Are you confident or arrogant?
Confidence is the belief about yourself that you are good at something. It's about knowing that you have the skills to accomplish a task, whether that's a work assignment or making your friends feel comfortable around you. Confidence is all about knowing your value and feeling good about having earned that skill or ability.
But, it's very, very different than arrogance. The biggest difference between confidence and arrogance is that confidence is about you - It's about knowing your worth - what you can and can't do. What do you bring to the table in your personal and professional relationships?
Arrogance, on the other hand, is externally driven. It's dependent on you feeling superior to others. If knowing that you are better than others brings a greater sense of comfort than knowing that you are good at something, then that's not really confidence.
A common reason that I see driving people towards what looks like arrogance is a superficial attempt to appear more confident. The arrogance is often a facade to hide insecurities, but what's the advice that people often give to someone with low self-esteem. It doesn't work when you just try to "be more confident" without knowing what areas you're confident in.
You have to identify the strengths that make you unique - things that you bring to the table because those are the things that will help you feel confident and empower you from within. So let's move on to two tell-tale signs telling confidence and arrogance apart.
The first sign is that you know what you are confident about and what you are not confident about? No one can be confident about everything because there will always be areas you feel confident in and things you are not good at.
For example, I feel pretty comfortable with public speaking, but ask me to sing or dance, and you will see the most unconfident person ever.
Real confidence is rooted in knowing that you are good at something and that something is important to you and valuable to others. On the other hand, if you feel that you must come across as confident in every situation all the time, then, I'm sorry, but that's just your pride speaking… or maybe narcissism…. I'm not sure, but it's definitely not confidence rooted in self-awareness.
The second tell-tale sign of confidence vs. arrogance is the belief that your confidence is only valuable because it makes you better than someone else. You could be confident that you are competitive in a particular skill, but being better at a task or two doesn't make you a better person than someone else. Your confidence should be a reflection of you - your abilities and your values. Because real confidence is not dependent on feeling superior to others -that's, in fact, a sign of arrogance. Superiority is arrogance - narcissism is arrogance - that needs constant reassurance and comparison to others.
Now, if you find yourself more towards the arrogance end of the spectrum, then that's nothing to be embarrassed about. I often talk about personal growth is like a pendulum. When you are stuck on one side for a while, and you try to get yourself unstuck, you ARE going to swing to the other side and a back and forth a few times before you find your balance.
And one thing that can be very powerful in finding your confidence, especially in relationships, is to develop self-awareness in relationships. Understand who you are in relationships and what things make you feel loved or insecure.
And to help you take a deeper dive into that, I'm creating this special playlist of videos. This playlist covers attachment styles and love languages to understand your insecurities and vulnerabilities in a relationship. So be sure to watch it develop arrogance-free confidence with a dose of humility.
Why be humble with confidence?
That humility is the real key - it's the secret ingredient for genuine confidence. We all have had experiences where someone acted arrogantly.
Now I want you to think back to one such experience in your life - where you felt that someone was arrogant. Maybe it was the way they were talking, the words they chose, or perhaps just the non-verbals. Now, remember how you feel good after talking to that person? Did they earn your respect?
And if your answer is no - If you didn't feel empowered or valued, then use that experience to develop non-arrogant, humble confidence for yourself. Be intentional about the choice you make with your words and actions.
Confidence is an expression of who you are without any shame. It's also an invitation to others to connect with you genuinely. Your confidence in being unapologetically you should make others feel comfortable to be truly themselves without any fear and hesitation.
Because that's where you truly bond with them. That's how you feel accepted and respected by others, rather than simply feared, and guess what - when you receive respect and love, your confidence will grow stronger too. Because people love you for you who you are, not who you pretend to be.
You don't have to convince anyone to see your strength because it shows through your calm confidence that doesn't need to be loud to be heard. And that's the value of being humble. There is no better feeling in the world.
Now, of course, you are not going to get there overnight. It's a process - It's a journey. And if you are ready for this journey, then know that your intentional living family will be with you every step of the way.
