The thin line between confidence and arrogance

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What makes someone confident but not arrogant?

This is a tough line that, quite frankly, most people cannot successfully tread. Far too often, most of us go screeching way past confidence and delving into sheer arrogance.

The value of confidence

It’s important to be comfortable. It is crucial for one self-esteem to believe that they can be successful. One of the first times I learned a lot about confidence and visualizing success when I was on my high school swim team. Our coach taught a lot about visualizing how a race was going to go and seeing yourself performing excellently. The argument with visualization is that when you see yourself succeeding, you will succeed.

I think that’s a big difference between confidence and arrogance is that confidence is believing in oneself, in spite of things that might go wrong. Arrogance on the other hand is believing that you will succeed and that nothing can go wrong. Confidence is a lot like courage. Without fear, courage means nothing. Without adversity, confidence doesn’t mean a whole lot either.

Playing to not get hurt

I think a lot about football players and the athletes in general how they will talk about the idea that sometimes they try to play to avoid getting hurt“. The problem with that mindset is you only put fourth half effort. And trying to protect yourself from getting hurt, you really end up Not giving your best effort. Human athletics is one of those areas where you have to go full force. You can’t be afraid of getting hurt. A lot of athletes will say that when they do “played and not get injured“ more often than that, they end up getting hurt. I bring this up because people who “played and not get hurt“ are essentially playing without confidence. They are guarded. They’re not taking chances.

But I think the same idea can be anything in life. You have to give it your all. It sounds corny and cliché, but it is true. You have to believe that you are limitless and nothing can stop you.

The tortoise and the hare

When one is arrogant, they are convinced that nothing can go wrong, that nothing will go wrong and there’s no way that they can possibly lose. We need look no further than the old fable of the tortoise in the hare . The hare was the perfect example of arrogance. He was the height of hubris. He believed that there was no way the tortoise could beat him, and because of that, he put forth no effort. And in doing that, he ultimately caused himself to lose. At the risk of settling into the realm of cliché, I always think of the expression. “when you failed to prepare, you prepared to fail”. That expression may have no better example then the story of the tortoise in the hare.

Being confident requires a level of self-awareness than arrogance can never conceptualize. Yes, things can go wrong. Yes, you can get hurt. Yes, you can lose. But confidence is the state of mind where we push ourselves to move past those insecurities, past those limitations and persevere.

Hopefully this makes sense. I feel like I wrote myself in circles just now.

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