I think there are multiple pieces to this place and moving forward may require addressing all of them. There's the idea of not taking risks because of fear, which requires working with fear directly, addressing it and being willing to do things anyway despite fear. I wrote in another thread about Pema Chodron and the Buddhist philosophy of "feel the fear and do it anyway." For me it was fairly revolutionary to realize that I could feel afraid and still take a risk. There are numerous other books, a lot of them self-help, that express this same idea. There are specific tools (Mel Robbins has some that have been helpful to me, you can you-tube her talks, including a TED talk) but I think if you're ready to release yourself from the hold fear has on you and you do the prep work of thinking through the risk and addressing the real risk (which usually isn't "I'll die if I'm rejected as the head of the PTA cookie committee" -- I'm not try to be flippant about your fears here), any "tool" will work. So some of what you're talking about is empowering yourself to move beyond fears and reach out.

The other buddhist philosophy that has helped me in times of fear is to work on "seeing things as they are." What evidence is there that, for example, you can't learn? And what evidence do you have that you can in fact learn?

I work in an arena where it's very hard to determine whether your work "matters" in a tangible way because there are many factors outside the quality of my work that determine the outcome. When I first started in this field a couple of decades ago, I was either buoyed by a positive outcome (claiming credit where it may not have been all about me) or irrationally blaming of myself for failure where even something that might have been 100% brilliant couldn't have resulted in a good outcome.

So I started defining "success" as something different than an outcome that happened in a minute over years of work. I made myself see things as they are, and the different ways I knew that my work made a positive difference, in an individual or within a very chews-people-up system and the stoniness of the people that worked within it. I started accepting positive feedback and really hearing it. There are things that "count" for me now as success that didn't use to. I have opened up my world to see the good that I do and have done, and I think that same openness has increased my self confidence.

If you tell yourself things that are not true right now, especially about yourself, then those beliefs will limit your choices and stall your risk taking. And of course reduce your confidence in yourself, and then that creates this dynamic where you don't take risks to "prove" that you can do and be more. Endless circle, and probably an example of a self fulfilling prophesy.

Increasing your self confidence also creates a projection of self confidence in others, and IME people like self confidence. It's easier to work with people who are not steeping in self doubt, or need help in figuring things out even though they do not actually need it. I like being around people when I collaborate who understand their part of the project and can take what I give them and run with it. Who don't ask me to do their job for them or prop them up while they do it. Self confidence also feels very different than arrogance, which I run into from time to time.

I also think that self confidence increases the possibility that the risk taking will work out positively, and it makes it easier to bear when it doesn't. Just like success isn't always due to you, neither is failure.

I read something the other day and I can't recall where, but the person said something about how they are now able to make choices about what they do based on their "core." That really speaks to me in this context, because I think self confidence is very much a core of who we are, and when I was able to make some changes to improve it, I have felt like my choices were more coming from my "core" rather than the periphery of myself, like my fears. It feels good.