Confidence

I have found that throughout my life, I have struggled with confidence--either thinking I have not done enough, or comparing what I have done with others and finding myself wanting. I notice that this happens a lot when I am very impressed with someone else's remarks, or thoughts, and there is a sense that I could improve my own abilities, though I don't always know how. I have found recently that the how question is what really gets me stuck and bogged down. Whenever I begin to ask myself how to do something, I end up in a whirl: it's a bit like asking a centipede how it's possible to move so many legs and synchronize them together. Of course, there is simply no answer or end to any answer, and sooner or later the centipede can only do what's most natural to itself. But it seems very easy for a person to sink into the mire of how questions when there is a seemingly insurmountable challenge or frustration. Very often, we do things with some level of competence without ever knowing the "how" of it, and it's not explainable in such rationalistic terms.
  I think a lot of times, there is also the associated cult of personality that arises when people easily start to admire others for what they do, rather than contributing their own experience or knowledge. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter who has the most knowledge, the most experience or the most wisdom. Sometimes one has to simply let go of comparison altogether and just try. The example was during the sharing after meditation today, when the topic was about quantum physics and its connection to meditation. For some time, I became overwhelmed by the topic, but after a while, a thought came to my mind: well, I am far from being an expert on this subject, but I have read a thing or two about it. Why don't I just say what I know and not worry too much about whether it's an expert opinion, or just hopelessly naïve? Rather than trying to start with the finishing point, I focused instead on the simple question of what do I know, or what can I possibly know about what is being discussed. In this way, I am observing the process of contributing in itself, rather than trying to get to a predetermined destination.
    In ESL teaching, there is something similar that students are taught to do when they read unfamiliar or daunting passages of text. One strategy they are taught is to scan the whole text overall to figure out what the overarching topic might be, or why the author is writing this particular piece. The second strategy, somewhat related, is that of context clues: detecting the meaning of an unfamiliar word by looking for its context in the sentence or surrounding sentences to discern a possible meaning. I think both strategies are effective because they work on the felt, tacit sense of knowing, or 'pre-knowing' that learners often bring to a seemingly new situation. Through these processes, learners develop the confirmation of seeing that they already know many things, even when the details of a language may not be so transparent at first.  With this basic trust, people can engage things wholeheartedly without having to compare their abilities with those of others.  Quite simply: everyone has something truly unique an valuable to contribute to any situation.