It's helpful to realize that each one of us, as a human being, are just like so many people back in the Buddha's days. They were all like us - human beings.
It's also helpful to reflect that Buddhism teaches about rebirth. It doesn't look at us as just this lifetime, what we can do right now, but it looks at something deeper than that. In the teaching of rebirth, the simple fact that all of you are here means that you've earned it from doing something good in your past life. You were born into whatever family life you have. For many of you, I don't know how bad it was or how good it was, but the simple fact that you're here now - that means you have done much good Kamma in your past.
Reflecting on your goodness, as Rosemary mentioned before about Sympathetic Joy to give you more confidence, lets go of self-doubt. Reflect on what you have achieved, rather than reflect on what you have not achieved. If a person could get enlightened through concentration alone, a lot of people would get enlightened thinking about how rotten they are! And some of our students would be very good at that. That's why we teach these other techniques, that's why we teach the Sympathetic Joy meditation, that's why we teach to reflect on your good past Kamma.
Rosemary mentioned reflection on our good past Kamma briefly. That is one of the Forty Meditation Subjects that's traditionally taught within Buddhism. Why does the Buddha want us to reflect on our good past Kamma? It's exactly for this purpose: to get over self-doubt and to get gain confidence - "We have done good things."
If you've done anything good in your past, even one good thing in your past, doesn't that mean that you could repeat it again? Yes. Now, if you've done two good things in your past, does that mean that you might do two more good things in the future? Yes. And if you can think of three and four and five, six, seven, doesn't it get you kind of excited? "I'm going to be able to do so much good stuff in the future. I've done all this good in the past. I'm going to do more in the future."
Thinking in this way, in order to give yourself more confidence, relies a lot on considering what you've actually achieved. You really have done these good things. But, if you focus too much on your negativities, if you focus too much on what you can't do, then indeed, you're going to have a lot of self-doubt with every project that you encounter, with everything that you come up against. Now, there's a little syndrome in many people which Rosemary is going to explain. It's about being in first grade.
[Rosemary adds to the answer] Imagine that it's the first day of school. All the little five and six-year-olds file into the building, some are very excited wishing to be on this new adventure, some terribly anxious wishing they were home with mom and dad. So they sit down and peer at the teacher. The teacher looks over the class and sees a very shy kid looking down at the desk in front of them. Their teacher strides up to the little kid, grabs their hand and puts them in the corner and then says to them, "You sit there." Then the teacher turns to all the other little kids and says, "School is an adventure. We make mistakes but we learn from those mistakes. Everybody in the room relaxes. Even the little shy kid looks up just as the teacher turns to them and points at the little shy kid and says, "Except you. You're not allowed to make any mistakes at all."
How often do you do this to yourself? We have to be careful about those teachers and put ourselves back with the other kids.