her: “Why would anyone want to see me again in a movie? I don’t know how to act anyway, so why am I doing this?”

What can you do when you lack confidence in yourself?

Various research suggests that there are ways to boost self-confidence.

Fake It Till You Make It

Social psychologist Amy Cuddy and her colleagues conducted an experiment in 2010. They divided 42 participants into two groups:

1. the high power posing group and
2. the low power posing group.

They asked the first group to sit tilted back in a chair with hands behind their head and their legs propped up on the table for a few minutes.

The second group was asked to sit with their arms close to their body and their hands in their laps.

All of them were then given $2. The participants could either pocket this $2, or they could bet it on a game with a 50/50 chance to either double it or lose it all. The participants were also asked how powerful they felt on a scale of 1 to 4.

12 of the 21 folks in the low power posing group bet their $2. And their average rating of feeling powerful was 1.83.

In contrast, 18 of the 21 people in the high power posing group bet their $2. Their average rating of feeling powerful was 2.57.

Cuddy and her colleagues also took saliva tests of all the participants before the experiment began and then once again 17 minutes after their pose on the chairs.

Participants in the high power posing group showed higher levels of testosterone and lower cortisol levels. Conversely, participants in the low power posing group showed the inverse: low testosterone and high cortisol levels. (Higher testosterone leads to more confidence and lower cortisol leads to less stress and anxiety!)

Sitting in a powerful pose changed people’s emotions and hormones, making them take more financial risks.

“Fake it till you make it” works because your act changes how you feel. If you act confident, you’ll feel confident too.

Build rituals

Anxiety is the usual reaction when doing things out of our comfort zone. A great way to beat anxiety is to build rituals.

That’s right.

Rituals help us feel in control. Anything that reduces our anxiety enhances our confidence. Athletes who follow rituals before their game feel more confident about their abilities than those who don’t. Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal’s soccer team makes sure his right foot touches the grass first before stepping onto the field for a game.

Rafael Nadal has to have all of his water bottles lined up with the labels facing the baseline where he is playing from.

Tiger Woods wears a redshirt for the final round of every tournament he plays. In every game, Michael Jordan wore his North Carolina University shorts underneath his Chicago Bulls shorts.

Writers follow rituals too. Isabel Allende starts writing her new book on the 8th of January each year. Hemingway wrote in his bedroom every morning just after dawn and would go for a daily half-mile swim immediately after. Charles Dickens was committed to a three-hour walk through the streets of London or along the countryside. Maya Angelou wrote in a hotel room surrounded by a dictionary, a deck of cards, a bottle of sherry, and a Bible.

Barbara Stoberock and her colleagues from the University of Cologne show that even a simple ritual like crossing your fingers for luck makes people feel more confident.

Build small rituals, and you’ll feel in command and full of confidence.

But what to do if you want to feel confidence deeper — in your bones?

Use Pygmalion Effect To Label Yourself

The Pygmalion effect is a psychological phenomenon in which high expectations improve performance in a given area. The effect is named after the Greek myth of Pygmalion, a sculptor who fell in love with a statue he had carved.

Psychologist Robert Rosenthal conducted a famous experiment in 1968. He gave the young students in an elementary school in California an IQ test. He then told the teachers which of their students had the potential to bloom intellectually and were in the top 20% of the class.

But he lied to them. Rosenthal randomly names the students without looking at the results of their tests.

After a year, all the students were given another IQ test. The students who were listed as being in the top 20% improved their IQ scores by 10–15 points when compared to their peers.

Expectations changed performance. The children who were labeled as smart ended up increasing their smarts the most.

You’ve got to label yourself as confident.

How to do that?

Here is another experiment to help you figure out.

Researcher Antonis Hatzigeorgiadis and his colleagues did a research experiment with the help of 60 swimming class students at the University of Thessaly in Greece. The students were tested on how accurately they threw the ball and how far they threw it.

Then half the students were given instructions to talk to themselves every time they threw the ball. These students dramatically improved their performance and became better at throwing the ball than the others.

Motivational self-talk sounds woo-woo mumbo jumbo, but it works. Just repeatedly telling yourself that you’re a confident person makes the label stick.

Research done by Ethan Kross of the University of Michigan shows that self-talk in the second or third person works better than first-person. Saying “you can do this” instead of “I can do this” to yourself works better because it makes you think objectively.

Takeaways

• Self-confidence is the key to being a successful writer.
• Act confident, and you will feel confident. How you act changes how you feel.
• Reduce self anxiety to boost your confidence. Rituals help reduce anxiety.
• Work on your emotions to feel more confident. Power posture, rituals, and self-talk all help to build confidence.
• Surround yourself with people who think highly of you. Their expectation will affect your confidence and change your performance.