As I sat on the plane, looking out at the thin white clouds covering the square patches of farmland, I could feel the knot in my stomach get tighter. The St. Louis Arch loomed up ahead as the plane began to descend. Ding. Please restore your chairs and trays to an upright position. Thank you for flying TWA.

There wasn’t much time left. I pulled my notes out of my carry-on bag and began to read through my list of possible interview questions. But because I had asked and answered these questions so many times in the last few days, I started to space off.

Then he appeared — that gremlin on my shoulder.

“You’re not going to get this job. Stop kidding yourself,” he whispered in my ear. “I’m sure the other applicants are more qualified. Give it up,” he said snickering at me behind his matted paw.

I tried to be brave. “I’m just as good as the other applicants,” I recited. “Or I wouldn’t have been asked to interview.”

“They obviously felt sorry for you,” the evil little guy said. I slumped down in my chair. “The other interviewees have four- points, are student government presidents and wear Ann Taylor suits,” he said. I slumped further. It had happened again.

In the book “Taming Your Gremlin,” Richard D. Carson explains this sneaky character that appears to steal our self-confidence. According to Carson, the gremlin is the side of our personality that tries to prepare us for failure by making us anticipate that we will fail. No matter how illogical we know the voice of the gremlin is, we can’t help listening.

The gremlin appears when we are interviewing for a job or internship, giving a speech or competing in a sporting event. He can also kill a party by convincing us we’re not funny, pretty, handsome, witty enough to meet people and have a good time.

We start worrying about how others will see us. Will we appear too eager? Will we look stupid, or naive? We start to second-guess the choices we’ve made. Should we have worn the black suit instead of the gray pants? Should we have printed our resume on cream paper instead of white? We start to think about what our family and friends will think of us if we fail.

When we start comparing our extra-curricular activities, grades and even personality to others, we know it’s all over. The gremlin has succeeded in robbing us of our confidence in our abilities.

Why do we torture ourselves? Throughout school we have been taught to have confidence in ourselves and our talents. Despite this, society, our upbringing or just human nature convinces us we’re just not good enough.

Fortunately, Carson says we can learn to tame the gremlin.

The key to vanquishing the gremlin is to visualize him on your shoulder and imagine removing him. Grab the little guy by his scrawny neck and yank him off your shoulder. Proceed to wring his neck and watch his little eyes bulge out of his furry face. Then fling his lifeless body to the ground and stomp on him until he stops moving.

If these directions seem harsh, don’t worry — he’s not dead. He’s like the Terminator. No matter how far you run or how cruelly you think you killed him, he will pop up the next time you feel your self-confidence begin to slip.

While we can’t kill the gremlin, and probably shouldn’t, we can tame him. Each of us needs to have faith that our education, experiences and abilities will enable us to accomplish the task at hand.

We need to realize that while other applicants, speakers or competitors are qualified, so are we.

To give ourselves an extra edge, we need to recognize the unique talents and experiences we possess that can give us an advantage over our competitors. With each positive thought, the gremlin grows weaker and weaker until we are able to focus on accomplishing our goal.

So as I headed to the baggage claim, I took a deep breath and smiled to myself and my gremlin. I knew I could go in there and wow those interviewers, and if not, then at least I got a window seat on the airplane.

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Erin Walter is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Urbandale.