Self Confidence again

GP run finished.
It was actually a good run. Somehow I come back tired everyday, no energy to do anything. So all my assignments have been put on hold. That is crap.

I was with the german gp in parnell. He's very nice. Actually, i think he is a good GP - i would recommend ppl to go to him. He's really nice with the psychosocial things - he takes time to listen to you and you can really see people opening up to them. He's patient with his Korean patients (he got heaps cos his wife is korean, and he's able to speak a few words of korean and understands some). He is also nice to students. He watches us do history and examinations and takes over/gives help when we ask.

Maybe we don't get to do as many practical procedures and things like that as compared to other places, but we really got to practice our consultations skills and time management.

So when he marked us again at the end of the run, he commented on our lack of self confidence and it would be good to have more confidence.

Which made me think - WHERE am i gona get that self confidence from, and HOW am i gona achieve it?

In the past, have i been basing my self-confidence on comparison with others?

I think that's the easy way out.

There's 2 types of confidence -
a> when you feel confident after comparing yourself to others and think that other people are worthless and not as good as you (the kind of confidence that makes you the arrogent proud jerk)

b> when you feel confident of your own abilities without comparing to others - you know what you can do, what you can't do, your limits and weaknesses and know to try harder if you do fail. It comes from within yourself - if you take all those other people away, you will still feel confident.

I think i base most of my so-called self confidence on a> . THat is not good - as
1. it makes me an arrogent jerk, which others can easily pick up
2. this confidence is easily crushed when other more self-assured people appear.
3. this confidence is influence by other people - and therefore ruins the concept of "self-confidence". And it is important not to be dependent on other people.

Therefore maybe next time, when my supervisors suggest to me that i need more confidence (which many supervisors have already so far - i duno if i have improved or not), i really really want to ask: so HOW do i go about improving my confidence?

1. They sometiems say i should just ACT confident...maybe after acting confident for a while, I WILL become confident? Or is that some kind of self-delusion?
2. They also say that it is ok to be wrong. I, for one, am one of those people that's scared to be wrong. Part of it is me not wanting to hurt other people (and thus the lack of confidence in practical procedures), part of it is not having done it many times before (i need to be familiar with things and have lots of experience before i feel confident) and part of it is the fear of being put down when you are wrong (by myself - when i make the wrong diagnosis, by others e.g. supervisor, when you get the questions wrong and they make mean comments that can have lasting effects). Yea, its the 駝鳥心態 isn't it? where the less i try, the less i learn, and the less i learn, the less confident i am, and the less confident i am, the less i try, and the vicious cycle goes on...

I guess that's why I feel more confident when i am with friends too (SOME friends, not all), cos i know that they won't laugh at me if i make a mistake. And if the teacher is a nice person that is encouraging and motivating, instead of sarcastic and demeaning.

I sound like a wuss eh, how am i gona survive in the real world?