To me, confidence is knowing that you can do
something. The more you prove to yourself that
you can do something, the easier it gets, because
you have the experiance and convidence.
Helplessness is the cycle going in the opposite
direction. You don't know what to do and then
nothing you do works, and pretty soon you're
totally convinced that nothing will work...and
other people, picking up on this, agree.
There is or was a site www.buildfreedom.com
and one of the articles was on overcoming the
feeling of helplessness. Something about the
cognitive links being broken.
If I do x, I will get y result gets messed up
so you're not sure if I do x, will I get y or z.
And the solution is to start with something simple
that you can do and get results immediately and
then build with regards to complexity and length
of time involved...good old delayed gratification.

By the way, since 80% of our communication is non-
verbal, it's easy to see why if one acts con-
fidently, one can achieve a lot. Confidence games,
cults, etc are all predicated on the fact.