Interesting piece on Confidence...

[Tonus]

*puts on amateur psychologist hat*

Our subconscious controls a great deal of our behavior, and the less we are aware of that (or resist accepting it) the more influential it is, because our conscious self will find ways to rationalize our subconscious behaviors, even when we know they are not rational. Phobias are a good example. My mother is utterly terrified of frogs, possibly owing to a bad experience in childhood. Even if she is aware that the frog in question is harmless, she displays all the effects of sheer physical terror in the presence of one. Why? Her subconscious mind simply believes this, and causes a physical reaction that she cannot control and that she surrenders to.

Confidence (or the lack thereof) is also highly influenced by the subconscious, IMO. Someone who spends his life being told "you'll never amount to anything" by a parent may become very confident (if he uses the words as a motivation to prove the parent wrong) or may develop low self-esteem (if he accepts the criticism as valid). In either scenario, he will subconsciously drive himself to achieve the ends he feels he deserves: the confident person believes that he deserves to succeed and the un-confident person believes that he deserves to fail. Ask them if this is true and they will likely deny it, but the thought process is in there, doing its work.

This frame of mind can be influenced by our surroundings and circumstances, of course. Think about something you do particularly well. Say you're a pretty decent guitar player. When you're with a group of friends who lack any musical talent and are awed by your ability, you become more and more confident and may feel more relaxed as you play. You may even feel that it's as well as you've ever played the guitar. Now go to a studio and sit down with several guitar players that you recognize as among the best in the world, and start to play for them. It's likely that you will be very nervous and worrying that each chord is wrong and that you couldn't possibly be playing worse than you are at that moment. Those other guitar players could change your mindset drastically by either telling you that you're not very good or showing that they're very impressed by your guitar-playing. If they do the latter, the confidence boost could last for quite some time and even build upon itself.

And also think about how that can work for or against a religious person. Knowing that "god has your back" can provide you with a lot of confidence. But those times when you reflect on the idea that "we're just miserable sinners" can leave a person feeling weak and useless. Since religious belief is still something that is generally built on what we hear and learn from other humans, it depends heavily on their input.