Trying something new is scary!
Doing something new is often anxiety provoking, we don't know what to expect or what we are doing usually, so being anxious makes a lot of sense in those situations. However, controlling that anxiety is helpful in order to be more comfortable and more successful at the task. Try to remind yourself in those moments, you aren't supposed to know what you are doing the first time you do something. It is supposed to be uncomfortable and difficult, you don't have the experience in it yet to be good at it. It is also important to remember that it is okay to fail at something new, it is how you learn!! You didn't walk perfectly the first time you tried to walk, and look how great you are doing at it now! Things take practice before we get good at them. Remind yourself to be patient with yourself. Sometimes it can be helpful to think about times when you have taught someone something new. Did you expect them to get it right the first time? Were you frustrated with them for not getting it right away? Were you angry with them in any way? My guess is that you weren't, so why are you assuming the person that wants you to learn it would be frustrated or mad at you? It is very doubtful they would be, most people would be understanding and patient, and get that it will often take a few tries. And for yourself, why are you more patient with someone else learning something new, but you aren't when it is you? That isn't fair, is it? You deserve patience and understanding as well!!!
Don't be afraid to ask questions, it is better to ask and get the right information to start with, then to make a bunch of guesses and do it wrong. Most people welcome questions, unless they are repeating information that has already been given more then once, then, and usually only then, do most get frustrated. It is usually because they feel like the person isn't listening if they have to keep repeating. So, if you feel like you have to ask the same question more then once, consider rewording it, or starting with "I know you said..... however I'm still not clear, is there something I'm missing? Sometimes there is a small step that the other person does without thinking about, asking in this way will often elicit them walking you through it and helping you figure out what is missing. It may be something they didn't explain fully, or it could be something that you misinterpreted or misunderstood. Asking the questions means you won't spend extra time struggling unnecessarily, resulting in the task taking longer then it would have otherwise, and it helps them explain it in a different way so they aren’t just repeating the same thing back at you. We are so afraid of asking questions because we fear what the person will think of us. Most of the time they aren't thinking any of the negative things we think that they might. They are usually more concerned about themselves and what they need to be doing, not on others.
Have there been other times that you felt that you were inadequate, however later it turned out that you weren't? I'm guessing you have many of those situations. Situations where you felt like you would fail, however you did much better then you thought you would, or at least better then you thought. I'm guessing this happens with assignments a lot in school, where you feel like you failed an assignment, however you passed by a wide margin. Right? If you were to count every single assignment, I would assume that you pass a LOT more then you fail. This means that you absolutely ARE adequate! It's easier to focus on the failures, then on the wins. We pay so much more attention to the failures, and we forget about the wins. Remind yourself, you are better then you think you are, or give yourself credit for. If you quit, then you won't get a chance to see what you could have done. It's better to try and fail (and LEARN from the experience) then it is to not try at all. After all, "you miss 100% of the shots you don't take" (Wayne Gretzy quote) You can't move forward unless you take the risk and try. Usually, if you aren't successful, you aren't much worse then where you were to start with, except for your self-esteem. Likely that wasn’t that high to start with or you wouldn’t be feeling inadequate, self-esteem is directly related to the thoughts you think about yourself, not to your actual capabilities. If you think positively about yourself, the higher the self esteem.
There are people that I’ve worked with that wanted to work on their low self-esteem. Through our work though it was discovered that they didn’t have low self-esteem, they just felt like they should be cause of societal and family pressure to be “the best”. With some work they learned that they really had good self-esteem and liked who they were, yet they were giving lots of power of their self-esteem to others. Be careful of this trap, what matters is how much you truly like yourself, not what others think about how much you should like yourself.
