It is very repulsive to hear that a person cannot be trusted until he is lost. Interestingly, many of us struggle between confidence and arrogance. Balancing becomes a challenge for most of the people and it is because of the wrong thinking which is ignorant of the real truth of being confident.
Are you still confused? Let me tell you a story. An HR officer in an organization was interviewing for a higher position. While asking the question, he asked the candidate sitting in front of him where do you see yourself after 5 years? In response to the question, the candidate said that if I get this job, in the next 3 years, I see myself in the co-op space. On hearing this, the officer thanked the candidate and ended the interview.
Shall we call it self-confidence, overconfidence or arrogance?
Without self-confidence, it is difficult to survive in the society, and if this self-confidence is too high, it can lead to problems. This may sound like a good thing, but the interesting thing is that overconfidence doesn’t actually exist. Self-confidence creates obstacles.
It is very important to understand that arrogance, which is also called pride, and self-confidence are two completely different concepts and they have nothing to do with each other. It is not necessary that a person who has self-confidence should also have arrogance and one who has arrogance should also have self-confidence. For example, people who bully others, do you think they are self-confident? No, not at all. In fact, such people have a severe lack of self-confidence and this lack leads to bullying others. The important thing to understand is that the opposite of arrogance is not lack of self-confidence, but what we call “respect”.
Anyone can develop as much self-esteem as they want, but it is important to understand that self-esteem and respect must be balanced. The question arises as to how this trait of respect can be highlighted in ourselves. To develop this trait, it is necessary that we give importance to the next point of view.
How to give importance to the point of view of the other, try to understand this process. Whenever two people meet each other, seeing each other, a specific thought is created in their minds. After that, they try to guess each other’s motives and intentions. If there is any doubt, they try to guess more in this situation. By this time, they have this thing well settled in their minds. What is the opinion of the next person about them? This opinion can be negative, positive or neutral. At this stage, it is very important to assess that this thought of ours is not related to the past. Eventually, you will improve your behavior in the way you want the next person to think about you. This whole process happens unconsciously in a few milliseconds.
Let’s go back to the example given above. The requirement was that the candidate should answer the question considering the relevance of the occasion. In this way, he could guess what the officer would think about him after hearing his answer. What will I think? He may think that this child of yesterday is thinking about me reaching this position in 3 years, whereas I have achieved this position after 15 years of tireless work. This will never happen.