Moxy vs. Cockiness?

In my lesson on Saturday, Carol told me, after politely shredding me, that I had lost a bit of my confidence, or my "moxy."  Hmm...I wonder why????  My guess is that I am a little distraught at my current lack of abilities, or lack of preparation, or general lack.  How can we as performers balance a very self-critical interior with a confident performing presence?  How can we as people be both confident and self-affirming without being huge cocky asses?  This is my current dilemma.

How can one be confident and yet be able to accurately judge one's playing?  How can I balance self-criticism with confidence in the moment?  I really have no idea, honestly.  I feel like I'm actually pretty good at being confident while performing, but apparently, that hasn't been working out for me as of late.  How can we, as performers, be confident, but include the audience in our experience, while not being artificial or sycophantic?  Nothing is worse than a performer who is extremely egotistical in his performance (Yuri Bashmet?), especially when there's not much substance underneath.  I'm on a search though, to see how I can combine the substance and positive intentions of my playing with something that is confident and containing "pizzazz" (whatever that is).  

The recent lack of success here at the esteemed (ahem) ESM has attacked my sense of confidence and moxy, and has made me question myself and my abilities in a harsher way than usual.  Each day, each hour, I vacillate between feeling excitement and my playing and enthusiasm for the future, with despair and disgruntlement.  It's quite awful, honestly.  To never feel confident in myself is harsh enough, especially when I'm not even playing.  I used to be unhappy with classical music as a medium, but now I'm ok with it, and instead I have doubts in myself, in the aesthetics I value, and I fear that I am missing some really obvious thing in music in my string of failures.  I know I need to get back to the way I was, even if it may have been ignorant or misguided in its enthusiasm.  Right now, I'm weighing down the self-criticism side of the seesaw, rather than maintaining a balance between the confidence and the criticism. Hopefully, something will sit down on the other side soon.