How To Build Your Confidence

In the new book, The Confident Mind: A Battle-Tested Guide to Unshakable Performance, Dr. Nate Zinsser, Director of West Point’s influential Performance-Psychology Program, shares his secrets of mental toughness and how to build and master confidence. 

In addition to training the minds of the U.S. Military Academy’s cadets, he has coached world-class athletes, a Super Bowl MVP, numerous Olympic medalists, professional ballerinas, NHL All-Stars, and college All-Americans – teaching them to overcome pressure and succeed on the world’s biggest stages. 

Dr. Zinsser’s research shows that you perform best when your confidence overpowers your doubt. And, that confidence is a skill that can be taught, improved, and applied by anyone to enhance nearly every aspect of our lives and careers. 

“One trait above all others makes peak performance possible: confidence,” explains Dr. Zinsser.

 He defines confidence as: 

• “A sense of certainty about your ability, which allows you to bypass conscious thought and execute unconsciously.” 

Further, he shares that “confidence is that feeling that you can do something (or that you know something) so well you don’t have to think about how to do it when you’re doing it. That skill or knowledge is in you, it’s part of you, and it will come out when needed if you let it.” 

Dr. Zinsser additionally explains that confidence is learned by: 

• Retaining and benefitting from your successful experiences.
• Releasing or restructuring your less successful experiences. 

He also teaches that it is a misconception that mistakes, failures and negative feedback will destroy, erode or weaken your confidence. 

And, finally, as you dive into the book, you’ll learn why Dr. Zinsser says that the opinions and beliefs we hold of our talents, skills, and abilities either serve as walls that constrain us or doorways that open us up to new achievements. 

The Confident Mind is a complete guide to confidence:

• how to understand it
• how to build it
• how to protect it
• how to rely upon it when your performance matters most

Dr. Nate Zinsser

Today, Dr. Zinsser shares these additional insights with us: 

Question: After reading The Confident Mind, how much time does it typically take for a person to feel and be more confident? 

Zinsser: That entirely depends on what you mean by “more confident.” Immediately upon reading the first two chapters of the book and completing the exercises that are part of Chapter Two a reader will have a much better sense of his or her skills and competencies, and that of course contributes to the overall sense of certainty which is really the definition of competence. 

For this sense of certainty to be strong enough to sustain one through a challenging game or performance, it has to be reinforced over time. How much time? There are no hard and fast rules. I have had clients walk out of my office after a single hour-long meeting and then report back to me that their entire experience at football or hockey practice has changed. While I’m always glad to hear that I’m also aware that this new-found confidence may not withstand the punishment that comes from losses, mistakes, or setbacks. 

In order to make that confidence more stable and enduring I’d say that a couple months of steady practice is a realistic time frame. That shouldn’t deter anyone – you’d have to spend that length of time developing anything of value – muscular strength, cardiovascular endurance, a new language, etc. 

Question: How much of a person's confidence is influenced by co-workers or fellow team members, and how impactful (positive or negative) will that influence be? 

Zinsser: Being social animals, we are always somewhat under the influence of co-workers and teammates. The degree of influence other people have over us, (assuming we’re talking about adults here, because children are far more susceptible), can depend on the power dynamic present, but in the final analysis it always comes down to how much responsibility we take for our own state of mind and our own personal experience. 

It is possible, as demonstrated in the extreme cases of many POW’s, to retain one’s own confidence, dignity, and sense of self in the presence of criticism, rejection, and marginalization. It all comes down to realizing that one’s state of mind is always under one’s personal control regardless of circumstances and then making use of that control. 

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.