Purpose, Submission, Self Confidence

One of the things I have always struggled with in my considerations of God's purpose and submission is the relationship of self confidence.

Full disclosure:  I have - for most of  life - struggled with self confidence.  Even when doing things that I am relatively skilled at, I struggle with having any confidence in myself and what I am doing.

Why?  There are probably a host of reasons buried beneath the surface.  The one that is germane to the conversation at hand is that it often impinges on my understanding of what submission to God and His purposes means.

The crux of my problem is this: if I am submissive to God and His purposes, seeking His plans, then I feel as if I have lost the ability to have confidence in my own ability to choose a path and my directions.  This lends itself to constant sense of looking over one's shoulder, of trying to ascertain if what one is doing is really correct or if it is a misdirection of what was intended.

Do this long enough, and what one finds is that one becomes immobilized, never really sure what direction one should be taking or failing to put full effort into what is at hand, fearing that it is the wrong thing to be spending time on but never sure how to figure out what the right thing is.

If you think this isn't crippling, you can't imagine the level of uncertainty - perhaps even fear - that enters one's life when one is never sure of direction or effort or if one is doing the right thing at all.  It makes days a thing of concern and nights a thing of waste (after all, you should be doing something more useful than sleeping, right)?

How does one resolve this?

I'm not sure.  I've just written, deleted, rewritten, and re-deleted a phrase three times in this spot.  I can come with the answer I think I should, but I'm not sure that it's the honest answer.  Matters such as these are too important to leave to trite phrases and passionless mouthings of things I have not really made my own, a form of rote chanting without understanding the words.

How does one bridge the gap between God's will and purpose and the daily self confidence to competently live one's life?