I'm Just Confident

Have you ever heard someone say that? “I’m not arrogant, I’m just confident.” In my experience of the conversation got to the point where someone is saying that—not as a joke—they’re probably arrogant, cocksure, cocky, egotistical, whatever you want to call it. Here I want to discuss the difference between arrogance and confidence. And how you may want to go about interacting with people that come off as arrogant.

Confident people are usually people that we look up to—especially since none of us are confident. They believe in themselves, they are ok with who they are, they carry themselves with respect. Where does this come from? This comes from self-awareness combined with acceptance. Confident people know who they are, they know themselves, and they're ok with themselves. Not to say they don't think they're flawed, they know they're flawed, and they accept that. That's the root of confidence: awareness and acceptance.

Arrogant people often come off as overestimating their abilities, talking about themselves in a way that seems to show that they think they can do more than they're actually capable of. Where does arrogance come from then? Where is this inflated sense-of-self derived? Unexpectedly arrogancy often arises as a defense mechanism of insecurity; meaning, people that are arrogant, deep down inside are insecure about themselves. They don't like themselves. Sometimes they are simply not self-aware, they don't know themselves, more often, however, they are self-aware, however, they don't accept themselves. Self-awareness with the lack of self-acceptance is where the arrogance comes from.

How does that make sense? How can you act so cocksure if you don't like yourself? Because you create a version of yourself, an image of yourself, an inflated sense of self, and that's what you project into the world. This is arrogance.

With that, I ask you, if you meet an arrogant person, don't validate them, don't agree with them, but be compassionate, be kind. Deep down, regardless of how annoying they come off, and how much you want to punch them in the stomach, they're probably just insecure. And they've gone through things that have taught them that they can't be insecure, and formed the defense mechanism we call "arrogance."

Arrogance is nothing more than a function of the ego. The ego is a sense of self, the ego protects people from rejection, from acceptance, from pain. If a company rejects you, your ego kicks in, "I'm not unqualified, they're just stupid, I didn't want the job anyway, I was doing them a favor." Your ego tells you. The moral of the story, treat everyone with kindness, we're all arrogant, egotistical, jerks somewhere.