The Confidence Scale

On the confidence scale, there is definitely a pretty small area in which “Healthy Confidence” falls. It may come as a surprise to you that I push the upper bounds of healthy confidence to extremes never tested :)

On the high extreme are people who are supremely over-confident. There’s a whole myriad of problems that accompany this issue. Over-confidence leads to getting into situations that are way over your head. Over-confident people think they can handle anything and everything, and never admit that maybe they are not the expert. As you can imagine, a lot of different problems can happen when you think you know what you’re doing, but really have no clue. Overconfidence/arrogance are a recipe for disaster as well as people not liking you.

On the other end are people who have an extreme lack of confidence. This can manifest itself in two ways, both of which can be annoying.

The first, and less annoying way, are the people who don't think they can do anything. They're favorite response when asked to do something is "I'll Try" or "I'll try my best!" The lack of confidence then perpetuates because, how in the hell are you supposed to do anything well when you can't envision success?

You can't!

The accumulation of failure or minimal success just reinforces the low self esteem.

The other types of people who lack confidence are those who try and hide it or make up for it by showing an overly confident facade.

There's a guy I play basketball with, lets call him Mo, who suffers from this "I'm the best, and you're going hear about it" syndrome. Generally, he's a nice guy and we get along...mostly because I don't feel the need to call him out on a lot of the "Bovine fecal matter" that he comes up with.

For example, last week he's going on and on about how he goes up to Riverside and he has like a harem of women who are all over him. Not quite the exact story, but that's the gist. I know that this is all nonsense, but I like humoring him to see how much more stuff he'll make up.

Mo: "Damn Arun, I went up to Riverside last week cuz this girl's been callin me...when I came back, she wasn't a virgin!"

Me: "Gee Mo, you've got a lotta game man."

Mo: "I've got me a lotta girls up there dawg!"

Then later on the basketball court, he's not exactly having a stellar day. Conveniently, he jams his finger. While it's entirely possible that he jammed his finger, the whole rest of the day he's looking at his hand shaking it around....and not playing very well.

Mo: "Wait till next week guys when my finger's better! Imma ball y'all up!"

Again, a truly confident person doesn't want anyone to know he's hurt. When Michael Jordan, Pete Sampras, or Tiger Woods played hurt, they never used that excuse.

A healthy confidence means you don't feel the need to brag about yourself on a constant basis. I don't need to tell the world that a very cute girl asked ME out last night because I earn respect not by the company I keep, but by the way I behave. (although I suppose I just told you all :)

I've talked ad nauseum about the The Power of Self Confidence before, but I think a lot of people fool themselves into thinking they're confident when they're really not.

One shouldn't have to tell people you're confident. It should naturally show. That's not to say I'm 100% healthily confident as I still get butterflies and thoroughly enjoy tooting my own horn (and a quite good-looking horn it is if I do say so :), but at least I realize it!

Moral of the rant: Be yourself, believe in yourself, and the result will be a more confident person. And, start a blog so you can tell people how awesome you think you are so you don't feel the need to in person. (although, come to think of it, I quite the ego-maniac in person too!)