Storms and Confidence

There's a huge thunderstorm going on right now. It started right when I was leaving studio, and I was very glad I had my big umbrella with me. While I was walking back to the apartment, I spent a lot of time just feeling the wind and hearing the thunder, and watching the rain, and there was a lot of it, flow over the ground. When I got back to the apartment, I stood outside for a few minutes and just looked up at the sky and watched the lightning fork across the sky. Have you ever watched a thunderstorm? I don't think I really have ever looked at the sky during one. I'm usually inside and I see the light through the curtains, but all I see is generalized flashes. It was glorious, a very beautiful experience. I wish I had a camera, one that was fast enough. O well... Isn't it funny that now I'm finished with my weatherman project that I'm taking the time to observe a storm? But then, I don't recall any really big storms that happened during it. There was one right before we started, and now there's one right after. Stupid storm and its faulty timing.
After class I was talking to my professor. Our midsemester meeting was, in my opinion, unsatisfactory in its vagueness. While we were talking about whether or not I'm on the right track, the issue of confidence came up. I realized that I have extremely low self confidence. Well, not entirely. In relation to social situations, I'm pretty confident that I'm an attractive person and that people don't think I'm that horrible of a person. In academic situations or things that require my personal knowledge, I have terrible confidence. I think this is what my professors last year were talking about. I don't trust myself to do things "correctly" even when there's no right answer, and the fear I have of making mistakes is handicapping me to a point where I can't develop a project. What's worse, when I think about it, my confidence is at a point where I don't even trust my hearing. When I ask people over and over to repeat something, it's not that I can't actually hear. It's more like I don't believe I could be correct in what I heard so I need to double or triple check.
I wonder how my confidence has deteriorated to that level... A lot of the things I do now are sort of low of effort because I think I can't it right, so why bother. I really need to try to fix that but I don't know how...