Confidence.....what is it?

Now a days there seems to be such huge talk of building confidence, "build your self esteem in 10 days".......I think many people's idea of confidence has gotten quite distorted. I myself as a teenager probably had what they call very low self esteem. I wasn't quite sure about myself, looked alot for external cues to get a better understanding if what I was doing was correct or not, and was told by several people to work on gaining confidence. But the self doubt always remained...probably because I didn't know myself well enough, I hadn't taken time to well observe my strengths and weaknesses, to build of the skills i possessed, and couldn't find what was so special about me as a person. Those adoloscent years where definately quite difficult for me I would say. With a short temper that often sparked at home with family members, I had been labelled and tagged by alot of people. Maybe somewhere that hurts even today, that people couldn't pull me up when i needed some support, that someone couldn't accept me for exactly who i was, but then there is also compassion now for they too were unaware of the damage their words and actions were causing another. In fact, it is these younger years of my life that I infact sometimes now look back with alot of gratitude towards, for it was because of them that today I feel empathy for so many.
For me the latter years of university onwards was when as they call it...my "confidence" started to grow. Suddenly, I was becoming more and more aware of myself.... of what made me tick, of what made me stand out, of how being shy and quiet did not mean that you were unintelligent, just that you observed more.....I was starting to look at myself with a totally different light which I could see being reflected through any person who started interacting with me. The more time I spent with myself, the more I faced my pains and sorrows, the more I felt I was blossoming as an individual. Probably, the months after I finally left my software life for the unknown is when I sat there with myself......and as I started accepting the little things about myself that up until then I couldn't come to terms with, and most of all I started loving myself...the world responded differently, paths and ways started opening up. And with that grew a confidence so huge, that I felt in so much control for the first time in my life.
And thats when I started realizing that confidence comes from the ego....your mind is needed to sustain it in you. It is self belief driven by experience, by knowing yourself, by having command over your skills. But when this confidence metamorphosizes into humility and love.....that is when you truly experience compassion. For confidence by itself can infact be very dangerous....we have seen how most of the wars and brutalities have been caused because some people had so much belief in themselves. I feel in fact most of the world is heading with such vigour towards this shallow perception of confidence.....someone who walks and talks without hesitation, is not shy to make open remarks...we look at them with such intrigue. But i feel when a person can be all that, but has come to a state where he has become humble....for he understands how little a part he plays in this event called life....those are the ones who walk in true self awareness....they know themselves well enough, to know what is them is not...