And by real confidence, I mean confidence that isn't completely destroyed at the first sign of failure or criticism, real or perceived.

I do know it has nothing to do with experience. I have plenty of it. I could also tell you the things I'm good at. But I have no confidence that I'll actually perform at the proper level when I need to every time. It also seems that some people think I'm better than I actually am.

I just lost what little confidence I had been able to build up recently...I'm just about done at this point. I'll never have any confidence ever at this rate.

[ManOfConstantSorrow]

I wonder if it is not confidence as such but the way you look at setbacks and what people say?

You have plenty of experience you say so will know that things will go wrong from time to time and people won't always comment helpfully all the time.

Perhaps you are being quite hard on yourself? I am pretty sure you could be a little more sympathetic with yourself.

[Perna]

I think you have to really like yourself to build up confidence that, whether you succeed or fail, make mistakes or are "perfect" it all is good. You have to be interested in yourself and cheering for yourself and trying to help yourself as if you are your own best friend (which, if you think about it, you technically should be since you're your own self and there's nobody else in your Life :-)

I think we generally lose confidence because somewhere along the line someone else said we weren't good at something or couldn't do something or had some other criticism and we believed them instead of looking at what we wanted, what the circumstances were and what we were trying to achieve, etc. Other people humiliating us does not make us worthy of humiliation! Because other people point out things they don't like about us, they don't know our story/why we do what we do or what we are working on, etc. so they don't really have the "right". Criticism is often not about us at all but about the person criticizing. And the self-critical voice we all have is usually just left over criticism from parents or teachers from when we were young and did not understand how to judge just criticism, how to use it or dismiss it as not useful to ourselves.

I think a lot of the problem stems from first of all my parents wanting a boy if they were only going to have one child and my brother died before I was born. And so they were stuck with just me, a girl. I tried pretty hard to be a boy growing up...but obviously I'd never be good enough.

In college I studied music. I was originally a saxophone player, but switched over to trumpet which was apparently what most people didn't want. The abilities that I developed on trumpet were not recognized that much (since these were abilities not valuable to the school I guess) and I graduated feeling that I wasn't good enough to even attempt a graduate degree on trumpet. So I switched to composing music as the area I got my masters in. And now I'm getting my doctorate in music composition.

I still have little to no confidence as a trumpet player despite years of playing on a part time basis when I've been in school. In some cases, it doesn't feel comfortable being a girl playing a "man's instrument". Especially in jazz which still has a pretty misogynist sort of vibe.

I also should of mentioned that my father is pretty misogynistic himself so I did automatically have less value because of my sex. I guess I eventually won him over, but really at the core, I resent being female. I don't really consider my gender to be female, just so I can live with myself.

[pathtofreedome]

I have just read somewhere "Unhappines is just a thought" but so is everything else. So fill your mind with happy thoughts about yourself and youll be fine.