Personal Development Skills – Confidence

Article by Mike Sherratt

Personal Development Skills – Confidence

Personal Development Skills – Confidence – Confidence in Personal Development, Leaders in Assertiveness and confidence building training, communication skills

We all know how valuable confidence is for creating the life of our desire and for magnifying our other talents and making the most of the opportunities in our life. However, you might be puzzled by the question: “What’s the difference between being confident and being arrogant?” I say this because it puzzled me for years, and made it VERY difficult to develop confidence. I finally discovered the answer several years ago and since then have developed a level of confidence that I never knew I had.

Since I believe that this insight can help others and there’s a serious lack of good material on this subject, I thought it was appropriate to write this article…

The Difference Between Confidence and Arrogance

The primary difference between confidence and arrogance is this: confident people are self-aware, arrogant people are self-absorbed. Big, BIG difference between the two. First of all, it’s impossible to be genuinely confident without self-awareness…I mean how can you be confident in who you are if you don’t know who you are? The less aware you are of who you are, the more uncertain you’ll be and uncertainty (as you know) always leads to fear.

The most prevalent fear which comes from lack of self-awareness is that you’re somehow “not enough” or that you’ll “be found out” for a fake. This is a common challenge which is created by much of the “how to be confident” teachings today. You’re taught to act confident by modeling confident people in your speech and in your body language. However, the more you do this the more you’re absorbed in keeping up the mask of confidence.

While this might work for a while, this kind of “confidence” will always be exposed by the presence of pressure and adversity. At other times, the truth will be exposed during times when there is a lack of pressure or adversity, simply because the “actor” put their guard down. When either of these situations arises, “confidence” because arrogance, and it can happen on a moment’s notice. So here’s the first question you’re probably asking…

What Makes One Self-Absorbed Instead of Self-Aware?

Self absorption is a symptom of the lack of self-awareness. The more self-aware you become, the less need you’ll have to be absorbed in who you hope that you are, or fear that you aren’t. This is because you won’t be constantly driven by the need to actualize or to validate yourself. Too often, people don’t build self-awareness because they have parts of themselves which have been buried or repressed. These parts are buried because the person has come to devalue them as: bad, embarrassing, shameful or inadequate.

The problem is that when a segment of our character is buried, it doesn’t have the opportunity to mature within the context of real life. Thus, it becomes more immature, more distorted and more inadequate, thus creating a vicious cycle which magnifies insecurity and uncertainty. So if you want to build genuine confidence, start with self-awareness, in time this will give way to an unshakable sense of self-actualization which will eliminate the need for outward displays of arrogance and defensiveness.

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Tags: Confidence, Development, Personal, Skills