Lack of confidence is a huge problem for almost everyone and it often ties in with self-pity, self-hatred and inferiority complexes, "I can't do it, everyone else can".
By in large we are conditioned to think this way. Just go and buy your food at the supermarket. Stand in the check out line and look at all the magazines. The pictures are telling us that we are not handsome enough, we are not able to fall in love, we are not rich enough, we are not successful enough.
Competition can be beneficial on one side, it can certainly be harmful on the other side.
We were never the best athlete, we were never the most beautiful, we were never the best, the best, the best in everything. In that way then we feel under confident, we have a lack of confidence. Self-pity, self-hatred, all that comes in as well. So this is a major area for everyone to work with.
How do we get over this? We have to work, actually basically succeed at something. It doesn't have to be anything great. But we have to succeed in something and then reflect upon the fact that we have succeeded. Whether it is just staying with your breath for three seconds, and then go, "Ok, I can do it, I can do it for three seconds." Then sometime in the future you can do it for five seconds maybe, and then you have to reflect on it, "I can do it for five seconds". Or can you be nice to the people at the store, next time you go there, and when you leave the store, can you think to yourself, "I was nicer today than normal. I helped them pack the stuff, rather than them pack it all. I said hello to them. Whereas normally I don't say anything." Just little things like that, to actually reflect on it.
Most of you, if not all of you, have been successful in your work to some degree. Have you actually reflected on how you have succeeded, or do you reflect on how you have not yet succeeded enough? It is like the view that the glass is half empty or that the glass is half full. Most people look at the glass and see it as half empty but this is a wrong view. It is half full, we have done some good in our lives, and we have to reflect on all of the good that we have done.
Reflection on Sympathetic Joy, reflection on good Kamma, the more you reflect on what you have done, then you can feel confident that you can do more. If you reflect on what you have not done yet, this just builds more and more lack of confidence. Now sometimes it helps that other people say, "Hey, you did a good job." Sometimes that helps, but if we are always looking for that, then we are never going to feel satisfied, we have to know for ourselves that we have done a good job. After all, if we have done a job that was just "so-so", and somebody says, "Hey, that was great!" - we are not going to believe them, are we? If we did a great job and we know it was really good, and someone says, "No, it wasn't really good," if we believe them, what happens? We are crushed and we lose our confidence because we are not looking at reality, it actually was very good. We have to know for ourselves if something was good or not.
So this is also important when we think of developing confidence, it has to come from within. It may help from time to time if someone says, "Yes, that was good." It solidifies what we already know, but we can't depend on other people to get our confidence, we have to reflect on our good qualities, we have to reflect on our good Kamma.
Now if you haven't got enough good stuff to reflect on, then you better do more!! It could start from going to visit a hospital or an old people's home on the weekends, little things like that, and then you have something to reflect on, you have done something good. It is very simple and you can keep building from there.