It certainly is hard to get used to a new camera. I've used either a Canon Powershot S1 or S3 for about 10 years, then I got a Panasonic FZ200 and it took months of near daily use before I stopped hitting the wrong buttons while trying to quickly change settings. There are still things I miss about the old Canons, and other things I wish I had back from my film Pentax SLR camera days.
I do try to read through the manuals when I get something new even if I don't take it all in at once. Then practice different techniques a lot on unimportant things if you have the time. My mom doesn't use her camera very often and then gets frustrated when she needs to use it and can't remember how to do things. She does the same for gps maps programs on her phone. I keep saying... don't wait until you're lost and already frustrated to try and use it for the first time in over a year!
I know a lot of people just say to leave everything on auto, but you really can get better results usually using at least P (program mode). That way you most likely have some control over settings like the aperture, iso, white balance, macro focus, etc. Auto modes normally don't let you change much, and really aren't as smart as the manufacturers claim. The scene modes aren't very helpful in my opinion and are often fiddly to find anyways.
I agree with Larry about standing farther back and using your optical zoom for closeups. That is a great technique to help isolate a flower and blur the background which is what a lot of people are trying to achieve. Opening up the aperture helps with that also, which you can't do in auto mode. I know on my camera if I have the macro mode enabled I can use the full 24x zoom and be as close as 1 meter away from something and get good focus on my subject with a nice blurred background. If I don't use the zoom at all (keep it at wide angle) I can put the camera right up next to something as close as 1cm and focus on it in macro mode. I do that a lot with very tiny insects, if they let me. If I disable macro mode the camera can't focus that close at either end of the zoom range, but it focuses much faster because it isn't trying to lock focus searching such a wide range. Knowing what those focusing distances are for your particular camera is immensely helpful.
