Practice will help a lot, but let's face it: most people don't get a lot of time to practice, so when you have the chance to fly you want to do it right.

You might want to try some different techniques, I found that switching to superman flight gave me a lot of speed but lousy control, flapping my arms is extremely slow, but great for precision, and gliding is somewhere in between. There are so many techniques: do the superman thing, sprout wings, equip a jet pack or even take that My Little Pony out of your pocket and ride it over the rainbows (though lacking in testosterone this would be one hell of a dream). There's bound to be a style that suits you. You can work out the occasional nosedive with some practice.

Good luck

edit: Since you've already got long lucids I'm ignoring the whole confidence thing, I guess you already know that by now.